My Brownback story

Several years ago I was in DC, doing some lobbying on Capitol Hill. The background is that both of my sons have an auto-immune disorder, alopecia areata, which causes hair loss. NAAF, the National Alopecia Areata Foundation has yearly conferences, and every so often they hold them in the Washington DC area for the express purpose of lobbying. The point of which is to make sure that funds that have already been approved by Congress, go to the appropriate research areas.

The last time I attended a DC conference, in '03 or '04, can't recall exactly, we did the appropriate visits to our Representative and Senators. I wound up waiting in the front office of then Senator Brownback for about an hour. It was quite fascinating, watching the young lady at the front desk. She was admirably efficient and knowledgeable. She greeted, people, answered the phones, and in between turned to me to chat. What was most amazing was how she totally trashed the other Kansas Senator, Pat Roberts, telling me that people often confused him with Pat Robertson, the evangelist. Her scorn of the other senator was palpable. I simply sat there and nodded quietly, not finding it necessary to tell her I was an extreme liberal and thought her boss was as close to the devil incarnate as I could imagine.

It was her willingness to openly trash the other senator from that state, a member of the same political party, that took my breath away. If they'd been from opposing parties, I might have understood. But I was there on a genuinely non-partisan purpose: asking for help for a specific disease. And I was also going to be visiting the other senator's office as well.

I do want to say, that in the five different times I've done this lobbying thing for NAAF, every single Republican, senator or representative, has been totally unresponsive to our request. Every single Democrat -- although I've only lobbied Democratic Representatives, never a Democratic Senator -- has been very responsive and has written the letter requested.