Taking Food Out Of A Young Republican’s Mouth
Posted on January 14, 2009 at 8:39 amRobert Martin pen an open letter to Speaker Williams after his job offer to work in the General Assembly was rescinded when Rep. Jason Mumpower failed to win the Speaker’s chair:
Speaker Williams,
I was present for your election today, and first may I congratulate you. I’m sure you had to work very hard to get where you are.
The reason I was in attendance is because I was set to be a research analyst for the Legislature, conditional upon a Mumpower election as speaker. I have been interviewing since November, and was finally offered the job on Saturday. Now, as a result of your election, I must begin searching for jobs again. Let me thank you for that.
Also, I learned something about politics today. I learned that it is not uncommon for a man’s words to be worth nothing. Your prideful vote for yourself, in your distasteful quest for power, sets a fine example of what all of us in this state should strive to reject.
I am writing under the assumption that you believe accepting your nomination was the “right” thing to do. If you truly were seeking a “bi-partisan” speaker, you got it. After all, more Democrats did vote for you than the other candidate. I know that you were only sworn in to your second term today, but I am certain that you cannot be naive enough to believe that Democrats will continue to support you. Your nomination and election was to serve no other purpose than to offset the Republican Caucus as a whole, a body of which you deserve no part. The second you are up for re-election, and I can almost assure that the GOP will put a very fierce effort towards your 2010 race, it is unlikely that Democrats will support you. You must learn the same lesson that John McCain learned last November: Democrats may like you more than other Republicans, but they like their own kind more. Congratulations, Mr. Speaker. You have been used.
I wish you the best of luck in the upcoming two years. I’m sure that your prior two years, during which you held no leadership position, have prepared you well.
Take Care,
Rob Martin
(reprinted from a Facebook note with permission)
SEE ALSO: Brainstem
Comments
29 Responses to “Taking Food Out Of A Young Republican’s Mouth”
Amen, Rob.
I, too, had a friend who’d been offered a job, which… magically vanished yesterday.
- Matthew
Counting chickens, etc…
Not exactly the letter I would send if I was wanting the guy to consider hiring me anyway.
Shorter Rob Martin: “Poor me.”
I learned something about politics today. I learned that it is not uncommon for a man’s words to be worth nothing.
SHOCKER!
Dude isn’t going to have a very long life in politics if this is the pose he’s going to effect every time he gets screwed in that line of work.
So Rob was promised a job, dependent upon his would-be boss’s appointment, and he’s blaming the guy that pulled the rug out from under the preening peacock mumpower because he doesn’t have a job now. If you’ve been around government AT ALL you should be smart enough to never put much stock in a job offer dependent upon someone else’s appointment, no matter how imminent it may see to be.
No doubt Andy, no doubt.
Typical GOP behavior though. Gotta blame somebody else, because it couldn’t possibly be their own fault.
This letter clearly shows Mumpower’s mistake. He assumed he had the job in hand and “hired” people. This guy should blame Mumpower.
No sympathy here. Counting chickens and making assumptions will often get you into trouble, grasshopper.
“in your distasteful quest for power”
Anyone with knowledge of politics understands that Rob is well suited to go into politics after reading his letter that accuses his opponents of wanting everything that his side wanted.
Mumpower measured the drapes before he counted the votes, and this is what happens.
I feel for Rob’s situation; HOWEVER, why he is blaming Kent Williams is beyond me. Mumpower is a power hungry idiot who got what was coming to him. Believe it or not, there is skill in leadership and skill in politics. Clearly, Mumpower is lacking. Not only did he not anticipate every move by the Democrats, he clearly was taking the appointment for granted and clearly did not realize that Kent Williams wanted something.
Mumpower is so stupid and it is so great.
To be fair, in 49 out of 50 legislatures across the nation, Mumpower probably would’ve been Speaker of the House…so its not entirely unjustified for him to begin the process of hiring his staff.
Sean –
That’s right. It’s completely unrealistic to expect Mumpower to have done anything else. What would all these people be saying if he did none of that and started putting together a staff today? It;’s not like there’s months of transition time between now ad when the legislature really gets rolling. He had to start as soon as possible to get as much in place as he could. Anyone else would have done the same thing. They would have had to.
Mumpower was playing checkers while Naifeh and Odom played chess. Perhaps it’s worth remembering why Naifeh has maintained control this long.
He might not be out of a job had he gotten over his manufactured outrage and merely asked to be considered for the same job with Williams as his boss instead.
But I guess that would be too prideful and arrogant. Better to just bitch and moan on facebook about it.
This is why you never rely on a job offer until you have actually signed a contract. Always ALWAYS have a Plan B.
I feel for Rob, whose career plans were ruined through no fault of his own. It happens that job offers in the private sector are rescinded, and it hurts.
But it’s not like the legislature is laying on more staff. Rob was going to replace someone, who is now not going to need to be replaced. How does he feel that he would be costing someone else their job?
The research analyst, like the clerks and other staff positions is a civil servant job. It is not politically appointed. Granted, some people in these positions may be party loyalists, but that is of their choosing, and they are free to leave if they don’t want to work for a member of the party opposite their personal affiliation. If Mr. Mumpower was elected Speaker, hundreds of career government employees would have lost their jobs, as it was his intent to clean house. I don’t think that would be an action becoming of the “Compassionate Christian Party”
Mumpower would have been elected in 49 out of 50 state legislatures? How do you figure? I think he would have met the same fate in any state, if one vote separated the two parties. Mumpower should have anticipated all of this, and he shouldn’t have been telling members of his own caucus what they were going to get when he took the speaker’s gavel. That divided his caucus into haves and have nots. Everyone knew it. All the Democrats had to do was find the right have not.
I just want to thank Mr. Williams for having the nerve to stand up to arogant bullies. Since he had only been in office a short time, they thought of him as a nobody, somebody that would do whatever they say. I say ” GOOD JOB MR. WILLIAMS.” He truly represent the people not his own interest. After all isn’t that what our elected officals are suppose to do? Mumpower showed just what his goal was; power for him, not what the poeple wanted. I bet if they put someone else up they would of gotten it. I am a Republican and I didn’t want Mumpower representing me!
Poor Mr Williams. I believe the job he was offered was one of my best friends. I wish him luck in his continued search.
CLICK HERE for the official Republican response to the election of Republican Kent Williams as speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
As a spouse of a research analyst in the house, who was told that he was going to lose his job once Mumpower was elected, I do not feel sorry for Rob Martin AT ALL. It was devastating for all the support staff to watch candidates from the street come in for interviews who had little to no legislative experience.
To all the people that suggested Rob apply for the same position with Williams: Not gonna happen. As he was elected by Democrats I imagine he’ll be keeping the Democrat staff for all the committees regardless of the chair’s opinion. And it wouldn’t reflect well on Rob in two years anyways, regardless of whos in the speaker’s chair.
I am currently a Research Analyst for the House of Representatives. Following Election Day, I had heard rumors of mass firings of legislative staff, including Research Staff, Legislative Administration, the Legal Department, Legislative Budget Analysis, Fiscal Review, Oversight Committees and Legislative Information Services, etc. Hearing all of these rumors, I am not shocked to hear that Mr. Martin was offered a Research Analyst position on Saturday. Since November, I had been hearing people were interviewing for my job, including people being granted second interviews.
While I wish “good luck” to anyone seeking employment, I just want to remind Mr. Martin that for him to get the Research Analyst position that he was “offered,” someone like me would have to have been fired for him to fill it. Someone like me would have been looking for work.
I have been with the legislature for some time, and I know and understand how the legislature and the process works. I believe I do my job well. I seriously doubt that very many of the people that interviewed for jobs like mine know much at all of what I actually do during a legislative session, or how I help members complete their duties. While I was hired to work by representatives from one political party, I serve an entire committee and the entire House when called upon. Research Analysts like myself possess institutional knowledge that I would suspect few of those offered positions have. Some Research Analysts and other important staff have upwards of 30 years of experience and know more about the legislature and state government than anyone that could have been offered a position. (And to TD, my position, like the clerks and ALL other staff positions at the legislature, is NOT afforded civil servant protections. We work in the legislative branch, and we serve at the pleasure of the Speaker, whoever he or she may be.)
I realize I work in a political environment, and that my job is at the whim of who controls the Speaker’s gavel. However, there was a plan for mass firings of the staff that make the House of Representatives run. These firings would have created a giant dearth of institutional knowledge that helps the legislature run and helps members with their tasks. This knowledge would have been replaced by hyper-political staff with little to no knowledge of how the legislature or state government operates. I suspect that this plan for mass firings may have played a role in the Democrats voting for Speaker Williams. And the staff that got to keep their jobs are very grateful to Speaker Naifeh, Speaker Williams, and the House Democrats for what they did yesterday.
But I just want to remind Mr. Martin that the position he was offered was not vacant. Someone else would have had to lose his or her job before he could take the one he was offered. I genuinely wish him luck in his job search. It was almost me that would have been looking for a job yesterday.
Wow. Great piece, RA, you guys do the due diligence that makes the Capitol run, and I am hopeful Speaker Williams keeps you.
Yet another reason to keep the barbarians from the gate.
Research Analyst, You would know better than me. Sorry for my error. My main point though was that it would have been wrong of Mr. Mumpower to “clean house” had he been elected Speaker. I too wish anybody looking for a job “good luck”. I hope Mr. Martin realizes he would have been replacing somebody being fired simply because they worked there when the Democrats had control.
So, by the collective logic I read here should Barack Obama retain all of the current Bush Administration staff because they have institutional knowledge and have been in place for many years? Of course not. That is as ridiculous an assertion as expecting Mumpower to retain staff in positions that affect the General Assembly’s policy and decision making process. And most of the positions in the Legislature do. There are very few true service positions, most have some impact on policy decisions - including the research analysts, budget analysts, and legal counsel.
It is wholly appropriate that staff should turn over with a change in Leadership. The advice and analysis they provide shapes the decisions that are made by our elected representatives. This advice and analysis is impossible to separate from principle. Not to mention the multitude of possibilities for impropriety that could be motivated by sour grapes, mis-matched political alliances, or any number of grievances created during a transition.
These transitions are painful, ask the 5,000 or so Bush appointees to be out of a job next week. However they are necessary to effective governance. Just because we haven’t had a transition during the careers of any of the incumbent employees doesn’t obfuscate that fact.
There are no positions in the Legislative branch that are protected by the civil service. All employees serve at the will of the Speaker(s). That lack of protection is not new, and is in place for a reason. No quarterback should be expected to play with the other team’s players, and neither should our government’s leaders.
BooHoo. Baaaaa. BooHoo. Baaaaa.
Rob…boohoo…is…baaaa….your….boohoo….average….Republican.
“These transitions are painful, ask the 5,000 or so Bush appointees to be out of a job next week.”
And that is why I have, after eight long years, been able to acheive some emotional balance.