The ex-senator talks about the supreme court justice, the threats his family has received and the 2020 election
In an era rife with images highlighting partisan turmoil in Washington, few snapshots stand more poignant than Jeff Flake being cornered in a wood-paneled elevator at the US Capitol.
It was September 2018 and the Republican senator for Arizona had just heard evidence from Dr Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Donald Trump's supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, of sexually assaulting her 37 years earlier.
The hearing had been watched all over the world. A litmus test for the influence of the # MeToo movement, and a measure of just how far the president and the Republican party would back a flawed, but ideologically aligned candidate for a lifelong position on America's highest judicial body. Flake, a stanch conservative but vocal critic of Trump, was set to cast the swing vote on Kavanaugh's progression.
He stood awkwardly in the small elevator as two female sexual assault survivors told him their stories, prayed him to believe Ford's detailed accusations and demanded he block the nomination.
” You have power when so many females are powerless ,” one girl said to Flake as he politely nodded and the scene was broadcast live on CNN.
Eight months later Flake sits in a poky New York dressing room almost as restricted as that elevator. The interaction, he says, had a profound effect on him. “[ It reflected] some of the same things that friends, close friends, extended family members, had said to me. This nomination genuinely brought to the floor a lot of issues that we still need to deal with .”
His face violates into a mildly mournful grimace.
” I think all of us[ Senate Republican] should have handled that differently ,” he acknowledges of the hearings as a whole.
Shortly after the elevator incident, Flake forced his party to stall Kavanaugh's nomination so the FBI could conduct a brief investigation into Ford and another woman's claims against him. But within eight days, and without any definitive discoveries, he cast his ballot in favour of Kavanaugh, who scraped by on 50 -4 8 margin.
To his critics, Flake's conduct during the Kavanaugh hearings was the embodiment of his toothless resistance to the Trump presidency. An indecisive and inconsequential intervention that ultimately changed nothing.
A year earlier Flake had published a volume entitled Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. It was hailed as a forceful critique of Trump's ruinous long-term impact on American conservatism and republic as a whole. He called on Trump to drop out of the 2016 election following the release of a videotape where the reality TV star boasted about grabbing females ” by the pussy “. He came close to branding the president a traitor following his extraordinary summit with Russia's chairwoman, Vladimir Putin, in July 2018.
Flake established himself as one of the few voices in the party willing to call Trump out, even as some of his closest friends jumped on board with the White House. He declined to recontest his Senate seat in 2018, quoting the influence of Trumpism on his party.
But for all the rhetoric, his critics argue, Flake has largely employed his vote in the Senate to assist Trump's agenda , not resist it.
As he enjoys his second month out of office, does he still stand by his vote for Kavanaugh?
” Umm hmm ,” he nods, with visible unease.
Did he ever believe Ford?
” I don't know ,” he says.” Some of my[ Democratic] colleagues carried complete clairvoyance as to what happened 37 years ago. I've never had that certainty.
” Should just the presence of an uncorroborated allegation in itself alone be sufficient to disqualify someone? And that's a very real question. And so it was … I still don't know. I did what I thought was best and I'm still comfortable with that .”
Flake is in New York to appear at a debate curated by the media company Intelligence Squared, where “hes just” argued in front of a receptive audience that the Republican party should not renominate Trump for the 2020 election. It is, of course, unlikely the party would block Trump from running again, a prospect induced even more distant by news earlier in the week indicating Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election did not find prosecutable evidence of collusion with the Trump campaign. But Flake goes as far as saying it would be better for the party to lose to a Democrat in 2020 than endure another four years of Trump.
Flake has already ruled himself out of challenging the president in a primary contest next year. He confirms, though, that he has been in contact with the Ohio governor, John Kasich, a candidate in 2016 who is seen as perhaps the only viable name to mount a challenge from within the party.
He declines to elaborate on their discussions, but corroborates:” Kasich hasn't ruled it out .”
But, to state the obvious, wouldn't he have been able to assist a more effective opposition to Trump's re-election in 2020 if he had at least tried to recontest his seat?
Flake seems virtually puzzled at the question.
” If I was operating to win, and that's what you kind of do, I would have had to stand on a campaign stage with the president. And I would have had to have been OK with some of his policy positions and his behaviour. I would have had to cheer when people are chanting' lock her up ‘.” He pauses for a moment here, grimacing as he imagines what he has just described.
” I simply couldn't. It's not who we are .”
It's true that Flake's approving ratings among Republican in his home state plunged after Trump's election. Trump used a rally in Arizona to describe Flake as” weak on borders, weak on crime “. But surely if you're talking about injecting principles back into Republicanism, running away from the fight is inexcusable?
He giggles uncomfortably.
” I would have liked to have done one more term in the Senate, that's probably all. But it's been at a heavy cost to my family. The sacrifices they've been[ made to make ], what they had to endure …”
At this point Flake exposes he, his wife and his children have received numerous threats in the past year. Earlier in the week a human in Chicago pleaded guilty to leaving a threatening voicemail following Flake's role in the Kavanaugh hearings, stating:” I am tired of him interrupting our chairman, and I am coming down there to take him and his family out .”
There have been many more Flake has not spoken about before: a Trump supporter who arrived at three churches in Arizona looking for Flake and carrying a rifle scope, threats that have listed the addresses of his five children, others that have linked to beheading videos.
” I'm not saying that drove me out ,” he says.” But to go out there … awareness-raising campaigns takes not only you .”
The Republican party eventually lost Flake's Senate seat in the 2018 midterms to the Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, an outcome Flake says highlights the long-term damage Trump is inflicting on the party. Strikingly, Flake declines to say who he voted for last year.
But his public voting record tells a story in itself. During his two years in the Senate under Trump, Flake voted to support the president 81% of the time, according to data analysis by FiveThirtyEight. The supportive referendums extended beyond simply confirming appointees like Kavanaugh to major legislative accomplishments for the administration, such as tax reform.
These are the sort of victories that have undeniably bolstered Trump, whose entire image is built on winning against the odds, and, at the very least, highlightings the contradictions in Flake's attempts to stunt the influence of Trumpism.
He doesn't see it that way. Flake transgresses momentarily from his affable demeanour when pushed.
” I'm a conservative. I like conducive tax policy and regulatory reform ,” he says.” I have just voted, before Trump came along, some 35 periods to repeal Obamacare. Am I supposed to, out of spite for the president, vote against something that we supported and he happened to support as well ?”
Well, if we're talking about principles and the greater good, perhaps he should have.
” Vote differently than I voted before? Just because now I resist a chairman politically? That's not principled. That's against principle. I tried. I probably didn't always do it right. But no politician does .”
There is a sense Flake is already tired of answering these sort of questions. Trumpism arguably expense him his career and placed he and their own families in physical danger. Politics and partisanship came close to taking his life.
Flake was one of the Republican politicians on a field in 2017 when a gunman opened fire in a politically motivated shooting at a baseball game that left two people, including his colleague Steve Scalise, critically injured.
He recalls that morning in June vividly. Watching Scalise fall in front of him during the course of its first burst of gunfire.” I can see bullets pitching off the gravel in front of me ,” he says.” For some reason time seemed suspended for a minute, and I'm thinking:' Why us ?' How could somebody look at a bunch of middle-aged humen playing baseball and find the foe ?”
The experience resulted Flake to soften his resistance to gun control measures. For others, it might have led to a change of career.
But Flake makes clear he is not done with politics yet.
” I'm not saying I'm done running for office ,” he says.” We'll take it as it comes .”
What remains to be seen, however, is whether the Republican party is done with him.
Read more: www.theguardian.com
