Segall on the issues—Part One: A phone call

Rogers’ vote in favor of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. Even though Segall said Rogers had pledged in a 2005 newspaper interview not to support CAFTA “as long as a textile industry in my district is threatened,“ he did vote for the agreement when it passed the House by two votes in July 2005. CAFTA resulted in 15,000 job losses in East Alabama, Segall said, citing the closures of the Russell Athletics plant in Alexander City and the WestPoint Stevens plants in Lanett and Opelika as examples. The CAFTA vote shows that Rogers is more concerned with voting with his party than in doing what’s best for the district, Segall said.

Rogers’ relationship with Tull Chemical owner Charles Wigley. Tull is the only U.S. producer of Compound 1080, a chemical used in the U.S. by ranchers to protect sheep and in New Zealand and Australia for controlling opossums. But since it was found in Iraq in 2003 in the wake of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Compound 1080 has come under scrutiny both for its highly toxic properties—one teaspoon of it can kill 100 adults—and the amount that is produced in Oxford—five tons every year, Segall said. The factory is poorly secured, Segall added; it has only a chain link fence for protection. Although legislation to ban Compound 1080 has been referred to the House Committee on Agriculture, of which Rogers is a member, Segall says that Rogers has refused to take a stand on the bill. Segall says that might have more than a little something to do with the fact that through June 30, Wigley was the one and only individual contributor—in the amount of $1,500—to Rogers’ PAC.

A staffer sent me this statement from Segall today:

There’s a company in Oxford that makes the world’s deadliest pesticide, called Compound 1080.  They make enough to kill every man, woman and child in Alabama.  They’ve been fined for having no security plan and no plan to warn the community if something happens.  The building sits in a flood plain, and it’s protected by a chain link fence.  You’ve got something that most government labs aren’t even allowed to handle being manufactured in what’s basically someone’s garage.  But rather than protecting us, Rogers took money from the company and denied knowing about a bill to ban Compound 1080, even though that bill has been in his committee for four years.

Segall hit Rogers on what Segall said was Rogers’ unresponsiveness to the people of the Third District. Segall relayed a story to me, which he repeated later that night at the campaign office opening, about something that Heflin city officials recently told him during a recent campaign visit there. One of the biggest projects for local officials there is a comprehensive development plan for the city, 70 miles from Atlanta, and the surrounding area as it looks to expand. Segall said the local officials told him that they sent Rogers a copy of the plan, ostensibly to get his input and solicit his help for federal highway money that would be necessary to see some parts of the plan come to fruition. Although there’s no evidence Rogers hasn’t reviewed it, Segall said, there’s no way to know that he has, either; the local folks haven’t heard back from Rogers either way, Segall said.

And then there are Rogers’ 2008 power ratings by D.C.-based Roll Call magazine: 403rd out of 435 House members overall, 172nd out of the 200 Republicans, and 44th—second from last—among House members elected in 2002.

Segall says all this is evidence that Rogers can’t get the job done for the Third District.

We talked about Rogers’ recent negative ad (first clip), which charges that Hollywood and New York City interests are funding Segall’s campaign. Segall expressed frustration, again, that Rogers was not being held accountable for spreading misinformation. Segall said that 70 percent of his campaign contributions come from in-state interests, and that the so-called “Hollywood” contribution to which Rogers was ostensibly referring actually came from Lucie McLemore Amberg, a childhood friend of Segall’s whose husband is trying to make it as a screenwriter in California. (If that name is familiar, it’s because Lucie’s mother, also named Lucie McLemore, recently ran and was defeated in her campaign – as a Republican – for Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 1, in August.)

Back to the issue of media coverage of his race, I remarked that I haven’t seen much of Rogers, beyond his occasional column in the Opelika-Auburn News, and I haven’t seen any activity at all in this area from his campaign beyond a couple of large yard signs along U.S. Highway 280. I consider myself to be a pretty plugged-in political person, but maybe it’s there and I’m just missing it, I said.

“It’s in Rogers’ interest to stay out of the papers,” Segall said, elaborating that because of the inherent advantage Rogers has as an incumbent, the more he can fly under the radar, the better off he is in November. 

I pressed Segall about his oft-made charge that Rogers sells out his district to maintain good graces with his party. I’ve served in a state lawmaking body, and I know how these things work, I told him; when the party wants to lock down on an issue, you vote with the party, and if you don’t, then you face retaliatory measures: Your bills are buried in committees. Your funding projects are ignored. Your amendments are torpedoed. Politically, you are made impotent.

Your party is in the majority in Congress, and you’d have a lot more to lose by breaking with leadership, I told Segall. So won’t you face the same – if not worse – pressures to conform to party will in Washington? How will you maintain your independence in the face of a Pelosi lockdown?

Segall sounded very much the idealist as he outlined the strategy he would pursue to protect his district in the face of leadership opposition: “It’s in the Democratic Party’s interests for me to do well, for me to do well for my district,” Segall explained. “So if there is a time when leadership wants me to do something that will hurt my district, I will explain that I have to vote with my district.

“I would hope they would understand. But if they don’t, I still have to vote with my district,” he said.

Segall went on explain that he would work to create a reputation as a congressman that would insulate him from being asked to support measures that would compromise his district. If folks know you’re not a party-line guy, he said, then they won’t expect you to toe the party line; they’ll expect that you’ll stay with your district, he said, and it will only be remarkable when you don’t.

As for his party affiliation, Segall said that neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party is where it needs to be on all the issues for the Third District. And that’s another reason, he said, why it’s dangerous for any congressman to stick to the party line, no matter which letter is behind his name.

A staffer sent me this statement from Segall today:

A Congressman’s first responsibility is to the people of his district, and this means you’ve got to be willing to break with your party and to do things that are going to make your donors unhappy. This takes leadership and independence, and Mike Rogers hasn’t demonstrated either of those things. When I’m in Congress, I’ll work with whoever is in the White House and anyone in Congress to bring good jobs to the third district.

I also asked him about his reaction to news that Department of Defense officials will not rebid the Air Force’s tanker contract until sometime next year. Segall was vocal in his disappointment—with military brass who awarded, then took back, the contract from Northrup Grumman and Mobile, and also with Barack Obama for involving himself on the issue and siding with Boeing.

A staffer sent me this statement from Segall today:

I think both parties have been pandering to Washington state, where Boeing is located, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Northrup Grumman clearly delivered the better bid; they would build larger, more versatile aircraft for less money. I hope the final decision is based on economics, not on politics.

Tomorrow:

Part two: Opening the office