Meeting the People

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As it is essential to liberty that the Government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that the [lower house of the Congress] should have an immediate dependence on and an intimate sympathy with the people. So the author of The Federalist wrote of the U.S. House of Representatives-- and so, in that same spirit, to five United Auto Workers' pickets huddled around a fire outside a Buick Motor plant in Flint, Mich, last week, came a small, balding man with a cracker-barrel voice: "Hi, fellows. I'm Chuck Chamberlain, your Congressman. I brought you some matches in case this fire runs out."

Charles Ernest Chamberlain, 41, Republican Representative from Michigan's Sixth District, began handing out red-white-and-blue matchbooks bearing his name, his photograph, and a key word: "Re-elect." One of the pickets turned his back, growling: "We don't need you around here." Deep in Democratic U.A.W. territory, Chamberlain was undismayed.

"Hey," said he, "we need two sides to everything, don't we? Isn't that the American way? Gee, I used to work in the plants myself. I know something about your problems." Cried the hostile picket: "You don't know anything. All Republicans are lousy, and your President is the worst goddam one of the bunch." Demanded a second picket: "Why are you coming around here?" "That," replied Chamberlain, "is the way our Constitution is drawn. We go out politicking every two years, and if you don't like us you can kick us out." "Don't worry," snapped the second picket, "we will."

Coming Closer. Campaigner Chamberlain kept at it. "That's your privilege," he said. "But if I am elected I will still welcome your criticism. I don't want you to write and tell me I'm a dirty dog. That doesn't help. But constructive criticism I welcome. There's plenty of room for differences of opinion. As long as I am Congressman. I represent all the people in the district--those who like me and those who don't like me."

Somehow, somewhere, Chamberlain hit a responsive chord. A third picket spoke up hesitantly."I think you're O.K.," said he. "I like your approach." Campaigner Chamberlain moved into the warmth of the fire, rubbed his chilled hands. "Thanks," he said quietly. "Now if your buddies will stop heckling me for a minute, there is one thing I'd like to say: the Government is a lot closer to you than you think. Maybe you don't like me, but every two years you have your chance to put in the man you want. And believe me, that keeps the Government very, very close to what you want it to be. That's good. That is the way it should be."

The Humble Sons. It is also the way the nation's founders intended it to be. The members of the House of Representatives, wrote The Federalist author,* were to be elected by the "great body" of U.S. citizens--"Not the rich, more than the poor; nor the learned, more than the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscure and unpropitious fortune." To keep the House of Representatives immediately responsive to the district voters, the Constitution requires its members to stand for re-election every two years--and gives them the power and the heavy political responsibility of initiating all money bills.

Tied so closely to their districts, the members of the U.S. House of Representatives must, for survival's sake, reflect both the broadest national aspirations and the narrowest local interests of the folks back home. In their separate, infinitely diverse, bitterly conflicting parts, the 435 congressional districts make for a national whole, a mirror of the U.S. will and mood. Michigan's "Chuck" Chamberlain, like any Congressman of either party who is to live up to the founders' formula, must serve the will and the mood of his own district. And Chamberlain's Sixth District is indeed a land of the rich and poor, the learned and the ignorant, the distinguished names and the humble sons who make a nation. Perhaps most important to the hottest political issues of nonpresidential Election Year 1958, Chamberlain's Sixth is a land of farms and factories, in perilous political proportion.

County Countdown. In the 1,774 sq. mi. of Chamberlain's district in south-central Michigan live 624,000 people, with more of Walter Reuther's United Auto Workers than any other congressional district (72,000), yet with enough conservative-minded farmers, professional and businessmen to throw it into hairbreadth balance every two years. Since 1946 no congressional candidate has carried the Sixth by as much as 53%. In 1956 Chamberlain defeated Democratic Incumbent Don Hayworth, his opponent again this year, by 3,967 votes--a breathless .8% of the total. In 1958 most experts believe that congressional contests will be decided on the issues of 1) the economic recession and the jitters of recovery, 2) labor policy in the face of widespread charges of union bossism and Senate revelations of corruption, and 3) farm policy in the light of resurgent agricultural prosperity. These issues come to burning, brilliant focus in a breakdown of the three counties (see map) in Michigan's Sixth District:

GENESEE COUNTY (pop. 374,000) has more voters than the other two counties of the district combined. With its Buick and Chevrolet plants centered around Flint, it is a national stronghold of the U.A.W. In 1956, even with Big Labor's leaders cold-shouldering Democrat Hayworth in a personal vendetta, Republican Chamberlain lost Genesee by 9,947 votes. This year, although the U.A.W. is still squabbling with Hayworth, Chamberlain has even worse troubles. Few U.S. counties were harder hit by recession; as late as July an estimated 24.3% of Flint's labor force was still unemployed. And recovery figures have been blurred by the U.A.W. itself: even while reaching a national contract agreement with General Motors, it is keeping locals out on strike until lesser agreements are reached with plant management. As of last weekend, five Genesee County plants were idle, with 17,000 workers on strike.

INGHAM COUNTY (pop. 216,000) is dominated by Lansing, the state capital, seat of Michigan's enormously popular Democratic Governor G. Mennen Williams, next door to Michigan State University, a city of trim middle-class homes which boasts that it has no slums. Ingham County has its share of labor, e.g., Lansing's Oldsmobile and Fisher Body plants, but its politics has long been characterized by the penny-saved, penny-earned conservatism of its small businessmen and prosperous rural storekeepers. It was in Ingham, his home county, that Chamberlain canceled out his 1956 Genesee deficit: he won Ingham by 9,946 votes--and came out of the two counties exactly one vote behind.

LIVINGSTON COUNTY (pop. 34,000) is the smallest of the three--yet it can hold the balance of power. Livingston is a farm county with a smattering of wealthy business and professional men who commute to Flint and Lansing. Livingston's fiercely independent farmers have never been much for Government controls, did well with their 100-to-200-acre corn, oat and wheat crops even during the long farm recession. This year, with county farm income up by an estimated 7%, Livingston farmers seem to be standing even more firmly behind the flexible support policies of Republican Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson. In 1956 Chamber lain's entire 3,967 margin of victory came from Livingston County.

Riding the Tides. In the three counties of the Sixth District rest the delicate balances that Republican Chamberlain and Democrat Hayworth must carefully weigh--and work diligently to tilt. Gaunt, grey Don Hayworth, 60, father of three, a speech professor at Michigan State, knows that the economic discontent of the Sixth District is a strong factor in his favor. He has campaigned quietly but skillfully, trying to avoid making the contest a direct personality clash with bubbling, persuasive Chuck Chamberlain. He believes that a national Democratic trend is running, and he knows that his fellow Democrat, Governor Williams, in his campaign for a sixth term, is far, far ahead. Hayworth has shaped his own campaign to take best advantage of the tides.

Oddly enough, Democrat Hayworth's toughest problem is with labor. A member of the national board of Americans for Democratic Action, he was long a particular favorite of the U.A.W. But during his 1955-56 congressional term, he polled his Sixth District farmers, found them strongly in favor of flexible price supports--and therefore voted for the Republican Administration's farm program. His vote infuriated the U.A.W., which by no means confines its Sixth District interests to labor policy. High, rigid farm subsidies are an article of the U.A.W.'s national Democratic faith, and Hayworth found himself accused of treason. Big Labor refused to back Hayworth against Chamberlain in 1956, this year entered the Democratic primary against Hayworth with its own candidate. Hayworth headquarters accused the labor leaders of "Nazi-like" action, and Flint's C.I.O. Council President Norman Bully roared in rage: "It is the straw that breaks the camel's back! Anybody who can compare the unions with the Nazis is not a friend of labor." Hayworth easily won the primary, but Big Labor's billboards in the Sixth District list all major Democratic candidates except Hayworth.

Mapping his own breakneck campaign, Republican Chamberlain must work with different equations. He knows that a huge Genesee County turnout, born of economic unrest, could swallow him up. He has therefore thrown most of his remarkable energies into holding his own in labor's county. "I will lose the county," he says, "but I'm trying to keep my losses to a minimum. I'm trying to let the laboring man know that there is nothing inconsistent with my being a Republican and being interested in the welfare of the individual worker." Even while trying to stave off losses in Genesee, Chamberlain cannot afford to neglect Ingham and Livingston, and already he has heard complaints that he has not been seeing enough of his farm friends. To handle that problem, he scheduled a tour through the district's farming areas this week with Ezra Benson, whom Chamberlain deems a decided political asset.

Tuned Embodiment. Like most northern congressional campaigns, the race in Michigan's Sixth District is a tossup. But in his fight to win, Chuck Chamberlain stands out--perhaps as much as any other beleaguered member of the House--as the hustling, aggressive, inexhaustible, politically tuned embodiment of what it takes to run for re-election to Congress. To begin with, he has a running start because he knows and understands his district through personal identification. He was born on an Ingham County farm, heir to three generations of Ingham County farmers ; he worked as a youth in Lansing's Fisher Body plant; after a four-year World War II Coast Guard hitch, he practiced law (University of Virginia Law School, '49) in Lansing, came up through the political ranks from assistant Ingham County prosecutor to prosecutor to Congress.

When Prosecutor Chamberlain squeaked past Representative Don Hayworth in 1956, he was one of only nine U.S. Republicans to oust incumbent Democrats from House seats. He landed in Washington with bright expectations: "I was kind of steamed up about being on the team and finding out who the quarterback was." He found out all right: the only quarterback for Chuck Chamberlain was Chuck Chamberlain. "My God," he recalls, "the Welcome Wagon came out to see Mrs. Chamberlain when we had the electric meter hooked up, but nobody from the Republican high command came around to see me." From House Republican Leaders Joe Martin and Charles Halleck came only one direct piece of advice: "When you have to make a decision between your district and the national party, vote with your district."

Spreading the Word. Newcomer Chamberlain found that voting with his district was not nearly as easy as it sounded. Capitol Hill is 500 miles from Lansing, Mich.; the political stand that appears perfectly obvious in Washington may be twisted completely out of shape by the Sixth District's crosscurrents. It was up to Chamberlain to assess correctly the interests of his district on all the hundreds of issues coming up in the House.

Chamberlain began looking around, comparing notes with his colleagues to see how they met the problem of maintaining common bonds with their districts. He joined the Michigan Republican delegation at breakfast every other week, became a regular at the weekly Tuesday-afternoon sessions of the Acorn Club, an informal organization of freshmen Republican Congressmen who shared with Chamberlain the problem of learning. Such group meetings were helpful, but Chamberlain was still the only Representative from the Sixth District of Michigan, and slowly, painfully, he developed his own system of keeping pace with the folks back home.

He started sending out newsletters to his constituents describing everything from his activities on the House Banking and Currency Committee to his successful sponsorship of a bill establishing National Safe Boating Week (at the request of his old service, the Coast Guard). The newsletters gave him a chance to sell his own ideas about issues on which the Sixth District was doubtful, among them reciprocal trade, which Chamberlain supported even though many Sixth District automen, fearful of foreign competition, were in opposition.

Polling for Trends. Where each Congressman is allowed one annual Government-paid trip to his home district, Chamberlain made 14 his first year, 18 his second, at a personal cost of $76.34 per trip. Most of all, Chamberlain learned to rely on a system of periodic polls, sending out questionnaires to 150,000 Sixth District voters (each poll costs him $700). "The returns may not be complete," says Chamberlain, "and they certainly are not infallible, but they always show a trend."

The polls convinced Chamberlain that the majority of Sixth District voters was generally in agreement with Eisenhower Administration policy--and he voted that way. Among the most startling trends was one that gives Chamberlain high hopes that the Sixth District's rank-and-file union members will not necessarily blame him for their economic troubles. Seventy-seven percent of the hourly wage earners answering a Chamberlain poll last March said they believed both labor and management should renew then-existing contracts "to avoid possible labor strife."

Chamberlain's unending efforts to keep in touch with his district, even while attending to the daily legislative and committee work required of the conscientious Congressman, have kept him away from his wife, Charlotte, and their three children (Ellen, 12; Christine, 6; and Charles Jr., 4) more than he likes. But here again Chamberlain has a fine political asset: a wife who understands. Says Charlotte Chamberlain: "Somehow this extraordinary way of living--two homes, two worlds--comes to be taken in stride. The only time I realize that we aren't quite as stable as other people is when I am in a group of people, and somebody says: 'Where's Chuck?' And it suddenly occurs to me that Chuck is out campaigning, and he isn't like ordinary people at all: he is doing something special."

Despite a Congressman's $22,500-a-year salary plus expense allowance, the personal expenses of district pulse taking, of meeting and knowing people, have forced the Chamberlains to put a $10,000 mortgage on their East Lansing home. Beyond that, Chamberlain figures he will spend $20,000 before his 1958 campaign is over, and he is raising it with a "Bucks for Chuck" drive, exchanging elephant-outlined cuff links for contributions of more than $50.

People, One by One. A new congressional campaign, Chamberlain thinks, begins the day an old one ends. "You can't campaign openly that early," Chamberlain says. "It would be like saying 'Merry Christmas' on the Fourth of July. But you think hard about it. You look at an auto plant and tell yourself: 'Next campaign I will be at the gates to meet the workers as they arrive at 7 a.m.' And they will think: 'This guy had to get up as early as I did--he must really mean business.' "

Again, Chamberlain has no time for the formal political rallies on which many candidates depend. "I think rallies are useless," he says. "The people who show up at rallies are already on my side, and I'm just plowing the same field over again. I have to spend my time just talking with people, one by one." Laying out his campaign, Chamberlain figures that he can meet and talk to some 200 voters a day and, allowing for 50 days of active campaigning from Labor Day to Election Day, reach 10,000 people.

Out for Customers. To meet 10,000 voters one by one, Campaigner Chamberlain travels through the Sixth District in a red-white-and-blue campaign trailer ("The mortgage on it." says Chamberlain, "is as long as the trailer itself"), complete with loudspeaker and the recorded works of John Philip Sousa. When the trailer pulls up in a Sixth District town, Chamberlain scrambles out, sets up a sign proclaiming: YOUR CONGRESSMAN is HERE NOW! Then he goes back to his trailer office to await the passing parade of every sort of voter with every sort of problem (see box).

All Chamberlain's visitors sign a register in the trailer's reception room, and thereby automatically put themselves on the mailing list for Chamberlain's congressional newsletter. When the stream of visitors slows down, Chamberlain jumps up, stuffs shopping bags ("How could that printer be so stupid as to print my name on only one side of the bag?") with emery boards for the ladies, matchbooks for the men, comic books and balloons for the kids. Then he hurries off ("When there aren't any customers, I go out and find them"), making the rounds of the barbershops, stores, and especially the supermarkets. "Good morning," he says. "I'm Chuck Chamberlain, your Congressman. Have a shopping bag. And while I'm here, have you any complaints? This is your chance." Then, turning to a friend, Chamberlain exclaims happily: "See what I can do here in a few minutes as opposed to spending the time at a political rally? Hundreds of people, and they all get something to remember me by."

Out to Dinner. A typically breathless campaign day for Chamberlain began at 7 o'clock one morning last week, found him still going hard in the Genesee County town of Grand Blanc at 7 that night. He suddenly realized that he was already go minutes late for a dinner date with his wife Charlotte, even then waiting for him in front of the Durant Hotel, in nearby Flint. Chamberlain leaped into his red-white-and-blue Chevrolet station wagon, which he uses along with his trailer, and sped toward Flint at 60 m.p.h. His pace had been exhausting, but Chuck Chamberlain seemed to thrive on it, and his words tumbled out in a turmoil of enthusiasm.

"Hey," he cried to a friend, "where are we going to take my wife to dinner? She's been waiting since 5:30 and she's going to be plenty sore. Let's take her to a good restaurant, how about it?" He flipped down the station wagon's sun visor, studied a typewritten timetable of industrial plant and shopping-center openings and closings. Said he, ruefully: "We'll only have about 20 minutes to eat--we have to be in Flushing by 8. I want to catch that crowd at the shopping center. We have to be in Flint by 9--there's a real good shopping center there. Then we may get home by 11 and that will give me a couple of hours to catch up on paper work so I can get to bed by I --always like to turn in by 1. Then I won't have anything to do until 7 in the morning. I want to be at the Buick plant then."

Chuck Chamberlain sighed contentedly. "It's been a good day," he said. And so it had. To the best of his considerable energies, he had presented himself to the people as the nation's founding fathers had meant that a Representative should. And before him, with problems great and small, had moved the passing parade not only of Michigan's Sixth Congressional District, but, in a sense, of the U.S. itself. week.

*The authorship of several of the 85 Federalist essays, signed by "A Citizen of New York" and later by "Publius," is disputed between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

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