Senator Dalton was surprised when Michael told her that Senator Crawford had requested a meeting with her. “Did he say why?”
He shook his head. “Gordon, his AA, only asked if you had some time today. You don’t have a lunch.”
Crawford met Dalton at the rear of the Dirksen Senate Office Building at 11:30.
“Glad we could get together,” he said, extending his hand. Hers was warm and soft. “It’s such a beautiful day; how about Union Station?”
“Wonderful. I haven’t been there in years.”
“There’s a restaurant off the concourse,” he said, taking out his cell phone. “I’ll have Gordon call them.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” she chided.
“Yes, it’s very clandestine,” he half whispered, punching in Gordon’s number.
“Are we hiding away in some back room?” she asked conspiratorially.
“Actually, we go through a secret door used back in the Civil War, then down two flights of stairs to—”
“Where listening and viewing devices cannot penetrate?” she said, continuing the game.
“Oh darn, you’ve heard of it.”
They laughed. The repartee relaxed him. Gordon answered the call.
Once situated in the restaurant, Dalton and Crawford quickly got the preliminaries out of the way with the server. In the five-minute walk, they’d talked about family—mostly his, as she was a widow and childless. He hadn’t known where she lived until she mentioned settling into the Crystal City condo she and H.T. had bought ten years ago. “It was hard the first month, but then I found some good restaurants.”
“Oh? You never ate out when you were here with H.T.?”
“We did, but not a lot. After I knew we wouldn’t be having children, I wanted to do something for myself and not just sit around Washington. I chose to go home and get my graduate degree. I was teaching at the university when H.T. was killed.”
“But you, eh . . . I remember seeing you.”
“Yes, you did. In fact, I’ve met your wife Mariel on at least two occasions. Such a lovely and unusual name.”
“I’m sure she would have mentioned that if I’d told her I was meeting with you,” he said boyishly. “Her given name is Mary Loretta.”
Dalton liked this self-effacing man. He was not caught up in himself like so many others. The server appeared with their iced teas and took their meal order.
“How are things going now that you’re into your second year?” he asked.
“You can’t count my first year. I was only a guest then. But when I chose to run in the primaries, things began to happen. Mostly don’t run.”
“I remember hearing tidbits of that in the Cloakroom.”
“Everyone feared I’d lose. I don’t know if you saw my results, but I won the primary in a landslide and then the election with sixty-one percent of the vote. I think my colleagues forgot my father was a former two-term governor and that I . . . well, let’s say I was fairly well known. Also, I’d worked in campaigns all my life . . .”
“And,” Gavin added, “you had a PhD in history and an associate professorship at the university. A mighty strong resume.”
She smiled. “What route did you take to get here?”
“I had two terms in our state legislature. I pushed for some reform that got me some good press. I thought taking a run in the primaries would get me more statewide notoriety, and I could air out some of my ideas for a future campaign. I was thinking governor. Then surprise of surprises, I won the primary and the election.”
“And now you’re in your second term.”
He nodded. “What got you on HELP?”
“My interest in health and education. It was the only one on my list that I did get.”
Yeah, Gavin thought, and Tom Kelly’s still kicking himself over that one.
“I’ve always had an interest in health issues,” she continued. “I’m sickened with the high cost of medical care for seniors and the rising cost of prescription drugs.”
He agreed. “It seems like we make little if any progress in those areas.”
“We need to create a federal formulary on drugs,” she said bluntly.
Her candor surprised him. “Unfortunately, our hands were tied, or rather we tied our hands on that one,” he said. “To get even a modicum of cooperation from the pharmaceutical companies, Congress had to promise no requirements for discounts.”
“What’s tied can be untied. I don’t believe these programs can be remodeled like an old house,” Roanne went on. “They must be torn down and built anew, from the ground up. Look at what Lyndon Johnson tried to do back in the ‘60s. A picture of Johnson taken from the front page of our hometown paper during his presidential campaign in ‘64 shows him visiting an old couple sitting in broken down chairs on a dilapidated porch in front of a falling down, termite-infested shack.
“My father had that page laminated and framed. It hangs in his den at home. A small plaque on the frame underneath says, The Ultimate Politician. I’ve often wondered whatever happened to those folks after the news media left.”
Gavin sat rapt at her outpouring and was glad for a break when the server brought lunch.
After the server left, Roanne picked up where she left off. “The citizenry is fed a lot of hogwash at election time and sent into a frenzy, all for the sake of their vote. I’ve watched that in amazement for many years. With all the hot air, I don’t think the general population is any better off today than they were ten or twenty years ago.”
She paused to take a bite. He jumped in. “Maybe thirty. We have bills before us now that are not unlike bills a generation ago.”
She looked up from her eating. “This pharmaceutical issue is a good example. The Senate is so concerned with protection, they’re forgetting about prevention. Take the new cancer drug—why is everyone in such a big stew?”
Gavin was shocked, then relieved, that she’d brought up the very issue he wanted to discuss.
She continued, “I had my staff go over Rogers Pharmaceuticals’s reports. Each phase showed amazing results. That drug’s cure rate was over ninety percent. Yet our chairman of HELP wants it ditched, saying there are too many irregularities, too many questions about the testing. I don’t see that.”
Gavin went from grateful at not having to bring it up to downcast. This wasn’t the time to defend Tom Kelly’s position. He’d have to come up with another tack. He also wasn’t up on the drug’s history, and she certainly had abundant knowledge of it.
Roanne felt a little sorry for Gavin, a genuinely nice man. She and Michael had speculated he might have been asked to talk to her about Tutoxtamen, because the decision was imminent and Kelly wanted no cracks in the majority caucus.
Gavin then interrupted her thoughts. “I think the whole drug issue is a mixed bag of contradictions. We have those who are pro-cure at any cost, and we have those who are pro-caution because of costs.”
She smiled. He continued.
“Some do not want the drug because it will put a lot of other cancer-drug producers out of business, and others want the drug because of the great good it will be for humanity. The advocates of those differing positions are extremely adamant in support of their position. The pharma lobby is willing to sacrifice one member pharmaceutical for the sake of the many, regardless of the value of one over the other.”
She appreciated his gentle explanation of what he was really trying to say: Do what the party wants.
He was on a roll. “I have to admit I back-burnered Tutoxtamen when I heard it was going to be rejected. Now I’m told the caucus is concerned. There are other pharmaceutical issues in committee, and Tom wants the Tutoxtamen situation disposed of.”
“I don’t understand why. I’ve asked to talk to him.”
“You are a person of great convictions, Roanne. We’ve all had them. Please, if you are ever to have a political future in the United States Senate, understand that party unity comes before personal desires. If the opposition sees a crack in our unanimity, they’ll jump all over it and that, I can assure you, will bring out the attack dogs.”
She understood his point. She had heard H.T. on the subject more than once. It was why it took so long for anything to get done in Congress.
“We all need to pick our fights carefully,” he said. “I like and respect you, and I don’t for one minute suggest you change your point of view.”
That surprised her—because that’s what she thought this was all about. Then he said: “Only that you change your vote.”