When I called Senator Dorgan’s office, I was taken through the usual procedure: a friendly voice answered the phone, I briefly told them that I want to urge Senator Dorgan to vote No on any cloture or vote of passage for the Amnesty Bill, as I call it. They thanked me for my opinion, asked for my name and mailing address so I could receive a response letter from Senator Dorgan, and we thanked each other and hung up. This is exactly how it’s been before. Conrad’s office, however, was different.
First off, the phone rang forever. I know it was within office hours in Washington, DC but I wasn’t surprised at the long wait; the Capitol switchboard was actually shut down due to volume of calls Thursday and I expected things to be busy when I called Wednesday.
Second, the voice who answered the phone sounded one third agitated and two thirds cocky. I said the same thing, that “I’m calling to urge Senator Conrad to vote No for any cloture vote or final vote on the so-called Amnesty Bill.” I simply received an annoyed “okay” or something to that effect. Waiting for them to ask my name, it wasn’t happening. I kept the conversation going by asking, “don’t you want to record my name?” They said sure, so I gave them my name and said, “I’m one of the Senator’s constituents.” At that point they cut the call short. No asking my address or phone number to verify or anything. This was unusual and, in fact, different from any other call I’ve placed to any of our congressmen.
I have no doubt that my comments never reached Senator Conrad. Even if they had, I doubt they’d have changed his mind; he votes like a Massachussetts liberal consistently, and only keeps an apartment in North Dakota to qualify for re-election (along with his cohort, Senator Dorgan.
In this case, North Dakota was completely irrelevant in the immigration debate; our two Senators cancelled each other out. I expected Senator Dorgan to vote against this, and I give him credit for doing so, although his motivation lies with his love of Big Labor. (If we can have Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and Big Pharmaceuticals, we can also label the union lobby Big Labor.) Senator Conrad, however, is another story.
Like I said, Senator Conrad votes like a Kennedy. His votes consistently fly in the face of the values and demographics of the people he was elected to represent. But at least his staff could have been professional and recorded my message for the Senator, which I don’t believe they did. I’m going to continue calling, but more importantly I’ll be voting AGAINST him in the next election.