BOSTON — Debbie still remembers the moment more than a year ago
when she decided to devote herself to defeating Barney Frank.
“The way he talked to his constituents, it just turned my
stomach,” Debbie said, talking about an August 2009 town-hall event
in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, attended by some 500 citizens who
overwhelmingly opposed the health-care bill that was then working
its way through Congress. “I said to my husband, ‘I don’t care
who’s running against him, I’ll work for them — and I’ll work my
heart out.’”
True to her vow, Debbie was working her heart out Tuesday
afternoon at a phone bank in the Norton, Massachusetts office of
the Republican challenger who is giving the 14-term incumbent the
biggest fight of his career.
Sean Bielat has
first-hand knowledge of Barney Frank’s stomach-turning arrogance.
Bielat debated Frank three times in the past two days, although
“debate” is perhaps not the correct word. Frank does not debate, he
lectures, and no matter what outrageous claims he makes, his
opponent cannot be permitted to object.
“Mr. Bielat, please stop interrupting me,” Frank
said during a Monday debate on Boston’s WRKO radio, after the
Republican had objected to one of Frank’s numerous distortions.
Before the debate was over, as
Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller noted, Frank complained
eight time about being interrupted. It was as if Frank thought he
was back at Harvard — where he taught undergraduate course in the
1960s — and his GOP opponent was an impertinent
sophomore.
Bielat yesterday summed up Frank’s attitude: “‘Don’t talk.
I’m talking. I’m the congressman. You’re here to listen to me.’
That’s the way he’s approached his constituents. That’s the way
he’s approaching this race. And that’s the way he was approaching
me [Monday].”
For nearly three decades, voters in the 4th District have
evidently been happy to re-elect the biggest know-it-all in
Congress, but 2010 is not just any mid-term election year. Voters
everywhere seem to have lost patience with being lectured by
politicians and, like Bielat, they’re in a mood to
interrupt.
“This year isn’t about Democrats or Republicans or
independents,” Bielat said yesterday in an interview at his
campaign headquarters. “It’s about Americans who are tired of the
way their government is running, tired of the leadership in
Washington and want a change. I have had numerous Democrats come up
to me and say, ‘Hey, you know, I voted for Barney Frank a bunch of
times. I kind of agree with him, but 30 years is too long for
anybody.’ … And then I’ve had people say, ‘He wasn’t that bad when
he started, but he’s turned into a grumpy old man and he needs to
go.’”
Like many other Republicans, both here in Massachusetts
and across the country, Bielat was encouraged by Scott Brown’s
victory in the January special election to fill the Senate seat
vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy. Brown narrowly won the 4th
District, but Bielat says he expects to improve even on that
remarkable performance.
“We’re doing very well in the north [part of the
4th District], which should be his stronghold. He’s from
Newton. It’s a liberal town. Brookline’s even more liberal. And
we’re doing very well up here. We’re doing well along the South
Coast — again, not an area of strength for Scott Brown — and
we’re going to be able to repeat his performance in the middle of
the district. So it’s coming together. I think we’re going to be
able to widen his margin of victory. In many ways, Martha Coakley
was a better candidate than Barney Frank.”
At least Coakley — the Democratic state attorney general
who lost to Brown in January — couldn’t be blamed for wrecking the
economy, which is the most damning charge in Bielat’s indictment of
Barney Frank. During the housing bubble, Frank repeatedly denied
that there was any problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the
federally sponsored agencies that fell under the oversight of the
House Financial Services Committee where he was the ranking
Democrat. Bielat points out how Frank scoffed at claims that Fannie
and Freddie were engaged in unsound lending practices. Frank
dismissed “disaster scenarios” of those who warned that the
problems could lead to “serious financial losses,” and said he
wanted to “roll the dice a little bit more” with subsidies for
low-income home ownership.
During his debates with Bielat, Frank repeatedly claimed
that Republicans blocked his own efforts to crack down on
“predatory lending.” Yet what led to the mortgage crisis could more
accurately be described as predatory borrowing, with
taxpayers as the prey.
“Barney Frank doesn’t exactly have clean hands when it
comes to this stuff,” Bielat says. “He likes to pretend that he was
advocating for rental housing the whole time. I can’t find that in
the record.”
Frank is now experiencing his own financial crisis of
sorts. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, in
previous election cycles Frank contributed hundreds of thousands of
dollars from his own campaign coffers to help elect other
Democrats; this year, those contributions have been drastically
reduced, as Frank has been forced to defend himself against
Bielat’s challenge.
“I feel bad for all those Democratic campaigns that aren’t
getting that money,” Bielat joked yesterday, while his own campaign
continued to reap thousands of dollars in online contributions from
conservatives across the country eager to end Frank’s tenure in
Congress.
Such hopes were encouraged late Monday when the
Cook Political Report downgraded Frank’s re-election chances
from “safe” to “likely.” Of course, that means that a GOP win in
the 4th District is still considered unlikely, but it is no longer
deemed impossible, and that is certainly a step in the right
direction for the Bielat campaign. With less than three weeks to
go, there is reason to hope that Barney Frank’s days of lecturing
Americans will be rudely interrupted by voters here on Nov.
2.
