He stepped out of Northern Louisiana and into his new Capitol Hill office on Wednesday.
Vance McAllister, the nation’s and Louisiana’s newest member of the House of Representatives had never seen the Capitol Dome before his first day on the job.
A political outsider, McAllister came out of nowhere to beat Neil Riser, a hard-liner conservative backed by Republican party establishment, in a decisive 20-point runoff win.
Now I’ll admit that I have changed my tune a bit on McAllister. Just last month, I wrote that the election between him and Riser was a contest to see who would contribute more to the dysfunction in Washington.
However, Louisiana’s newest representative presents something so new to politics that it’s decidedly old. He’s a college dropout and Army veteran who keeps a family of five children. He’s a down-to-earth businessman who is not afraid to marvel at the chandeliers at
the Capitol.
This has drawn comparisons to the 1939 classic — and one of my all-time favorite movies — “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
In the film, Jefferson Smith — played by Jimmy Stewart — enters the political arena for the first time as a senator. An unseasoned hick, he is captivated by the sights he sees around the nation’s capital. However, Smith becomes disillusioned by the hypocrisy of Washington, but instead of quitting, he stages a marathon, Ted Cruz-esque filibuster to prove a point.
McAllister is venturing into a brave new world of fame and power. And he shows the country that hard work and folksy candor can still be distinctly American virtues.
He is a plain-spoken Republican from Swartz, La., who says, “We’ve got to make government work.”
A Thursday New York Times article featured the congressman’s journey from the airport and chronicled his first glimpse of his office and introduction to his staff, many of whom are left over from Rodney Alexander, who resigned to take a position in the Jindal administration.
But among the excitement and rarity of such a man reaching the hallowed halls of Congress, there is the protruding question as to how an optimist such as McAllister — or Mr. Smith — can navigate a system that is mired in cynicism and hypocrisy.
Indeed, McAllister is not the country bumpkin that The Times may make him out to be. He is a successful oil, gas and pipeline business owner and the holder of a few Subway franchises.
His excuse for never visiting Washington is that his family likes to “go to where it’s nice and warm.”
Still, the political media is abuzz with his throwback nature. He comes to the House championing compromise and solutions on the country’s problems. He supports Medicaid expansion, which Bobby Jindal has flouted, and he won on a campaign that topped $400,000 and was almost entirely self-funded.
So when thrown into the lion’s den that has become the House of Representatives — thank God he’s a Republican — many are unsure of how he will behave.
Of course, in the beginning he will be taken with a grain of salt. You can’t ride just around town oo-ing and ah-ing at the sights and not expect funny looks from Washington insiders.
But that just goes to show that being part of the establishment is not his modus operandi. McAllister has gone to the capital to find solutions and, whether he does or not, the people of Louisiana’s Fifth District can rest assured that he’s supporting their best interests.
This is a tactic that isn’t likely to win him many friends on the Hill, and he will certainly garner strange looks from the rest of the insiders.
But as Jefferson Smith proclaims: “Either I’m dead right, or I’m crazy!”
Eli Haddow is a 20-year-old English and history junior from New Orleans.