Loretta listened to you, Orange County!

Yesterday the progressives and moderates of our fine county suddenly panicked, hearing that our only OC Congressperson was flipping from a yes to a no on the historic Health Care Reform Bill.  Over a hundred concerned citizens quickly rallied outside her Garden Grove office to remonstrate (including OJ commenters anonster and gericault) – they reported hundreds more honks and thumbs up from passing motorists.

Rumors swirled that she was ducking the vote at a Florida fundraiser (it turns out she was in Florida but only on Saturday, and on personal business.)  Garden Grove staff assured the demonstrators that Loretta would be voting yes again, but at the same time her DC operator was telling me that she was still undecided and studying the bill hard.

Back in October, she and fellow “Blue Dog” Jane Harman had penned a fine column entitled “Why We’re Breaking With the Blue Dogs on the Public Option,” which made the sensible point that the public option would bring down costs for Americans and their government – something real Blue Dogs are allegedly all about rather than just protecting corporate interests.  Could the lack of a public option in the Senate bill be a reason for her to become the defeating vote, when every other public option supporter in Congress seemed to be backing the bill anyway?

Well, Loretta studied the bill, she listened to you, and she voted AYE. Here’s more of the inside scoop from the Register’s Dena Burris:

…Sanchez let it be known that her vote wasn’t a gimme, that she had questions, issues with the bill and that she needed to be convinced.  So the convincing started. And it was from inside and outside of Washington.

Out of every other piece of legislation that I have voted on for the last 14 years in this Congress this is the only time my phones have been ringing like this with people from my district who have been asking me for this,” Sanchez said.

Lawmakers are used to getting calls and faxes and e-mails. Often they are orchestrated campaigns and usually the calls come from activists interested in an issue.  But this time, Sanchez said, she knew the calls were from everyday constituents. “We could hear the kids screaming in the background, the dishes clanging. ‘Tell her my children are uninsured. Tell her we want the bill,’ ” Sanchez said her staff told her.

“That has never happened for any other vote, not even the Iraq war,” she said.

Sanchez also heard from health experts back home. Some of them said vote yes, even if the bill was not perfect; something has to pass. Others recommended a no vote; said the bill was too flawed…

By late Friday Sanchez knew how she was going to vote.

On the one hand, she said, she worried about the moral imperative of her Catholic belief about serving others and so it mattered to her that more people get covered.

Then the MBA banker in her kicked in and she worried about whether the country could afford the tab and if insurance companies weren’t getting a windfall.

Sanchez insists the politics of the issue didn’t factor in.

I agree with Gustavo that this will clinch the election for her.  (Naturally the inbred troglodytes at Red-Faced County predict it’ll throw the election to Boss Van Tran or racist Tan Nguyen.)  In any case the fight for a public option or Medicare Buy-in continues after the historic bill is signed, as we push for Alan Grayson’s Medicare-You-Can-Buy-Into Act.

About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.