Queer and Roving on the Campaign Trail: Just Another Angry White Man

In part 3, the two candidates meet face for face for a debate and things get heated when lies are told and receipts are shown.

Reclaiming My Time is a series in which I try to revive some of the writings I lost to the ephemeral nature of the internet. I originally wrote Queer and Roving on the Campaign Trail in November 2018 for the now-defunct NewNowNext.com, a subsidiary of Logo TV, which was owned by Viacom, which shut the whole shit down and wiped everything from the web. Thank god for Word doc drafts. This five-part series followed Sen. Julian Cyr as he ran for re-election and seven years later, paints a picture of the political landscape we would soon inhabit and the resilience of local government amid national upheaval.

Politics, as the news makes profoundly clear, is an ugly—and more and more frequently, downright disgusting—game. Any sort of “country over party” pretense has been tossed out the window along with hackneyed concepts like truth, morality, and of course the oft-lamented “civility.” Nowhere is the pugilistic nature of politics more evident than in a debate, where candidates get to call each other names from the convenience and comfort of spitting distance.

Sen. Julian Cyr is set to debate his opponent, Barnstable town councillor John Flores, Saturday morning at Cape Cinema in Dennis, co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Cape Cod Times. The Thursday before, Cyr meets up with his senior advisor, Leslie Sandberg and her wife Cass at their home in Provincetown for wine, cheese, and debate prep.

Sandberg, who bears a striking resemblance to actress/comedian/national treasure Bridget Everett, has a long political pedigree dating back to 1984 when she interned for Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign. In 1988 she joined Ted Kennedy’s Senate re-election bid. “We ended up winning by the largest margin that he had since Chappaquiddick,” she says, referring to the 1969 car accident that resulted in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and forever marred Kennedy’s political career, “and I think it’s because we were a bunch of young people running a campaign—that energy.”

She went on to get her Masters in public policy and journalism, worked at NBC News, did a stint at the White House, then returned to her native Minnesota where she worked for 10 years as press secretary to two attorneys general. After her mother became ill with Parkinson’s she started her own political communications firm, working with candidates, labor unions, and nonprofits to help them navigate public policy. By the time she and Cass had moved out to Ptown, Sandberg had all but given up politics, but then in 2016 she heard about a young candidate running for state senate.

“For a long time I was like, I’m not doing this. I’m not getting involved in politics again,” Sandberg recalls, her youthful days on the Kennedy campaign long behind her. “A lot of people say campaigns are for your young people because of the grueling hours. But I had a friend who used to be the editor of the Provincetown Banner who knew Julian and said, ‘You two need to meet.’ So finally I agreed to go to a debate.”

That early debate took place at a senior citizen center, and according to Sandberg, Cyr did well, but he didn’t quite read the room. “He had a good message,” she says, “but he was talking to the boomers and he was talking about the millennials.” So on her way out to meet Cyr for lunch, she grabbed a magazine about senior living.

Sandberg continues: “I said, ‘Julian, you’re really, really good. I really enjoy how you’re thinking, you’re very thoughtful. But the one thing is,’ and I brought out the magazine, ‘these are the people you need to reach.’ And he laughed. He got it. And the fact that he laughed and he got it made me want to work for him.”

Julian Cyr

On Thursday night and again on Friday morning, Sandberg and Cyr honed his opening remarks to a sharp two minutes, in which he laid out his accomplishments during his first term in office: securing money to address the opioid crisis, promoting resources for firefighters and police officers, rebuilding infrastructure damaged by Nor’easters, and supporting legislation to provide property tax relief; he also touted his endorsements from President Obama, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, and folks up and down the Cape.

Sandberg and Cyr also practiced responding to any of the number of attacks Flores might aim at him. For the duration of the campaign, Flores’ favored talking point has been Cyr’s first vote in office, a compensation package that included a pay raise for state legislators. Flores has been trying to paint this as a form of self-serving greed despite the fact that, as Cyr pointed out during prep and the actual debate, the bill also included raises for a host of state employees including judges, clerks, and magistrates.

Cyr’s personal salary increase, meanwhile, was $7500, bringing his annual compensation to $82,547, which in most of America ain’t nothing to sneeze at, but Cape Cod’s affordability, or lack thereof, particularly when it comes to housing, is one of the biggest issues in this election. Tourism may boom in the warmer months, but towns in Cyr’s district have trouble sustaining a stable year-round economy. So in other words, as a spry and sassy sexagenerian volunteer outside of the Outer Cape Democratic Headquarters observed, “Only a young person would be willing to take such a shitty salary.”

Flores and Cyr

Sandberg and Cyr’s work in tightening up his opening statements paid off, especially when compared to Flores who spent the first 90 seconds of his opening on pleasantries and regaling the audience about Cape Cinema history—The Wizard of Oz originally premiered there in 1939. A fun fact, indeed, but one that ate away at his chance to make a good first impression. Not that the rest of the 50 minutes endeared him to the crowd of some 300 potential voters.

All around the country, Republicans seem to be coming down with a case of the Trumps. They’re angry, they’re confrontational, they’re controversial, they stoke fears on immigration, and they lie with impunity, all the while offering little to no substantive policies. Even on this remote peninsula jutting 65 miles into the Atlantic, the Trumps has found its way to John Flores. Throughout the debate he manufactures, half-heartedly at times, the rage that the media eagerly claims “fires up” Trump’s hallowed base.

The Massachusetts legislature has been wrestling over a sanctuary state amendment that would prohibit local law enforcement from cooperating with the much-reviled Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The bill, which Cyr co-sponsored, failed to pass in July, while back in December 2017, the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office got the greenlight from ICE to participate in its 287(g) program, which authorizes local police to carry out federal immigration laws.

Flores, who supports the program and is against Massachusetts becoming a sanctuary state, banged the table to emphasize his outrage over the $2 billion—“That’s billion with a ‘B,’” he reminded the audience—he claimed undocumented immigrants cost the state since they would be given “all the benefits that citizens of Massachusetts get.”

And as for 287(g), “Julian is against it,” Flores says, citing the notorious rapists and murderers Trump has conflated with all immigrants since he rode down that golden escalator in his eponymous tower. “He wants to put that person back on the street immediately so they can go and pray on more victims.”

When it was his turn to speak, Cyr argued that he was “disappointed” in Flores and that the $2 billion figure he was using came from a “hate group,” which resulted in some tense back and forth with both men talking over each other in classic 2018 political fashion.

“Municipal police should not be responsible for cleaning up the mess that the federal government has made of immigration,” Cyr said. “The fact that this nativist, Trumpist immigration rhetoric is being raised here really shows a lack of understanding for the true immigration issues people are facing here on Cape Cod.”

Cyr went on to bring up the importance of the immigrant workforce—and denounce the specter of walls and whatever boogeymen the GOP dreams up—without whom the economy on the Cape could not exist.

Things got even more tense later in the debate when the candidates were allowed to ask each other questions. Cyr brought up a radio interview Flores did with Pat Desmarais back in March in which he supported arming teachers in schools. “You spent your career as an educator,” Cyr said, addressing Flores, “How can you be for this?”

Flores claimed that was Cyr’s “most misleading” accusation of the morning, that “nothing could be further from the truth,” and that it was a “total misquote.” Cyr, however, was ready for that response and read Flores’ very comment, and—because you should never underestimate a queen when it comes to pulling receipts—sent out a press release the following day with the full Flores transcript and supporting audio:

Pat Desmarais: “Would you be supportive or willing to engage in the conversation at least about arming school teachers?”

John Flores: “Oh, absolutely, obviously in some states across the country, teachers already are armed, folks that have a license to carry, who understand weaponry, that understand tactical kind of issues—I would take that into consideration. I would want to do more research…” (interrupted by Pat Desmarais)

Pat Desmarais: “There seems to be a lot of pushback, the superintendent of schools in Barnstable said that is an absurd idea.”

John Flores: “I don’t think any idea is absurd.”

Flores, in turn, took shots at Cyr’s résumé—“You claim to be this health expert after working two or three years in a mid-level management position at the Department of Health,” which elicited some murmurs of disapproval from the audience—before asking Cyr why he did “the bidding of the insurance industry in endangering the lives of children, especially infants and toddlers” by filing a senate bill that allegedly allowed lead poisoning thresholds to increase.

Cyr was actually delighted that Flores mentioned this as he had been working for years to combat childhood lead poisoning and Flores unwittingly made it a boon of a campaign issue.

“The bill that I filed is an effort to make sure that we’re providing support to kids who have any level of blood lead poisoning so this is actually something I’m proud of,” Cyr explained. “Were it not for my efforts we would have done nothing on childhood lead poisoning.”

“You should be ashamed,” Flores said, interrupting Cyr before he could finish his point, invoking the “special interest money” he supposedly took, and once again banging the table in a play of outrage.

“I’m very proud,” Cyr responded.

After the debate, Cyr and Flores shook hands. “No hard feelings,” Flores told Cyr, “It’s just a game.”

Team Cyr was not only happy but ecstatic at the incumbent’s performance. Sandberg, who was busy buzzing around to various officials, press, and advisors—no doubt already planning that press release full of receipts that went out the following day—gleefully compared Flores to Brett Kavanaugh. Pat Johnson, Cyr’s chief of staff, was similarly pleased.

“I’m really proud of him, honestly,” Johnson said. “I think his opponent, unfortunately, distorted some facts, and was negative. That’s his campaign. Our way of doing things is much more [about] working hard and getting things done. [There was] a lot of work over the last year and a half coming up to a debate like this and it’s an opportunity to speak about all the things Julian’s done. I think he did that in a really great way.”

But perhaps the best sound byte came not from a professional Cyr staffer, but from his dad, Adrian, in referring to John Flores: “He’s just another angry white man.”

In a way, that perfectly describes politics in 2018. Faced with a historically diverse crop of candidates—women, people of color, LGBTQ—and their progressive ideas, the GOP is doubling down on anger and fear. Trump, Kavanaugh, Lindsey Graham—they all contribute to and revel in and benefit from this toxic masculinity dominating our political discourse. Though one has to wonder what the hell they’re so angry about. The Republicans, after all, control every branch of government. They have all the power and yet play the victim, all while victimizing those who are actually powerless. John Flores is “just another angry white man” because angry white men have been proven to win, or at the very least, make headlines.

But this isn’t Washington, D.C. This is WASP country. Civility actually means something here— it’s not just a dog-whistle to delegitimize the public’s legitimate anger. As Cyr, Sandberg, and several other people I hear mention at various points along the campaign trial, “This isn’t how we do politics on the Cape.”