Not Wowed

Last night I attended a meeting of the Phoenix chapter of Drinking Liberally so I could meet John Dougherty, a former investigative reporter running for McCain’s US Senate seat. I’ve never attended a Drinking Liberally meeting before, so I don’t know how they usually go, but I’ve heard they’re meant to be fairly informal. One fellow who seemed to be an organizer mentioned several times that this was the best turnout they’d had. I counted 18 people around the table at George and Dragon, not including Dougherty. This was after my husband and friend left. They stayed about five minutes before growing so frustrated with the environment that they preferred to skip the event altogether.

What was wrong? What wasn’t?

First, the pub isn’t an acoustically great environment. Sound bounces around off the tile floor and stone fireplace and off walls and ceiling. So if more than one person is talking, you get a cacophony and it’s impossible to isolate and listen to any one particular voice. The only thing you can do is try to talk to the person next to you. And among this group, everyone was talking. Dougherty remained standing while everyone else sat. He tried briefly to engage the group as a whole and then evidently gave up. I got to hear what he had to say when he was at my end of the table. And he had some interesting things to say.

But the conversation, driven by one or two people, kept reverting back to SB1070, which, topical as it may be, is not an appropriate issue to fixate on when you have the opportunity to talk to a US Senate candidate. It’s a state law, not federal. If we were there to learn about Dougherty as a candidate, why weren’t people asking what he would do to reform immigration laws at the federal level? And why keep the whole conversation focused on this one issue, when we could be asking him his views on economic reform aimed at preventing big banks from causing another meltdown, or what he would do to end lobbyist influence in Washington, or his views on Iraq and Afghanistan, or what he wants to do regarding energy policy?

For about twenty minutes, I listened as closely as I could to what others were asking Dougherty, and to his responses. The same guy who bragged about the great turnout talked so loudly that I only made out about half of what was being said. An older gentleman next to me kept looking up information on Google using his Blackberry, since no one heard when he tried to ask clarifying questions. During this time, all but four people at my end of the table were completely ignoring Dougherty, and talking so loudly that those of us right next to him could barely manage to converse with him. So were they hear to support him, find out about him, or what?

When I finally got a chance to ask a question of my own, Dougherty either didn’t hear it correctly or was completely unprepared to discuss the topic, because his answer didn’t directly address the question and more, was a pretty weak answer. I wanted to know more about his views on the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and the issue of corporate money and its effect on our elections and our lawmaking process. Before I could clarify or follow up, someone had routed the talk back to SB1070.

I stayed as long as Dougherty stayed. I shook his hand and thanked him for coming. I signed his petition to get on the ballot, which, by the way, he nearly left behind at the pub when he left. But I don’t feel like I got to know much about his positions on anything he would be able to influence should he gain the Senate seat. And that’s a failure on the part of the group hosting the event, and on Dougherty himself. I mean, honestly, how are you going to lead in the Senate if you can’t lead or inspire a group of 18 people to focus for half an hour and hear you out on your campaign platform?

My husband’s one-line assessment: “No one in this room has any political or monetary clout.”

As for me, I’ll keep an open ear and open mind. Hopefully I’ll have another chance to hear Dougherty, and hopefully he’ll be able to more clearly articulate some sort of vision of himself as a Senator. But for now, I’m not wowed.