Shawn Vestal: Spokane mayor struck by cordiality at State of Union

Mayor David Condon was chatting with his former boss, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, over the holidays when she asked him when he would next be back in the nation’s capital.

Condon told her he was planning to attend the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting there in January. Fast forward to mid-January: Condon got a call from a Rodgers staffer, asking if he might want to attend the State of the Union address as one of her guests. The speech was scheduled for the night Condon was arriving.

“I don’t know whether they had a cancellation or got another ticket,” Condon said this week. “But I said, ‘Sure!’ ”

So, instead of spending the evening of Jan. 20 in his hotel room looking over materials for the mayors conference, Condon got off the plane, got a haircut, bought a pair of black shoes – because he’d brought a mismatched pair – and headed to the House of Representatives to claim his spot in Gallery 3, Row D, Seat 5.

Though Condon worked as McMorris Rodgers’ deputy chief of staff for six years, he had never attended a State of the Union speech. He said that being there in person made it all seem strangely shrunken down to reality – given that it is such a momentous political event attended by virtually every major figure in the government.

He crammed into the “less than accommodating” seats in the gallery next to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and near “Mr. Pelosi” – Paul Pelosi, husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi – and took in the particulars of it all, from the arrival of the Supreme Court justices to the rituals surrounding the copies of the speech itself. Each member of Congress gets one, which they consult while the president speaks. After the speech, congressmen and women line up to have their copies autographed, like a book signing.

“All the members have copies and you actually hear the pages flip” while the president spoke, Condon said. “The pages would ruffle as everyone turned to the next page.”

Condon did not want to delve into his views of Obama or the policies proposed in the speech – though he’s conservative, he generally avoids putting issues into a left-right framework, at least rhetorically. He did pay attention to some of the president’s remarks on civility and compromise, and said Obama seemed a little more conciliatory than he’s found him in the past – despite the president’s “I won both of them” jab.

“It’s not every day that I agree with the policies of the president, but the overarching thoughts (about civility) – definitely,” Condon said.

Discussing the speech in his City Hall office this week, Condon highlighted some of the lines in the speech that resonated with him, about the way in which political debate had devolved into a pair of binary arguments flying past each other on cable news shows. One of the lines he cited: “Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns. Imagine if we did something different.”

One of the things that struck Condon was how cordial everyone at the speech was.

“How congenial they are with each other is interesting, because we usually see them arguing past each other on cable news shows,” he said.

Condon said that one of the things he discussed with O’Malley before the speech was how much less partisanship exists in local government (though it’s pretty pronounced in Spokane now, at least by municipal standards). Condon said that was one of the main reasons he ran for mayor in Spokane.

“I’m glad I’m in local government, where it’s obviously less partisan,” he said. “People often ask me, ‘Why’d you leave federal government for local government?’ Well, federal government drove me to it.”

Condon spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C. His wife, Kristin, worked for First Lady Barbara Bush for a while. They never lived there more than temporarily, though, and while Condon spent a lot of time in and around the working Congress, he said attending the speech was a much different experience.

“When I was there before, it was work,” he said. “They don’t let staff go. … It was fun just to watch it as a spectator.”

Though media coverage of the speech includes crowd shots, the mayor’s friends and family back home did not spot him during the broadcast, he said. Those in attendance had to leave their cellphones and devices outside; after the speech, Condon retrieved his phone to find a bunch of text messages from one of his brothers.

The gist: “‘I’ve been watching this thing for 30 minutes and I still can’t find you.’”