Room for a view

Mahatma Granny: An interview with Granny D

By Gail McGowan Mellor

“We’re losing our democracy, and we’re not going to put up with it!” Doris “Granny D” Haddock asserts. Haddock is the 90-year-old who walked from Pasadena, California to Washington DC, to lead a march into the nation’s capital on February 29.
As the 3,200 miles of secondary road and her sneakers devoured each other, Haddock, with softly curly hair and eyes that alternately penetrate and entrance, sometimes looked sixteen. High in the mountain blizzards, she looked near death. Yet nothing, neither sleet nor hail nor dark of night—or for that matter osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, emphysema, a metal back brace, bleeding feet, and hearing aids the size of demitasse saucers—slowed her determined walk toward the apparent center of this country’s power.
Nearing Washington, Haddock constantly voiced her demand: “Return the US political system to the American voter!”
Haddock has thus carved from her own courage one of U.S. history’s great characters, and she’s still in our midst. Even so, it’s strange that the national media have focused their attention on those human-interest angles and forgotten to explain exactly what drove a 90-year-old woman to walk 3,200 miles. Perhaps it’s because the broadcast media are a part of the crisis she seeks to expose....
According to Robert M. McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy, speaking in Colorado last December, an estimated 3.5
billion dollars flowed into the last presidential campaign. “Soft money” (funds neither registered to the donors nor chalked up to specific candidates) is the major and hidden river of such contributions. Most soft money, stressed McChesney, goes to TV for “issue advocacy ads” that tell us that Congressperson Jones is on the wrong side of issue X and to please call Jones to complain. A recent study of such political ads found “not one” that could have met the standards for truth in commercial advertising, McChesney noted. Perhaps since these “truly absurd ads” are “a cash cow for the biggest stations,” broadcasters are the leading lobby against campaign finance reform.
These same networks report that their polls show that Americans are apathetic about the effect of Big Money on democracy. But is that true? “Big money will always try to substitute dollars for our votes,” says Haddock. “Yet the American people will always rise in time to stop them. All year, I have journeyed as a pilgrim, asking food and lodging. The churches refused help because they saw me as political. So when I decided to walk, I looked on the Internet for organizations interested in campaign finance reform and found 60 of them! Grassroots organizations have already passed campaign finance reform in four states, and reform laws are pending in 17 others.”
History shows that Americans have a 200-year track record of fiercely caring about the effect of money on democracy. Haddock recites a story of proud and endless struggle. The Boston Tea Party, for example, was a protest not only against the British crown but against a Crown-protected business monopoly. The American Revolution established one person/one vote, the invention that protects the sovereignty of the people from the distorting effect of wealth.
“In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt, responding to a grassroots movement, passed a law saying that no corporation could give any money to a political campaign. The unions soon began to act like big business. Therefore, in 1947, Congress passed a law barring unions from giving money to a campaign. After Watergate, reformers came up with ‘hard money,’ hoping to create a ‘level playing field.’ The idea was that an individual might give $1,000 each to 25 different candidates during the primaries, and that person’s spouse might give the same. Then in the general elections, they could both do it again. Needless to say, not many American couples had or have $100,000 to donate, so it wasn’t all that level a field, but it was a start.”
“Major corporations were quick to think of a way around that. They called their employees together and ordered them each to ‘Make out a $1,000 check to so-and-so.’ Some corporations even furnish their employees with the money with which to do it. Then they collect it. That’s called ‘bundling.’ It’s legal. Yet of course it’s really the corporation giving the money, and the candidate knows it,” says Haddock.
Soft money began innocently after Watergate as a non-federal fund established to get the vote out, so the money wasn’t tracked and there were no limits, Haddock explains. “Ten years into it, some bright young man thought, ‘We could put campaign contributions in those get out-the-vote accounts, but not label them, and nobody would be the wiser.’
“That bright young man figured out how to launder campaign money, do you see?
“One must stay alert. A poor man cannot run for office when 30% of the US Senators of both parties are millionaires, and George W. Bush has received $80 million in hard money alone to make him King. Voters denied choice stay away from the polls. It is no coincidence that Bush was elected Governor by only 18% of the eligible voters of Texas. His big backers are not trying to get him elected. They’re trying to anoint him with that money,” Haddock says with clearly nonpartisan disgust. For 3,200 miles, Haddock spoke earnestly to anyone who would listen about the need to abolish soft money and sharply limit hard money—talking with passing motorists, people who walked with her and those who opened their homes to her at night.
Front-page news in cities and villages, she gave speeches on street corners and in universities, and interviews to the local and national media. By hand and over the Internet, she has circulated petitions.
“Everywhere, people stop their cars and come out of their shops and homes as I pass to say ‘Go, Granny, go!’ Thousands of copies of my petition to Congress are circulating, gaining millions of signatures throughout the nation.”
“In New Mexico and Texas, the Reform Party took me under its protection. In all the other states, Common Cause passed me along from one warm family to the next. Eight organizations planned my entry into Washington. I walked with the sponsors of the campaign finance reform legislation. They were McCain, Feingold, Shays and Meehan—senators and representatives from both parties.”
By any definition, in other words, there’s a nationwide grassroots revolt in progress, and it’s reached Congress. One key senator, Senator Mitch McConnell (R- KY) “is the person we term ‘the bagman,’ because he’s been the major soft money collector,” says Haddock. McConnell has vowed publicly that he will not stop taking soft money unless “Hell freezes over.” Putting even a snowstorm to good use, Haddock therefore had a picture taken of herself, four days after her 90th birthday, cross-country skiing toward DC. She made it into a postcard and sent it to McConnell. The postcard caption read, “Hell froze over, and here comes Granny!!!”
Meanwhile, she taught those walking with her Robert Frost’s poem about overcoming the seductive impulse to quit: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
“...The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.”
It’s not only the litany of a laughing, strategically brilliant woman pushing herself past exhaustion to protect the nation she loves; it’s also a fitting marching song for our resilient people.