Needing the Cash To Keep On Needing the Cash
Ernest (Fritz) Hollings is the former Democratic Senator from South Carolina and he knows from the practical experience of being there, the pressures on a Senator or Representative to stay in the game.
Staying in the game is a euphemism for getting re-elected. Hollings got elected in ’68 and kept getting re-elected until ’98, retiring in ’04, so I guess he should know something about the process.
Fritz was a controversial guy. You can’t spend almost 40 years in the Senate and not have people love and hate you in second-helping quantities. I hope not to get derailed on other issues. Fritz wrote an editorial on campaign money and how the need to keep ever bigger numbers coming in, just to hang on to a Senate seat, is handcuffing legislators. Turning them into beggars on the street, according to Hollings and keeping them out of their Senate offices, where they’re supposed to be doing the nation’s business.
That dovetails nicely with other evidence that suggests the modern-day Congress is ac…