I wasn’t sure how this would play out, but Seaver promptly got Boardman to hire a law firm registered as lobbyists to start pushing to pass D2A. His line was that a major funding outfit wanted it passed. Initially this was just a junior lawyer and a staffer sitting in on some of our meetings at the Heritage Foundation. Still, you had to start somewhere. Ultimately, I’d be able to go to my think tank, just like a regular Congressman, propose some ideas, have them actually write the legislation, and then hire the various lobbyists as needed. As long as the money flowed, nobody would care. We budgeted five million that first year.
A big part of getting things passed is ‘counting noses’, determining who will vote which way and why. We had enough House votes to override, but not in the Senate. As much as I detested working with them, we needed the NRA to bend over and get butt-fucked. The only way I was going to get this passed was to repeal my repeal of the assault weapons ban. This was simply foaming-mouth anathema to them, and the restraint on magazine capacities of over 10 rounds wasn’t much better. The only thing they really liked was the demand for reciprocal permitting and the ‘shall issue’ requirement (and they really liked those parts, which made some of the other stuff acceptable.) Again, I had the House lined up, but digging up ten Democratic Senators was going to be tough — as in, expensive. There would be a lot of campaign contributions for this one.
You have to love Congress. It’s the best that money can buy.
One thing I continued doing was to overtly use my ‘toys’ to swing a vote here and there. You or a constituent needed to fly somewhere? Hey, I’ve got a G-IV that I’m not using this weekend. Why not take that? Didn’t get to Barbados this year? Maybe you’d like a weekend in the Bahamas, a little place called Hougomont? Sure thing, not a problem. Just remember, we have this little vote coming up…
At one point in late summer I had a meeting with Wayne LaPierre of the NRA about the bill. He’d only been on the job for a few years, but he was a hard core gun rights advocate. He was pushing hard for me to remove the magazine capacity restrictions from the bill. I let him fulminate for more time that I really wanted to waste on this, and then shut him down. He was never, ever, going to get what he really wanted, which was a constitutional amendment outlawing any and all restrictions on who could own guns and how many and where they could carry them. If you left it up to him, it would be perfectly legal to strap an automatic machine pistol into your holster and march down the middle of the street, daring anybody to stop you. He wanted the good old days down at the OK Corral, never realizing that what really occurred there was that Wyatt Earp and his brothers and Doc Holliday were actually enforcing various gun control ordinances.
“Wayne, you are never going to get what you want.”
“Carl, we have to fight…”
I held up my hand to stop him. “You’ve had your turn, now it’s mine!” I told him sharply. He settled down, none too graciously, and gave me a mean look. I ignored him. “As I was saying, as long as Bill Clinton or any other Democrat is in office, you are never going to get more than a piece of the pie. You are going to have to fight the long fight, years, in fact, and probably never get everything. There is no way we can get rid of the stuff in the Brady Bill. We just don’t have the votes. I can get the override with the reciprocal permitting and the shall-issue ruling, but the only way is to keep the magazine capacity limit in place. End of story. You ain’t going to get any more than that, and if you don’t like it, get over it!”
He looked like he had a head of steam about to explode, and he cut loose on me. I just sat there and sucked it in, and then shrugged theatrically. “So what!? It don’t matter! Sure, you can buy all the Congressmen you want, but you ain’t going to be buying all the Senators that you need. Hell, I’ve got more money than you, and I couldn’t buy that many! You need to work on the edges. Maryland? Massachusetts? They’ll never vote for this, even if I lined their pockets in gold. Start working on the ones on the fence, and keep your mouth shut and settle for what you can. We get this now, and then in two years we run Clinton out and try again.”
The thought of Clinton losing re-election mollified him slightly, and after a bit, I got him out of there. My biggest worry was that he would demand more than anybody was going to give him, and then throw sand into the gears in response. That was a problem with true believers; it was either their way or no way.
I wondered, if this passed, could I get to meet Charlton Heston? He was the head of the NRA, a figurehead position, but really… he was Charlton Heston! How often do you get to meet Moses? I hoped Wayne could calm down enough to bring out the big guns. A photo op with Heston might convert a few recalcitrant Senators. This was a good ten years before the Alzheimer’s took him, and he was still quite clear and cogent at this point, and extremely popular.
There were some other conservatives who began thinking they had more pull than they really did. Grover Norquist was really pushing hard on his reducing taxation kick, and was going to every Congressman and Senator to get them to sign his ‘pledge.’ He already knew my feelings on the subject, but made an appointment (demanded it, really) and slapped it down on my desk. I wadded it up and tossed it in the circular file while he sat there and stewed. “Carl, don’t think we don’t have influence. How would you like a vicious primary fight in two years!” he warned.
“Grover, how would you like a nice liberal in the Maryland Ninth in two years?” I responded.
“Don’t try that threat with me.”
“Threat? That’s no threat, that’s a promise! Let’s play Suppose for a bit. Suppose you do find somebody to run against me next time around Now, I know damn near every Republican in the district but I suppose you can find a hard core conservative in the western part, or you can bring in a ringer from somewhere else. Now, suppose you give him a few million to attack me. Do you think I can’t afford to counterattack? Grover, I have more money in my wallet than your whole group has in their bank accounts! Now suppose that your guy is good, really good. He might win in a nasty primary bout, or he might lose, but weaken me in the process. What happens in either case is that we then lose to the Democrats, who will listen to you even less than I do. Grover, you can defeat me, but you can’t win the district.”
He argued on, about the moral imperative of what he was doing and about how Democrats really wanted fiscal discipline, too. I let him ramble on and then hit a hidden button under my desk. That buzzed my secretary, who would enter and inform me that I had an urgent call, allowing me to rid myself of nuisances.
One amusing incident occurred around this time. I was over at Tusk Cycle talking to Tusker late one afternoon, and Bucky was working in the shop. He was a high school senior now, and planning on college. He was tall and lanky, a lot like his father, with the same flaming red hair, although it was just an unruly mop, and not down his back. (Tusker’s was turning gray, which I needled him about on occasion.) He came through, and I asked him, “So, where are you planning on going to college?” Tessa had informed her son that he was going to college, and not hanging around the shop for the rest of his life.
He glanced at his father, and then looked back at me. Then he looked back at Tusker, who said, “Well, go on, ask him!”
I gave the pair a curious look, and Bucky stuttered a bit and asked, “Uh, Uncle Carl, I was wondering, uh, would you write me a recommendation letter?”