By Colbert I. King
Saturday, November 11, 2006
"Conrad, how can you live back there [in Washington] with all those niggers?" When asked how he had responded, Sen. Burns is reported to have . . . said with a chuckle that he told the rancher that it was 'a hell of a challenge.' "
-- The Washington Post, Oct. 22, 1994
Election night in the nation's capital was a pretty tame affair, given that most of the important local races were decided in the September primary. But for some of us who live in the District, the real action on election night took place far beyond city limits.
My attention, for example, was focused on Big Sky Country, where three-term Republican Sen. Conrad Burns was locking horns with the president of the Montana Senate, Jon Tester. It wasn't until late Wednesday morning that we received the good news that Burns had been defeated. It was worth the wait.
Burns lost his seat, in part, because of his ties to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But Burns hit rock bottom with some of us 12 years ago when we learned about his slur against the District's African American population.
At the time, Burns was the senior Republican on the D.C. appropriations subcommittee. A former livestock auctioneer and radio announcer, Burns liked to affect a folksy, aw-shucks manner. A Montana newspaper, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, reported that during a campaign visit with the paper's editors, Burns told an anecdote about an elderly Montana rancher who wanted to know how he could stand living in the nation's capital "with all those niggers." Asked how he responded, Burns reportedly said he told the man it was "a hell of a challenge."
After Montanans raised a stink about the slur, making it clear they didn't think it was as funny as the senator did, Burns apologized.
Thanks to the wisdom of the people of Montana, Conrad Burns no longer is forced to bear the burden of living among those of us of color. The "hell of a challenge" that Burns faced for lo these many years has ended, and with it his career as a United States senator. To which I shout: "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow."
Grace was also flowing back east in North Carolina on election night. Republican Rep. Charles Taylor lost his job to Democratic challenger Heath Shuler, who once labored for our hometown National Football League team -- a fact better left undiscussed.
Taylor was defeated for reasons having little to do with his former service as chairman of the House D.C. appropriations subcommittee. But, again, we in the District had reason to follow the North Carolina vote count as closely as we watched the D.C. returns.
I'd like to believe that Taylor's loss was retributive justice for the dastardly way he treated the District when he was the chief House overseer of the city's budget.
Who can forget his Jan. 9, 1998, "Dear Colleague" letter to members of the House of Representatives? Emblazoned in large, bold type near the top of the page was this announcement: "The average D.C. student can't read this letter."
It was a Taylor taunt hurled at our public school system and at students' math and reading test scores.
This was the same barbed-tongued Charles Taylor who:
--Directed the city to immediately close the University of the District of Columbia's law school and send the students to other schools. (He didn't succeed.)
--Used to tell us how many cops should patrol the streets and how pay raises should be awarded.
--Had his meat-ax approach to the District's budget, which then-financial control board chairman Andrew Brimmer said tore at the "very fundamental operations of government," overruled by his own House Republican leadership.
A few years ago, Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) introduced legislation to overturn a D.C. Human Rights Office ruling that ordered the Boy Scouts of America to pay two gay Eagle Scout troop leaders $50,000 in damages for discrimination. Mr. Hostettler won't do that sort of thing anymore. His constituents told him to take a hike on Tuesday.
The Democratic takeover of Congress offers the prospect of relief from amendments, or riders, that House Republicans loved to attach to the D.C. budget.
Under Republican rule, Congress banned the District from spending locally raised tax dollars on free needle-exchange programs to curb the spread of HIV -- even though local jurisdictions in half the states provide such services. A Republican Congress also extended a federal restriction on abortion funding to all federal and local money spent in the District. And it adopted a rider that prevented the city from using its own money to lobby for voting representation in Congress. One Republican-led appropriations subcommittee even added a provision to the city budget imposing federal penalties on D.C. children caught smoking.
Under House GOP rule, efforts were made to repeal the District's law prohibiting residents from possessing firearms. Another Republican measure would have allowed residents, except for convicted felons, to own handguns and keep them in their homes. The city was spared that fate only because the House ended up scrapping the national gun bill to which those amendments would have been attached.
Tuesday night's election hardly catapulted the District to the Promised Land. But the regaining of Congress by Democrats may have brought the city some relief from odious Republican budget riders and a welcome respite from the District-bashing in vogue in certain quarters on Capitol Hill for the past 12 years.
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