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THE MANDATE IS CLEAR.

The public face of Jeff Flake, via Mr. Flake's website demonstrates,

• Duplicitous/Secret Representation. He keeps quiet about the energy, service and time he is devoting to D.C. issues.  He has to spend lots of time fending off local residents who oppose his legislative intermeddling. You wouldn't know it from his public face - his website..   He does not mention D.C. on his website's 'Legislation' page.               Where does he mention his sponsorship of the voucher legislation - somewhere two or three links away from the home page, in the 'press shop' of his website. There is no evidence of it elsewhere. See for yourself. Visit here.

• Representative Flake Is Cheating On His Constituents.  He has taken on this task to help, reportedly, the poor underprivileged children of D.C.  Surely, the children of Arizona need him as well.  At least Governor Napolitano of Arizona thinks so. He is working for D.C. residents but failing to fully disclose his activities on the D.C. subcommittee to his elective constituents.

• Unconstitutional Representation. Congressman Flake

                has exceeded the threshold constitutional duty

                to oversee D.C. as defined in Article 1 of the Constitution.  Read here.

• Government Waste.

                Managing D.C. Affairs drains the financial resources of the

                 Congress. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton Can Do the 

                  job all by herself of representing D.C. in the national legislature.

                 Tell Representative Flake to come home to the concerns of the 

                  the constituents.  More on how wasteful it is for Congress to

                 manage D.C.? Read here.

What has he done for Arizona lately?

Apparently, on Mr. Flake's watch, Arizona is feeling so neglected that Governor Janet Napolitano, of Arizona, is planning to set up an office in Washington to look after Arizona for herself.  Mr. Flake is just too busy trying to run the D.C. school system to take care of his own!

Why Lobbyline Runs This Initiative

The Political Campaign for Voting Rights Has A Substantive Face, A Substantive Impact:  A D.C. Public Schools graduate and Parent Fights Congressionally Imposed Voucher Plan

Why Does a human service advocate become embroiled in what is seemingly the mostly political movement for voting rights?

I am an attorney, an education reform advocate interested in special education, a D.C. native, a D.C. Public Schools graduate and a D.C. Public Schools parent.  And I am sick and tired of being sick and tired of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (of special education cap on attorneys fees fame) and now Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ-6) trying to run the school system of Washington, D.C. 

First it was Senator Hutchison and her colleagues capping attorney's fees awarded to lawyers representing children in the city's special education program.  I have wanted to do something about Senator Hutchison and company and their incessant interference in this arena of D.C. affairs.  Now, Mr. Flake seeks to bring vouchers to D.C. So, at Lobbyline, we approached these education reform issues in this manner.  We decided to challenge Congress' authority on substantive and process grounds.

Substantive Grounds.

Why should I a native and educated life-long resident of D.C. who is herself a DCPS graduate and a DCPS parent and reformer stand by and let Congress continue to impose their experimental policies on a school system that I am committed to reforming?  What makes Mr. Flake more qualified than myself and the many active, informed and smart parents working to improve the system for our children?  The answer is nothing.  I want Congress out of D.C. affairs.  I think that voucher system supported by Mr. Flake will further erode the financially devastated school system where I am on the verge of having two children enrolled.  The lip service paid to improving the schools to attract and keep residents, to deliver economic justice to the predominantly black DCPS student population is just lip service.  Besides, one study done by a state university in Mr. Flake's own home state - Arizona State University - says that vouchers do not work.  But again, what business is it of Mr. Flake's?  He does not even sit on a D.C. Congressional subcommittee and he is taking time out of his surely full Congressional schedule to intermeddle in our affairs.

Well, what if we turned the tables?  What if we went en masse to Mr. Flake's hometown to tell him how to run his government?  What if we joined in with Governor Napolitano of Arizona to accuse him of neglecting his home district and his state.  Ms. Napolitano thinks so little of Mr. Flake's performance on her state's behalf that she is planning to set up an office here in Washington for herself so that she can do the job that Mr. Flake and company are not doing.

So, the people want Mr. Flake to return to Arizona affairs while he is meddling in those of D.C.  Let's get Arizonans to get Mr. Flake out of D.C. affairs.  In fact, maybe Arizona can be the launch of a campaign, to join all the other voting rights campaigns, to get the whole of America to call their Congressmen home, out of D.C. affairs and back to the matters of their own home districts. 

Visit Lobbyline's new education reform and voting rights campaign that  seeks to a)educate Americans from the home districts of Congressional members who legislate on D.C. issues (b) mobilize these voters to tell their Congressmen to resign from any D.C. subcommittees they sit on (c) abolish all of the subcommittees (d) support and supplement legislation to get Congress out of D.C. affairs for good.  Visit www.lobbyline.com/leavedc and tell the home districts through their newspapers that Representative Jeff Flake is cheating on his home District, neglecting their issues.  Every week we will introduce a new member to our home district education campaign. 

Process Reasons.

 We geared up for an initiative to inspire an email campaign targeting certain members of Congress to tell them to stop their attempts to impose caps on attorney's fees. 

But, we at Lobbyline, who specialize in email as a vehicle for connecting people to decision-makers were disappointed, then intrigued to find that many members of Congress will not accept email from D.C. residents.  Although we can actually transmit email to Members, some of them warn us that they won't respond.  So, we pressed ahead and thought what about starting an email campaign to get Congress to accept our email?  That wouldn't work, because Congress will not read our email and some are set up to reject our mail.  This is true even of those Congressmen on the D.C. subcommittee.  Even Representative Davis does not invite our email.  How would they know that we are protesting their failure to read or accept our email?

We looked from another angle.  Curious about what this meant, we went digging around the websites of various members of the D.C. subcommittee  - current and former, and what did we discover? Not only do they not want email from D.C. residents, who our analysis argues, are their non-elective constituents.  There is a big gaping hole around the information that they provide to constituents visiting their website,

Did you know that the D.C. subcommittee has one of the highest turnover rates of e appropriations subcommittees in the United States House of Representatives?  Did you know that most of the Congress, even members of the D.C. subcommittees, fail to disclose to their constituents on their websites their unique relationship to the District of Columbia? See our table for a comparison of subcommittee turnover rates.

These members of Congress are keeping a secret from their elective constituents.  All of Congress has the duty, which some gaily exercise, but Congress barely mentions their constitutional nexus to the governance of Washington, D.C. on their websites. Not even the members of the subcommittees on D.C. explicitly describe the positions they hold on these committees. No wonder, as surveys suggest, fewer than half Americans know of the plight of D.C. residents - the disenfranchised stepchildren of this republic. Shame on Congress. 

 Well, it's time America learned what their Congressional representatives are up to - governing Washington, D.C.  So welcome to Lobbyline's latest project.  We are proud to join in the fight. This is our contribution to the heroic effort of other warriors struggling for autonomy for Washington D.C.