A Fighting Chance

Shrink the Vote

In August, the Republicans picked a new target: my daughter, Amelia.

Ooh boy.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I later learned that Massachusetts (along with many other states) had taken some heat for not following a federal law designed to make it easier for people to register to vote. The National Voter Registration Act, passed in 1993, requires states to offer people the chance to register to vote when they get a driver’s license, which is why the law is usually called “Motor Voter.” Seems sensible, and that part of the law was working pretty well. But since not everyone gets a driver’s license—especially the disabled, elderly, and urban poor—the same law required states to invite people to register to vote when they applied for social services, such as veterans’ benefits, food stamps, or Medicaid. That’s where Massachusetts had dropped the ball.

And that’s where Amelia figured in. Not long after we finished writing The Two-Income Trap together, Amelia started volunteering for a nonprofit group called Demos, which tries to help strengthen the middle class and promote democracy through research and advocacy. By the time of my Senate campaign, she had been working with Demos for several years, and they had elected her chairman of the board. It was a part-time volunteer position involving things like choosing an audit committee and setting the agenda for board meetings.

Demos had been pushing a lot of states, including mine, to comply with the federal voting law. Now Massachusetts was finally mailing out half a million voter registration cards. In early August, Scott Brown issued a furious statement calling the state’s mailing “outrageous,” and he accused Amelia of aiding this effort in an attempt to benefit my campaign.

In fact, Amelia had nothing to do with the Massachusetts mailing. Demos had started pushing for state compliance with federal voting laws two years before Amelia began volunteering for the organization, which was many years before I had even thought of running for the Senate.

But to me, that wasn’t really the point. Scott Brown was a sitting US senator, and he was outraged that his home state was making an effort to follow federal law. Huh? The real issue for me had nothing to do with Amelia or even Demos: the real issue was about doing everything possible to help people register to vote. I thought voter registration was supposed to be like organizing a blood drive or holding a Thanksgiving charity raffle—the kinds of values that we all support, from both political parties.

Okay, people can laugh and say I’m hopelessly naive, but this issue is a direct shot at democracy. In many states, the Republicans have made voter suppression a regular part of their arsenal, chipping away at early voting, African American voting, Latino voting, immigrant voting, student voting, you-name-it voting. As the Tea Party–affiliated True the Vote campaign famously said, they wanted voting to become like “driving and seeing the police following you.” I guess attacking my daughter for her involvement in an organization that was pushing states to help more people register to vote was just one more page out of their standard playbook.

But the assault shifted the Senate contest in another way. Amelia was suddenly in the limelight. And once Scott Brown and the Republican Party started attacking her, it quickly became clear that she was deemed “fair game” for anyone who wanted to take a whack at her.

Amelia’s phone rang off the hook, and several articles about her appeared in the papers. Reporters combed through her background and called up her old friends and co-workers, trying to find people who would talk about her for a newspaper story. Amelia kept assuring me that she was fine—after all, she’s a successful businesswoman in her own right, and she could handle what came at her. But I felt terrible.

I knew politics was a rough business, but I had really hoped I’d be the only target. So far, the Republicans had denounced my dead parents, harassed my brothers, and attacked my daughter. And this was all on me. My family hadn’t asked for any of this, and if I had kept my head down, none of this would have happened to them.





Home Front

One night a week or two later, something was worrying me in my sleep. I finally came half-awake and heard a cough. Not exactly a cough, maybe more of a hack. I drifted back to sleep, then heard it again. My brain cleared enough to locate the sound.

I nudged Bruce and said, “What’s wrong with Otis?”

We both waited in the dark, but Otis didn’t make any sound, so I got out of bed. I rubbed his head for a few minutes. He seemed fine, so I went back to bed. But the next morning, Bruce said he wanted to take Otis in for a checkup, just to be sure.

When I got home that night, Bruce took me out to the porch swing and sat beside me. He held both my hands. This wouldn’t be good.