2009.06.07: June 7, 2009: Headlines: Figures: COS - Fiji: Politics: Congress: Candidates: Connecticut Post: In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election, Shays was endorsed by many, including his successor, to become director of the Peace Corps, a seemingly tailor-made spot for an someone who was an agency volunteer in Fiji after college and enjoyed a 34-year career as lawmaker on both the state and federal levels
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2009.06.07: June 7, 2009: Headlines: Figures: COS - Fiji: Politics: Congress: Candidates: Connecticut Post: In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election, Shays was endorsed by many, including his successor, to become director of the Peace Corps, a seemingly tailor-made spot for an someone who was an agency volunteer in Fiji after college and enjoyed a 34-year career as lawmaker on both the state and federal levels
In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election, Shays was endorsed by many, including his successor, to become director of the Peace Corps, a seemingly tailor-made spot for an someone who was an agency volunteer in Fiji after college and enjoyed a 34-year career as lawmaker on both the state and federal levels
But although Shays was reported to be on a short list, "I'm not certain I would have been the one," he acknowledged. He would have faced competition from interested Democrats, and perhaps opposition because he was a supporter of the Iraq war. Besides, he said his congressional pension would have been subtracted from the director's salary and he would not have been able to serve on other boards at the same time. So he asked them to take his name off. He said taking his seat on the contracting commission has given him a certain sense of revival. At the first meeting he intended to listen, as he did for so many years at community forums. "I broke my vow right away," Shays said. "I told the commission I got so giddy just being able to talk public policy. I just loved it." Although he anticipates earning far more than he did as a member of Congress, Shays is not cashing in as a lobbyist as so many others have."What I've made is a very conscious decision that I'm not going to become a lobbyist," he said. He said he doesn't want to ask his former colleagues for things and that he likes the other roles he has fine.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election, Shays was endorsed by many, including his successor, to become director of the Peace Corps, a seemingly tailor-made spot for an someone who was an agency volunteer in Fiji after college and enjoyed a 34-year career as lawmaker on both the state and federal levels
Shays looks ahead to future
By Susan Silvers
STAFF WRITER
Updated: 06/07/2009 12:24:24 AM EDT
BRIDGEPORT -- Had life gone the way former U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays planned it, his current routine would be much like that of the previous 21 years: meetings most weekdays with staff, fellow legislators, and lobbyists on Capitol Hill charting answers to the nation's problems; weekend dashes back home to meet with constituents about their concerns, where even eating out represented a chance to chat with waiters and waitresses about what was on their minds.
But the past seven months have hardly been what Shays, the last Republican House member from New England, would have planned. First came the loss of the role he so relished to Democrat Jim Himes in November. Then came the discovery, he said, that Michael Sohn, his former campaign manager, had embezzled funds critical to his campaign.
Now, however, Shays, 63, said he is overcoming his disappointment and dismay to find this is an opportune time to reinvent himself and take on new but satisfying roles in both the public and private spheres.
"I've readjusted," Shays maintained last Sunday in a conversation on a deck of his Black Rock house, which overlooks the harbor and is now for sale. "There are a lot of ways to make contributions in life and I'm discovering some wonderful ways."
In recent months, Shays has emerged to become a member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Afghanistan and Iraq, a role he said will take advantage of the knowledge he acquired in his years of monitoring events there and that he expects will bring him back to that part of the world.
He has joined the board of CIT Group, an international financial company that will pay him $60,000 plus stock options, and North Highland, an Atlanta-based consulting firm, and said he expects to undertake two additional such positions.
Meanwhile, on a volunteer basis, Shays has joined the board of the Campaign Legal Center, which champions the campaign finance and ethics reform he made a hallmark of his congressional years. And he has continued on as a member of the National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, which advises the State Department on humanitarian development and values.
Ultimately, Shays said he expects to earn far more than his annual congressional salary of roughly $170,000. "I'll be making about five times as much," he predicted. His wife, Betsi, a retired teacher who most recently held a post at the federal Department of Education, is exploring new consulting and corporate roles where she can use her skills as what he called a "strategic thinker."
Still, he admitted his redirected sense of purpose -- a desire to look forward and not back -- did come with certain pangs. "I loved being a congressman," he emphasized. "I loved the public policy. I miss not being in there making a contribution."
'a finely tuned sense of duty'
Friends such as Jack McGregor, a Bridgeport businessman, and Frank Carroll, a union leader who broke with his usual Democratic stripes to back the former congressman, said there is no overstating how much Shays cherished that work.
"Chris Shays absolutely 24/7 enjoyed being a congressman because he thought he could make a difference in people's lives," said Carroll, who has known Shays for nearly 30 years.
"He has a finely tuned sense of duty and amazing level of curiosity," said McGregor, who first met Shays during his 1987 campaign to succeed the late Stewart B. McKinney. Shays "just loved to learn things and apply his learning to the problems at hand," McGregor said.
Even now, Shays wonders if November's results -- in which Himes got 158,475 votes to Shays' 146,854 -- might have been different. Whatever the impact of misused campaign funds, Shays said one difference this time was the absence of his longtime friend Robert Shulman, a pollster who over the years helped Shays evaluate data but who died soon after Shays' tight 2006 election.
Back then, he said, Shulman helped him hone his message on the Iraq timeline. This time, Shays said, Shulman might have helped him "reorient" the campaign to be more successful with the minority community, where Shays said there wasn't enough ticket-splitting to put him over the top.
"I was really surprised," he said of the Election Day outcome. "It's not a good thing for a politician to be surprised. So it means my antenna was just off."
In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election, Shays was endorsed by many, including his successor, to become director of the Peace Corps, a seemingly tailor-made spot for an someone who was an agency volunteer in Fiji after college and enjoyed a 34-year career as lawmaker on both the state and federal levels. But although Shays was reported to be on a short list, "I'm not certain I would have been the one," he acknowledged. He would have faced competition from interested Democrats, and perhaps opposition because he was a supporter of the Iraq war.
Besides, he said his congressional pension would have been subtracted from the director's salary and he would not have been able to serve on other boards at the same time. So he asked them to take his name off.
He said taking his seat on the contracting commission has given him a certain sense of revival.
At the first meeting he intended to listen, as he did for so many years at community forums. "I broke my vow right away," Shays said. "I told the commission I got so giddy just being able to talk public policy. I just loved it."
looking to the future
Although he anticipates earning far more than he did as a member of Congress, Shays is not cashing in as a lobbyist as so many others have."What I've made is a very conscious decision that I'm not going to become a lobbyist," he said. He said he doesn't want to ask his former colleagues for things and that he likes the other roles he has fine.
"Betsi and I will be able to pay our bills and pay our debts, and that's just very nice," he said.
Shays said the decision to sell the Black Rock home -- an airy, light-suffused structure on the market for just shy of $2 million, as well as a two-bedroom Washington townhouse -- was born not by his campaign's debts and his commitment to meeting them, but of a longing for a less frenetic life.
"For 21 years I commuted every week back and forth," he said. The 14-hour round trip was so grueling that, for the most part, the Shayses couldn't enjoy a simple Sunday afternoon. With their daughter now a lawyer in Washington, he said he and his wife are settling in St. Michaels, Md., about an hour and a half from the capital. He said they'll get smaller places there and either in Black Rock or Stamford, where he lived before moving to Bridgeport 10 years ago.
So focused was Shays on his job that he said he never even visited Washington's renowned museums. "In 21 years I didn't go to a museum in Washington. I worked in Washington," he said. "I think I went to the zoo once because I took some family members," he said.
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Story Source: Connecticut Post
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