Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [81]
“Since I was elected, people keep asking me if I’m having fun yet and I never know quite what to say. The 110th Congress’s schedule is grueling, traveling home on the weekends exhausting, and my D.C. apartment is worse than my freshman dorm room in college.”
But then she talked of racing from meeting to meeting, passing reminders—a statue, a painting—of legendary Arizona lawmakers from the past. “I aspire to live up to the legacy of those who came before me,” she said, “and to set a new standard for those who will come along in the future.”
As the Chamber of Commerce audience listened, she took them on a “tour” of her district by describing people who were doing important work at places such as the VA Medical Center and Hendricks Elementary School. Gabby always had a performer’s sense of theater, and she arranged to have special people in the audience—heroes from her district she wanted to introduce. There was a third-grade teacher from Hendricks, Jay Stanforth. “Jay, will you please stand to be recognized.”
There was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, Tommy Mendoza, who served on the Veterans Advisory Council, which Gabby had created. “Tommy, please stand. Thank you for your service and for your commitment to making lives better for all returning soldiers.”
Gabby talked about how Arizona is the fastest-growing state in the nation, and that some towns in her district are “exploding overnight.” She mentioned Benson, with a population of about 5,000. “Now over fifty thousand homes are slated for construction there,” Gabby said. She explained the issues of infrastructure, water conservation. “Folks, we have some choices to make,” she said. “The tension between growth and nature can be lessened through smart policies and collaboration.” Then she introduced Katharine Jacobs, a woman heading a consortium of universities and state agencies that is studying water issues. “Katharine, will you please stand and be recognized.”
Many members of the Tucson Chamber of Commerce weren’t ever going to vote for Gabby, but they had to admit she put on a good show.
In her own way, Gabby was actually a one-woman Chamber of Commerce. Her day wasn’t complete unless she had spent some time proselytizing about southern Arizona. Gabby loved the people, the land, the history, the industry, the weather, the food, the culture.
“It’s the best place in the world,” she’d always say to Pia Carusone, her chief of staff, who was raised in upstate New York. “Don’t let people tell you that Arizona is too hot! The weather here is great and people like it hot anyway. You can have a year-round tan, and use solar panels to cut your electric bills way down.”
Gabby loved that her constituents were such a diverse crowd. Her district is home to an Air Force base and an Army post. Her constituents are ranchers, retirees, artists, college students, professors, astronomers, union members, public-sector workers, and a lot of hardworking, low-wage blue-collar types. Pia marveled at how adept Gabby seemed to be at relating to the “crunchy people in clogs” who thought she wasn’t liberal enough, and the grumpy old Republicans with guns on their belts who distrusted Washington. She called them her “bubbas.”
She could talk about military benefits with veterans, details of missile-production with Raytheon engineers, and Department of Defense policy specifics of the new Joint Strike Fighter with Air Force generals. She could nurse a beer with her bubbas at Trident Grill, a favorite Tucson watering hole owned by her friend Nelson Miller, or at the Shanty, owned by her friend Bill Nugent. She was just as comfortable sipping wine out in the foothills with retired investment bankers who’d moved to town from back East and wanted to discuss tax policy. And because Gabby spoke Spanish fluently and knew Hispanic culture well, she related easily to Latinos in her district.
She had a lot of warm feelings for the people she represented. It saddened her, though, to see the darker side of her district.