You couldn’t find even 1 talkative lawmaker

By Lisa Mascaro (contact)

Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Washington — As the House prepared for the do-over vote on the $700 billion bailout package, journalist Bob Cusack was trying to figure out what most of Washington wanted to know: How many lawmakers would switch?

The carefully crafted Wall Street rescue plan had fallen just 12 votes short of passage, but now a new version was presented, filled with extended tax breaks, that would attract some lawmakers while repelling others.

As managing editor at The Hill, a capital newspaper, Cusack drew up a likely list and assigned an intern to dial up each lawmaker’s office and ask for his vote.

Most of the calls went unanswered.

“We basically were calling member offices twice a day,” Cusack said about his operation targeting fiscally conservative Democrats who might reject the tax sweeteners.

“The immense pressure these guys were under, they didn’t want to advertise how they would vote because it would invite more criticism.” Nevada’s lawmakers were no exception.

Faced with perhaps the most difficult decision of their careers, legislators from across the country were hard to pin down.

Angry constituents grumbled over the plan to spend unprecedented sums aiding Wall Street when their own streets are filled with foreclosed homes and other signs of economic duress.

Yet to do nothing risked looking the fool, the Herbert Hoover who waited too long to intervene as the economy tanked.

Lawmakers had much to lose and little to gain by broadcasting a tough decision.

Besides, if they held out, perhaps they could leverage their vote for a little favor from House leadership, which was desperately trying to whip up a majority. One Hill reporter overheard a lawmaker say he was holding out for a better committee assignment.

Mostly, Nevada’s House members were similarly keeping their thoughts to themselves.

Shortly after the first vote, held Sept. 29, Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley and Republican Rep. Dean Heller, who both voted against the bailout, were both unreachable as they boarded planes back to Nevada.

Heller’s office was radio silent, not even issuing a press release about the vote. Berkley’s chief of staff filled in for the congresswoman as she retreated for the Jewish holiday.

Only Republican Rep. Jon Porter wanted to talk that Monday afternoon, taking the unusual step of holding a conference call with reporters following the vote.

Porter is in a tight reelection race against state Sen. Dina Titus, who dashed off a news release that afternoon opposing his vote.

Porter held forth on the long conference call in which he repeatedly spoke about being convinced he “did the right thing.”

“I’m willing to risk my reelection to do what’s right,” he said.

Heller’s opponent, Jill Derby, started criticizing his vote that afternoon before the congressman could get a word in.

The next day, Heller gave an interview and, according to a story in Northern Nevada’s Record-Courier newspaper, unloaded his thoughts at a conference at the Carson Valley Inn.

“Since last week, I’ve received about 1,000 calls a day,” Heller told the crowd, the paper reported. “Fifty percent of the callers said ‘no.’ The other 50 percent said ‘hell, no!’”

As the second vote approached, Berkley finally spoke out in favor of the bailout. She talked about the “reality of the situation” back in Las Vegas, where constituents were having difficulty as credit markets dried up. She noted the importance of the tax package that included breaks for the middle class and renewable energy firms that are doing business in the state.

At one point, she said she would have returned to the House in the minutes after the first vote to switch her vote — if that first vote had ended in a tie.

Berkley said the bailout was “like poison,” but a step she felt was necessary.