Oh my, oh my, oh my! Our legislature has devolved into a mosh pit of backbiting reprobates. Look at them! It’s a veritable they-said, they-said, 24/7. They must hate each other!
By and large, they don’t. There are hard-fought political wars, to be sure—democracy requires political tension to survive and grow. But in the midst of hurt egos and vituperative speeches, it’s still often a place of fun and funny people. Legislators are, after all, in the people business.
In my time in the Senate, I earned the reputation as a partisan gunslinger. But there were many playful moments on the floor where political jokes and hijinks forged bipartisan camaraderie, which helped serve as lubrication for the ol’ legislative machine. That’s not just my theory. As professor Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia who studies the dichotomy between liberals and conservatives, recently stated, “Minds are very hard things to open, and the best way to open the mind is through the heart,” he said. “Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games.”
Here, too, I earned a reputation of sorts.
Senators are seated by seniority, meaning that, as a baby senator, I was plopped in the middle of hostile Republican territory, flanked by seatmates who, at best, detested most of what I stood for, and, at the worst, prayed for my defeat. Awkward as it was, this seat assignment provided fertile ground for my mischief-making.
The Senate is known for its decorum and rules; business attire at all times, always address the chair, no food or beverages allowed on the floor. Seated immediately to my left was Sen. Gen Olson, a studious, by-the-book Republican who prided herself on maintaining her dignity amidst the rough and tumble of political scrapping (which she largely accomplished with the exception of the time she angrily denounced an amendment of mine, saying it would remove a key statute “in one swell foop!”). So on one sunny afternoon when she left the floor to meet a constituent, I hatched my plan. I opened her desk drawer, tossed in a bag of cookies, sat down and eagerly awaited her return, like a fourth-grader waiting for his teacher to sit on a tack.
She got back to her seat, and I promptly went to the sergeant-at-arms and “reluctantly” reported that Sen. Olson had food on the floor in violation of the rules. When the sergeant questioned her, she vigorously denied the charge, throwing open her drawer in self-defense. She looked down, her face flushed, and looked back up at the sergeant pleading, “They’re not mine! They’re not mine!” Seeing me in hysterics, she realized she had been had. On the last day of the session, she gave me a going-away present—a stuffed Cookie Monster.
Immediately to Sen. Olson’s left was another good target, Republican Sen. Pat Pariseau. A staunch, feisty conservative, she jousted with me many times on the floor, lambasting my positions, mocking my stands. After one spirited debate in which she rose and came perilously close to calling me an idiot, I used the phone in my desk that is provided for the majority whip. I phoned Sen. Olson, sitting right next to me, said I was one of Sen. Pariseau’s constituents, and asked if I could please speak to her. When she took the phone I disguised my voice to sound like an old woman and asked her, “Why are you picking on that nice young man? I’m watching you on TV and you are so mean to him.” She immediately went on the defensive, asking sternly, “What did I say?! Tell me what I said!” She turned, saw me speaking to her on the phone, and slammed it down in disgust. Punk’d. She did not give me any presents when I left.
Some legislation by its very nature brings out the inner juvenile in legislators, and for Republican Sen. Warren Limmer and me, a bill by Sen. Arlene Lesewski ensuring the rights of mothers to breast-feed in public was just too much for us to resist. While she presented her bill, a conversation with the witty and smart Limmer quickly deteriorated into a rapid repartée playing on the legislation’s subject. I started it with, “Hey, Warren, I think it’s really great that Sen. Lesewski is staying abreast of this issue.” Laughter. “I think this is just one of those tit-for-tat moves,” he shot back to more laughter. “I think she’s milking this issue for all it’s worth.” Louder laughter. “Well, I gotta say, it’s a lot better than her udder bill.” That was it. We were gone. Sen. Jane Krentz’s father was watching the session on TV and called her to tell us to stop laughing so much on camera. “It looks like you’re having too much fun,” he cautioned.
Was I having “too much fun”? One incident did give me pause for a time. Senate rules (rules again!) demand that while the Senate is in what’s known as the “Committee of the Whole,” the presiding officer is to be addressed as “Mr. Chairman” or “Madam Chair,” and when in “the Senate” he or she should be addressed “Mr. President” or “Madam President.” Republican Sen. Bill Belanger relished time as presiding officer, and took the responsibilities very seriously. I rose to debate an issue and sought recognition. “Mr. Chairman, this is an issue …” Belanger interrupted, “Senator, it’s Mr. President.” Not picking up what he was telling me, I tried again, “Mr. Chairman, I …” Belanger again, more emphatically, “Senator Chandler, it’s Mr. President.” Finally catching his meaning, I made light of it, starting my remarks, “Your Highness, or whatever, I rise today …” and so on. Belanger chuckled and so did my colleagues.
It wasn’t long after that I received a stinging letter from a constituent castigating me for my disrespect of Sen. Belanger and the entire Senate. I was rattled. Maybe cracking wise on the floor was going too far. After mulling over the letter for a bit, I showed it to my good friend Republican Sen. Dave Knutson, now Judge Knutson, and asked him to read it, with the constituent’s name folded under. His eyes grew wide. “Wow, that’s harsh,” he said. I opened the fold revealing to him what by then I knew—the “constituent” was Dave’s own legislative aide. After a good laugh, he started walking away, then turned and asked sheepishly, “May I take that?”
Certain legislators just make perfect targets by nature of who they are, and the kinetic Sen. Bob Lessard was among my favorites, partly because we shared an office suite in the Capitol and because he had a hilariously cantankerous demeanor and machine-gun speech cadence. On one busy afternoon, office staff and I began attaching big metal paper clips to the bottom of his suit coat whenever he walked by. Soon after he left, someone yelled, “Chandler, come here! You gotta see this!” There was Lessard, walking to his car, his suit coat swinging side-to-side from the weight of a dozen giant clips. He hopped in his car and flew back out like he had sat on a cattle prod. All he could do was look up at the window and give a smile—and a symbolic solitary salute.
Sen. Lessard was passionate about hunting and fishing, hence his moniker “The Trapper.” I was vice chair of the environment committee, which Lessard chaired, so I was expected to assist him with his legislation—not easy, because when it came to environmental policy, we were often at loggerheads. As the committee deadline loomed, Bob had a benign technical bill dealing with deer hunting that needed passage. “I just gotta have your help to meet the midnight deadline, Chandler,” he said, his hand gripping my shoulder. As the deadline approached, he and I sat alone in the committee room—no other members, no lobbyists, no concerned public. Finally, a few minutes before midnight, he looked at me in exasperation, smiled and told the committee clerk to start the tape recorder. Once rolling, he loudly banged the gavel saying, “All right, everyone, quiet down now, please quiet down.” Holding our hands over our microphones to suppress our laughter, I moved the bill, he and I and a wayward member voted for it, and it went on its way to the next committee. This is what is known in legislative parlance as sausage making—you really shouldn’t watch.
Sen. Lessard was also a bit of a problem child for us Democrats, driving us to distraction by regularly voting with and supporting Republicans. One day in his office, he opened his desk for a pen and I caught glimpse of a framed photo of him with Ollie North, the arch-conservative famous for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, with the inscription “To Bob, from your good friend, Ollie North.” He kept it hidden for obvious reasons: he was still a Democrat and chair of a major committee.
On my last day in the Senate, I crept into his office, retrieved the photo and walked it down to the press room in the basement of the Capitol. A few reporters giddily agreed to be my co-conspirators and wrapped the picture in plain brown paper, then called Lessard saying they needed to speak with him in his office on a matter of great importance. An obviously shaken Lessard asked if it could wait. “No, you’d better talk to us right now.” They told me later that they entered his office, somberly set the package on his desk and said they wanted him to comment on its contents.
He nervously unwrapped the photo, took one glance at it, and instantly knew the culprit.
“[Bleepin’] Chandler!” he yelled at the ceiling, and then, “I’m gonna miss him … not!”
—Kevin Chandler served as a DFL state senator from 1993 to 1996 representing White Bear Lake and surrounding communities in then-District 55. He can be reached at kchandler2@msn.com
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