He's not ready to consider the next step, yet. He's still stirring the brew of what happened Nov. 4. He talks about His District and His Constituents as if he's not about to hand them over to the man who beat him, Jim Himes. Shays had made plans in his head plotting his coming months as ranking Republican on the oversight committee. He had plans for energy policy and health care and financial oversight. Instead, he's trying to find jobs for his staff in a town now filling with Democrats. His scheduler is no longer on his staff. So, sticking near Capitol Hill in recent days as Congress prolonged its session long past its scheduled finish, he has missed some appointments and failed to return some calls. And, in a final sour note, the Shays campaign is mired in a fraud investigation. The finance people found irregularities in the books, and sources have said campaign manager Michael Sohn is the focus of the investigation. Shays won't say who was involved or comment, except to call it a betrayal and to say its outcome has huge importance to him. Congressman Chris Shays of Connecticut served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fiji in the 1960's.
Shays Unsure Of Where Loss Will Take Him
Shays Unsure Of Where Loss Will Take Him
Ponders What To Do After Losing Office He Held 21 Years
By JESSE A. HAMILTON | The Hartford Courant
December 14, 2008
WASHINGTON - Chris Shays sits in the basement grill of the capital's Republican club. He's receiving people here, with some papers and a couple of cellphones on the table in front of him, an inward look on his face.
People stop as they pass by. Sorry to see you go, they tell him. That was a tough race. You did everything you could. The congressman is hearing the kind of tone usually reserved for funerals. He shakes hands and thanks them. His face has a way of bursting into a smile, but it can vanish just as quickly, as it does now, when he thinks hard about his situation.
This is all the office he has, here in the private sanctuary of his party, with easy-listening music overhead. After 21 years in the House of Representatives, Shays' last moments have come.
"We all knew you can lose an election," he says, but it doesn't sound like he had believed it. "I told people I thought we were going to win."
He's not ready to consider the next step, yet. He's still stirring the brew of what happened Nov. 4. He talks about His District and His Constituents as if he's not about to hand them over to the man who beat him, Jim Himes. Shays had made plans in his head plotting his coming months as ranking Republican on the oversight committee. He had plans for energy policy and health care and financial oversight.
Instead, he's trying to find jobs for his staff in a town now filling with Democrats. His scheduler is no longer on his staff. So, sticking near Capitol Hill in recent days as Congress prolonged its session long past its scheduled finish, he has missed some appointments and failed to return some calls.
And, in a final sour note, the Shays campaign is mired in a fraud investigation. The finance people found irregularities in the books, and sources have said campaign manager Michael Sohn is the focus of the investigation. Shays won't say who was involved or comment, except to call it a betrayal and to say its outcome has huge importance to him.
Meanwhile, the constant traveler from his Peace Corps days to his recent trips to Iraq jokes that the biggest adjustment may come when he next flies overseas and isn't met at the airport by an official from the State Department who handles the arrangements. In 21 years, he's traveled on a private vacation just once, he said.
But the most significant travel of his life, the steady back-and-forth flights between D.C. and Connecticut, will no longer be necessary. He's talking about consolidating his households, though he said he and his wife, Betsi, haven't decided anything.
Lately, Shays has been helping put together Ikea furniture for his daughter, and he gave her a hand returning books for her bar-exam studies. The regular acts of a father.
Shays, 63, seems as engaged now in matters of home as he is in the business of the House. There's a trace of giddiness in his voice when he talks about his coming weekends no-strings days off.
"It'll be a much more normal life."
A History Of Independence
Shays' history in public life is that of an individualist. In his youth, he was a conscientious objector who entered the Peace Corps rather than the Vietnam War (though he would later support the war in Iraq). As a state legislator, he went to jail briefly in 1985 when he refused to leave the witness stand in a misconduct hearing against two lawyers. Two years later, he was in Congress, where his habits of speaking his mind and ignoring his party's wishes meant an often contentious road for one of the body's most moderate Republicans.
He pushed for ethics and campaign reform. He was often the most popular Republican among environmental and pro-choice groups. He fought for animal-protection legislation.
And he was talking about the dangers of Islamist extremism before 9/11. His beliefs led him to relentlessly defend the war in Iraq an issue for which many constituents in the 4th District, in the state's southwestern corner, couldn't forgive him.
"He was a very moderate, independent-minded Republican," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who even when he was still a Democratic senator shared a number of positions with Shays. "Part of why we grew friendly was that we actually did have a generally similar approach to issues which managed to put both of us in hot water with our respective caucuses."
Lieberman, also a staunch supporter of the war, said of Shays, "He has a lot to be proud of."
Shays may have been the last of the House Republicans from New England, but he felt he could be the exception in this year's mighty electoral swing toward the Democrats. He was confident in his record, saying, "We did a hell of a lot." And he said he felt good about his contact with people on the campaign trail. But on Nov. 4, he won 47.6 percent of the vote to Himes' 51.3 percent.
Shays' election numbers in Norwalk and Stamford were tough, but it was Bridgeport, where he won fewer than one in four votes, that kicked the veteran politician in the guts. Bridgeport was his "top priority." He had moved there more than a decade ago, and his adopted city surprised him. "Bridgeport has a hard time knowing what's in its best interests."
"We thought we ran one of our best races," he said. He thinks many people voted straight-ticket Democratic. "I'm surprised I didn't see it coming."
His final bow on the blue carpet of the legislative chamber was an uneasy vote against billions in loan money for the U.S. auto industry. He cast the vote well aware of the 21 years bearing down on him, and this vote felt like none before it.
"When you are coming back, you're very much part of a team that's moving in a certain direction. When you're not coming back, the boat's leaving the dock without you."
But in the traditions of the Hill, there's no gold watch, just an urgent need to clear out the losing incumbents to make room for the new.
"Basically, they toss you out of your office in three weeks," recalls Nancy Johnson, the longtime Republican congresswoman from Connecticut's 5th District who similarly lost an election to Chris Murphy two years ago.
For Shays, packing the office meant 700 boxes. "All the old cases," he said, "all the old letters."
Now What?
At a crossroads now, Shays is still looking back at the road that got him here. A well-off friend advised him to take a year off before he decides what to do with the rest of his life. But Shays pointed out he's been an elected official for 34 years on a government payroll for a long time. "That's not an option that's available to me."
So, what now? Shay's only plan: "I want my life to be a blessing. I felt for 34 years I was doing things that mattered."
Johnson said, "This is not a man who lacks interest and knowledge. He just has to find his way." So, she said, "he shouldn't rush it." It took her six months to get her life reorganized. She spent some time teaching at Harvard. Now, she works in the last environment she would have expected: a D.C. law firm. "I'm very happy. I'm challenged all the time. I'm working hard. And I see my grandchildren more. I see my husband more."
And on job fulfillment: Only now that Johnson is away from Congress does she fully realize how exhausting the pace could be and how frustrating to work furiously but sometimes get little done. At her firm, Baker Donelson, Johnson is a public-policy adviser working a lot on health care issues. "You can certainly have influence on important matters from outside Congress," she said.
Shays said he'd like to be involved in rebuilding the Republican Party, but he's not sure how. State party Chairman Chris Healy said, "He still has, I think, a lot to offer, whether it's in public service or private life. I hope he does stay active in politics in Connecticut. That's his decision." Healy said, "We'll just have to stay tuned."
Shays had vowed on election night that he was done with elected office. But he's not so sure now. "I'm not running for Congress again," he says in his makeshift work space. "I wouldn't rule out the Senate or governor, but I think it's highly unlikely." What about working in the Obama administration? "Absolutely," he says, though he adds, "I'm not sitting waiting for an opportunity in the administration to happen."
In fact, he says, "what I'm dealing with is not unique." He's now like tens of thousands in his district newly out of work.
Jesse A. Hamilton is the Courant's Washington bureau chief.
