The Washington Monthly has a flattering article about Congressman Jeff Flake, Republican from Arizona, who is distantly related to my husband's family. When I worked on the Dean campaign, people used to ask me if we were related. No one else had ever heard of him, though I suspect one day his will be an instantly recognizable name. (Remind me to tell y'all one day about why I ditched my maiden name, although that other Kathy Sims was no maiden, let me tell you.)
The article makes him out to be a maverick, as John McCain was once, with interesting tidbits like this:
Far from avoiding confrontation, Flake seems to revel in taking the fight to the big dogs in the Republican leadership. Last fall, he went after a pet project of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the famous $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" that would connect a small town in Alaska to a tiny island. Despite the hot-tempered senator's threat that he would resign from the Senate unless he got his bridge, fiscal conservatives succeeded in killing the project. According to Roll Call, the RSC celebrated by screening a key scene from the movie The Bridge On the River Kwai, in which the bridge is blown up. "It's Jeff Flake!" yelled one of the RSC members as Alec Guinness's character detonated the explosives. "It's Don Young [the Alaskan congressman] shooting at me!" Flake shouted back to a roomful of laughter.
He's also a handsome feller, a dead ringer for Matthew McConaughey, with more brains than Dan Quayle. I would not be surprised to see him on the Republican ticket in a few years, provided McCain himself doesn't hog all the space allotted for Arizona.
While I don't agree with Cousin Jeff's politics, most of the time, I am proud that he's taken on the sleazy Republican leadership, and is determined to get rid of earmarks and other pork projects. We need a few more Jeff Flakes on the other side.
