Where Is Steve Chabot?
This is the question I, and many other voters in Ohio’s 1st Congressional District have.
First, some background: Steve Chabot has held this office since 1995, except for one 2-year term from 2009–2011. The First Congressional District has been redrawn at least twice during his time in office, and is due to be redrawn again in 2021. Here’s what it looks like right now:
Here’s what it looked like before redistricting in 2011:
Ohio’s 1st Congressional District used to be geographically contiguous, and reflected half of Cincinnati proper, plus the West Side suburbs, plus a hefty chunk of Butler County.
As it happens, that’s the region of the Cincinnati metro area that has shown the most developing diversity since the 1990s. It’s no coincidence that diversity — economic, racial, religious, philosophical, every kind of diversity you care to name — tends to go hand in hand with progressive or liberal political values. This is perhaps especially true in southwest Ohio, where some might argue conservatism can trend to the extreme, relative to other parts of the United States.
Anyway, before the last redistricting, District 1 was growing increasingly diverse (the west side still is, incidentally) and elected a Democrat to Congress. After the redistricting, it’s only portions of the west side, connected by a strange thin line to heavily white, heavily conservative Warren County — where embattled Democrats have struggled for generations to even find people willing to put their names on the ballot to challenge a long list of entrenched, and typically incumbent, Republicans. Sincerely — no Democrat has won an elected office in Warren County in over 20 years.
As it happens, before Steve Chabot became Warren County’s Congressional representative, Warren County was split between Ohio’s 2nd and 3rd Congressional Districts.
Redistricting in Ohio is a deep and heavily obfuscated rabbit hole, but for now, suffice it to say there’s a lot of consensus that the last redistricting was done with an eye towards entrenching Republicans in office. And Steve Chabot has benefited from that.
What is a Congressional Representative’s Job, Actually?
Great question! Here are three takes on that:
- Congress says: Also referred to as a congressman or congresswoman, each representative is elected to a two-year term serving the people of a specific congressional district. Among other duties, representatives introduce bills and resolutions, offer amendments and serve on committees.
- Reference.com says: The main four roles of a congressman includes [sic] making policy, providing local representation, managing their office and making vital decisions. Congress consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The vice president serves as the president of the Congress.
- Chron says: The job of a member of the House is to represent his constituents. However, the nature of the American political system is such that there is no formal set of required duties for House members, which means that representatives are free to interpret their duties as they see fit. According to the Congressional Research Service, the duties of members of the House are generally “… understood to include representation, legislation, and constituent service and education, as well as political and electoral activities.”
Oh, and as a bonus, here’s a quora question about whether or not it’s a hard job.
Remind Me: How Much Do They Get Paid?
Interestingly enough, all the searches I did for information on this particular question turned up salary and payment information for all the congressional staff, listed by name and job description, but I’m not sure if we’re seeing the whole picture on actual representative compensation. As of 2012, base salary (not including any other payments, one supposes) for a newly elected member of the House of Representatives was $174,000 a year.
How does that stack up to Chabot’s constituents? The median income in Chabot’s district: $50,069 as of the 2010 census. For Hamilton County, which would include the west side portion of Chabot’s district: $30,062. For Warren County, the wealthier and less diverse portion: $33,421. So, who got dealt out of being in Chabot’s district? Looks like a lot of working class people.
What’s the market like for $175k+ jobs in the Cincinnati area? Go ahead and click that link. I’ll wait. Here’s the same search for the area where I lived before moving here. Take note, too, of the types of job postings you see.
I sometimes find myself wondering if Steve Chabot, head of the Small Business Council, has ever directed a staffer (I mean, because that’s who is clearly doing his job, but we’ll come back to that) to do any comparison like that on the jobs front.
In fairness, the sorts of jobs that pay six figures and up in the Midwest aren’t typically going to be turning up on job search sites; you have to be part of the elite social networks in which you’ll hear about them. Or else representing that set in Congress.
So Who Contributed Money To Put Chabot In Office Last Time?
Votesmart lists lots of information, but I was particularly interested in “Industries” and “Sectors.” What do you think they mean by “Ideology/Single Issue” as a sector? What gets put in that category? I wish I could drill down further there.
Here’s what the Federal Election Commission has for receipts. You can drill down to a lot of specific information. I can tell you I found some local businesses to put on my “nope” list by doing so. And I found it fascinating that there were so many “unemployed” people who could afford to make the maximum allowable $2700 donations. I’ve got a few other fish to fry today, but I can’t help wondering how many of the high dollar donors live in his district.
Who Endorsed Steve Chabot for Congress?
Man. It looks like the single most overt and concrete group of people and organizations endorsing Steve Chabot for the past 20+ years could be summed up as “people who really, really, really don’t believe in reproductive rights.” Perhaps that’s our “ideology/single issue” sector.
I mean, there are no few corporate interests and stuff, but if there’s a single bloc of voters devoted to Chabot, it sure looks like the anti-choice movement.
And clearly, he knows that, and expects that set of voters to keep him in office. While I and countless others among his constituents have spent the past few months attempting to schedule meetings, asking about town halls, calling his offices, writing his offices, and going in person to his offices, we’ve been hearing from his staff that he’s simply very busy. Too busy to meet with constituents, in fact. But he’ll get back to us. Sometime. Perhaps when hell freezes over (although nobody comes right out and says that).
But he’s not too busy to have lunch with anti-choice activists, not too busy to mourn Mary Tyler Moore on Facebook for #tbt (one wonders where the iconic woman would stand with respective to Chabot’s platform that includes pandering to people who don’t even believe there’s a place for birth control between married heterosexual couples, but I digress). Just too busy to state a position when it comes to Trump’s executive orders, or to meet with constituents outside the “ideology/single issue” sector, I guess.
So wait, what happened when you went to Chabot’s office?
Actually, the meeting felt productive. There were some things about it that felt positive — for instance, the lone staffer at his Lebanon, Ohio office invited dozens of us inside, and took detailed notes about what we were saying. He also permitted WCPO and The Enquirer access, and although he initially said “no cameras,” he checked up on that and got confirmation that it would be okay, so long as cameras didn’t show the desk.
And that’s huge. Chabot has, since this happened in 2011, not been a fan of cameras.
So, there we were, with a group of dozens of people, most of whom had not met before, gathered in Lebanon — super conservative Lebanon, at Chabot’s office just down the block from the historic Golden Lamb, owned by Senator Rob Portman’s family and a longtime Republican stump speech setting (although not this past year, for the first time in a very long time). And not only did staff invite us in, and hear us out, but he allowed cameras — both for the media and for individuals.
And then what?
Well, then I came home, feeling guardedly optimistic that perhaps we might be able to expect some representation from Chabot on the non-partisan question of what’s going to happen to the Affordable Care Act. I was all set to write about that, from the perspective of “Hey man, keep the pressure on and we can probably get representation even from the Representative who has been dodging us for so long!”
In the course of starting to write that piece, I went to Chabot’s blog. I still don’t have the words to describe what I found there — which had, it turns out, been posted while we were at Chabot’s office, and which had been redacted, supposedly removing the stuff that was offensive.
Here’s what I said on Facebook:
Full text here for transparency / low bandwidth / posterity:
I just got back from visiting Rep. Steve Chabot’s local office here in Lebanon, Ohio, where dozens of us met with his staff, who heard our concerns primarily about the Affordable Care Act, but also briefly about a slew of other issues, including our concern that he doesn’t hold regular town halls, is generally unreachable, and does not appear interested in meeting with even the small business people of the gerrymandered district in which we live, despite chairing the Small Business Committee. Chabot’s local staffer was courteous and efficient, working sincerely to hear everyone, and I was feeling guardedly positive. So I was going to write that up, you know? I was going to be like “Hey man, let’s give Chabot a chance to show us he can represent us,” and I was checking his blog so as to link to it, when… when… wow.
I have to say, words are failing me. So I’d better let you look for yourself.
http://stevechabot.com/blog/the-press-vs-trump/
Please click through even if you don’t read his invective, and just look at the images he chose to use. Then ask where they came from. Go ahead: do a google image search on them, and see what you see.
I don’t know about you, but thinking that the man whose job it is to represent me and my family and community in Congress gets his news from sources like this… holy shit. Holy shit, people. Holy shit.
What do you think?
Edit: and, unless I am completely misunderstanding the Cincinnati Enquirer on this, what’s visible now has been edited to remove the offensive content. In other words: I never even saw what people called about first. I only saw, and you will only see, what has been deemed appropriate.
Edit again: Cincinnati Enquirer story: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2017/02/01/chabot-posts-image-anti-semitic-site/97344576/
So, Chabot and his staff appear unapologetic, and unconcerned, about what this sort of invective means for his chances for reelection.
Which means they’re unconcerned with a large number of their constituents’ needs.
So my answer to today’s question, Where Is Steve Chabot? You can find that on Twitter: he’s on the short list of people who I’ll campaign hard to see voted out of office in 2018.
Did you find this thought-provoking? Informative? Hair-raising? Please take a moment to click the little green heart and recommend it, and if you’re so inclined, express your solidarity with those of us seeking representation from this elected official — it’s #WhereIsSteveChabot day today, and this is my little contribution.
As always, I welcome your comments.
