Interview with Romano (Ron) L. Mazzoli, May 20, 2010

Kevin Collins: Okay?

Ron Mazzoli: Okay.

KC: All right. Today is Thursday, May 20th, 2010. This is Kevin Collins, and today's interview is with Romano Mazzoli, former congressman for 12 terms, from 1970 to 1994, for the Third Congressional District of Kentucky. It is being recorded at the University of Louisville Archives as part of the Romano Mazzoli Oral History Project. Good morning, Congressman.

RLM: Good morning, Kevin. How are you?

KC: Very good, thank you.

RLM: Good.

KC: This morning's interview, we would like to cover the business of campaigning, particularly in the local campaigning for the Kentucky State Senate from 1967 to '69, and your not-quite-successful primary bid for the Louisville mayor in 1968, and then perhaps as time allows we would conclude with an overview and reminiscences and commentary of your congressional campaigns from 1970 to 1992.

Let me ask you: how and when did you decide to run for public office, and why 1:00did you choose the State Senate for your first effort?

RLM: The second question is very easy to decide; the first question's a little bit tougher, but I was thinking about that just as recently as last night. And I think I may have mentioned earlier that John F. Kennedy's advent on the national/international scene was very powerful on Helen and me, and most of the young marrieds of that era, particularly if they happened to be a Catholic in that era. Here was the first Catholic president and the first young president that we've ever had, or could remember, because most of us grew up with Roosevelt and then Truman and Eisenhower, men who -- younger than I am today, but by our standards as 20-year-olds were pretty old people. So here, John F. 2:00Kennedy, a very important part. We studied him, we listened to him. He was quite eloquent. He was handsome. His wife was beautiful. It was the Camelot. So a lot of that hit us and said, well, public service --which we probably hadn't thought about much before -- is a way that you really can do things and help people, and, in the case of John Kennedy, be a world leader in the process. So I think that planted a seed which gestated in the back of my head about politics and the possibility that there may be some opening for me in there. However, as I said before, that was 1960 when he was elected. It was not until 1968 that I actually became an elected official, so there was a gap of almost a decade.

Helen reminded me last night that not only was John F. Kennedy the genesis of the thought that I might have a political career, the two of us -- because Helen 3:00has been very intimately involved in every campaign from the very start -- but that there was a group of young, married people, of which we were one part, that would meet periodically, once every month or two in somebody's house or apartment -- many of us lived in apartments in those days -- and we would have dinner and, you know, talk about the kids and talk about this and that, religion and on and on, but we'd also talk about politics. So Helen reminded me last night that Tom and Mary Cahill, and Bill and Mary Ann Rickert and Ron and Helen Mazzoli, and there may have been another couple of people along the way, but mostly this was the group, and mostly we talked about lots of things, including politics. So Helen believes that part of what later moved us is into political life was born around the kitchen tables and the dining room tables of these various houses that we lived in or apartments we lived in, and so I certainly do remember those conversations.

What my first recollection of entry into political life was, having this job 4:00with a law firm of primarily delivering papers from the office, the Commonwealth building, which was 4th and Broadway, all the way down to the courthouse, which is there on Main Street, and -- excuse me, on Jefferson Street -- and did a lot of walking, and in the course of some of that walking I would pass the Democratic headquarters, which was a little bit over in the side -- basically 4th and Main Street. And one day I was walking past Democratic headquarters, which was the bottom floor, like the storefront, of a tenement there, and I walked in, and I asked the lady behind the counter, whose name was Kate Smith -- and I always, whenever I hear Kate Smith I think of the great singer who popularized --

KC: [Laughing] "God Bless America."

RLM: -- "God Bless America." She was the one who created it, I guess. But Kate Smith -- and I asked her this very sophomoric question -- understand, I was 34 5:00years old at the time. And I asked her the question, "How do you get into politics?" Well, Kate showed me this map with a lot of diverging and converging lines of different colors that designated wards for the Board of Aldermen, it designated state representative districts and State Senate districts and on and on. And she said, "Well, what you do is you get in touch with the leaders of those districts, and tell them who you are, and ask for them to support you, and if they support you then you'll become the party's candidate for this particular office." And she pointed, and she said, "It happens that you live" -- and this answers the second question, how come the State Senate -- "you live in the district that's now being vacated, because the long time State Senator Mike Duffy is retiring." I said, "Mike Duffy? Well, he's my friend." I played a lot of tennis over the years with Mike Duffy, and a wonderful, wonderful gentleman, 6:00lawyer. So she said, "You live in that 35th Senatorial District, and so these are the men" -- in those days men -- "who are the district chairmen, and these are the men you should write."

And so the only thing I did -- I did do what Kate had asked me to do. About the only thing I could say, because I had not been in politics before -- about the only thing I could say was that "I'm Ron Mazzoli, born in Louisville, went to St. X, went to Notre Dame," because that was... "And went to the University of Louisville Law School, and I think I've, you know, got some talents," et cetera. It was a pretty roundabout letter, to tell you the truth. [Laughs.]

So I sent that on to these gentlemen, and I'll never forget this: we were at the state fairgrounds. The candidate for governor, our Democratic candidate for governor that year was Henry Ward, the roads commissioner, a very talented man, but a very undramatic kind of guy, very self-effacing kind of man. But anyway, 7:00he was having a hot dogs get-together out at the state fairgrounds to help his candidacy along, maybe raise a couple of dollars, and so we went out there, and one of the -- and I never will forget this fellow, I won't name him now, but he came up and, with what I believe to be a smirk on his face -- I may be mischaracterizing it, but I thought it was -- said, "Well, you know what happened, don't you?" And I said, "No, what happened?" He said, "Well, they didn't endorse you. They didn't go with you."

So anyway, on the way out of the stadium, Helen and I were, as you would imagine, probably demoralized. But I remember Helen saying something to the general effect, "Well, I guess that's over, and so we just go back to what we were doing prior to this." I said, "Well" -- and I believe I used the words it was a free country, and if we want to pay our filing fee -- which I may have already paid. I might have already filed. But I said, "We can still run. Nobody can keep you from running. They may beat you, but they can't keep you from running."

So the next thing I can recall, Kevin, is that we would then gather a group of our friends -- and among them was Jack Harrison, Ken Kiely, John Kilroy... This was before Charlie Mattingly and Cecil and those good people, but Jack Harrison and Ken Keily from... And Ken was a piece of work. He came from Quincy. He was the first one to tell me that you don't say Quincy [with "s" sound], Massachusetts, but it's Quincy [with "z" sound], and I've never forgotten that little elocution lesson [laughs] from Ken. He was a natural born politician. I've already said that anybody who's Irish who's born in Massachusetts comes out of his mother with a streak of politics that cannot be eradicated, and Ken was that person. So anyway, we got these people down in our basement, and we've known one another from school, or Ken married into Jack Harrison's family, and Jack and Helen were longtime friends. So we talked some politics in the basement, and that's where it all began: at a card table, under an incandescent 9:00lamp in the ceiling.

And to this day in my offices, all the offices I ever had -- and I have it in my office at home now -- is a marble plaque that my brother Richard made to designate our origins and our start in politics. There's this Latin phrase "Sic transit gloria mundi," which, roughly translated, is "All the glories of the world will pass." And so Rich inscribed "Sic transit gloria mundi," and then he had an incandescent light bulb with the rays coming from it that show that it was on, and it reminded me all through my years that we began in the basement with a card table and a naked light bulb hanging there, and that's where it started.

So from that basement we crafted a campaign, and we crafted it in part from ingenuity, from skills that we might've picked up in other avenues, because not 10:00one of us had really been active in politics. We did it from imagination; we imagined this thing. And we had to be resourceful, because the party would give us no information. We couldn't get the precinct captains' names, we couldn't get the designation of the 35th District. So John Kilroy, who was always very imaginative in this thing, was able to somehow find, perhaps even purloin -- I haven't figured it out and I don't want to know -- but some kind of a map, which we proceeded to paste up on the wall in our kitchen. My dad was a tile man, and we had tile from the floor all the way up to the ceiling, beautiful tile work, still there, still beautiful. And we pasted that map up, and we had some general idea that, you know, it was the Highlands, it was Germantown, it was Crescent Hill, Lower St. Matthews. And so we just sort of sketched out what that might look like, and then we'd try to figure out friends that we would have who lived 11:00there who might be able to help us, because ours was a truly grassroots campaign, I mean truly ragtag campaign. And it was, again, a bunch of people -- didn't check affiliations, didn't check registration. Anybody that we knew that might be able to help us was invited to our basement on Ardmore Drive, 939, and that's where we did this.

So the long and short of it was we pulled together all these people, and I have a couple very interesting recollections about that, because this map on the kitchen wall was our start, and then we would build on it, and then Helen would call these friends and people, and "Would you be willing to do this, and stand in a poll? Would you be willing to knock on some doors? Would you be willing to hand out some material?"

The materials we had were all done by my brother Richard, who was quite an artist, but we had one letter which had a picture on it that was sent to the 12:00voters, and then we had a little card, like a business card, that had the vitals. In those days we had no contact information, you know, no www.RonMazzoliForCongress.com, none of that stuff. This was just a plain piece of paper. But it advertised what was going on, and also we used that -- in those days you could electioneer. You can't electioneer anymore, but we could in those days. So that's what we'd hand out at the polls as people walked in to vote.

But we were down in the basement one time, and we were packing bags. We had help from people like Bill Hoback and Irv Lambert, people with the letter carriers who understood how you lay out a route, because that's what they did professionally. So they would help us to say, "Well, if you got this street this is where you go,"" and so you don't dead end. You don't walk back empty-handed 13:00for more. So they would lay these things out. But we'd fill these grocery bags, paper bags in our basement, with whatever we were handing out [laughing]. And we had -- in this district was one little town. It's called Parkway Village. It's still there. It's a little incorporated city right smack in the middle of Louisville, just north of Audubon Park. And so we didn't really know how to packet, how many people lived there, how many homes were there. So John, who was just constantly involved in our campaign, somehow disappeared. We couldn't find where John was. So anyway, sometime later while we're still puzzling out how much to put in bags and filling the bags we were sure of, down the basement steps came John Kilroy. We could tell, you know, first his feet, then his legs, and then his knees, and then John Kilroy. And he said something like, "382." And 14:00we said, "What do you mean, 382?" He said, "Homes in Parkway Village." John had gone out that night with that flashlight -- and today he would've probably been stopped by the cops, he would've been turned in by the homeowners. But anyway, he went out with a flashlight and essentially counted the houses in Parkway Village, which gives you some idea of how, again, rudimentary our campaign was [laughing], but that's how we did it. We had the help of friends who knew how to pack things. We had the help of people like John, who was my friend forever, and my friend until he passed away. And I have a -- which I'll give to the Archives -- I wrote a reminiscence of John at one point, since he was probably the very first, the numero uno, of people who helped us in the campaign. So I have that, and I'll give that over.

KC: I did an interview recently with Charles Mattingly, who was your district director here at your Louisville office, and he told me that I should remind you that in his judgment, you probably wouldn't have had a political career if Mrs. Mazzoli hadn't been your initial campaign manager.

RLM: Oh, she was -- I shouldn't say was; Helen is amazing, and she was... I thought this was the box. I have here, for the purpose of the listeners, I have here a box of cards, which I thought -- it has "Mazzoli For Congress" on it -- I thought this was the fateful box of all the people that Helen put together for our campaign. It happens to be from my law firm days, and it may still be something the Archives would want, clients that I had where I charged $4 or $5 for a will. [Laughs.] Anyway, but Helen was the one who painstakingly, looking at this map every day -- she was a young mother at the time, the kids were little; this was -- Mike was born in '61 and Andrea in '63, so they were just little kids in 1967. And she would put these names down on these little 3x5 16:00cards and put them in a shoebox, and that's really what it was. And then she would be there every day, making phone calls to get people -- every night that we were down in our basement Helen would be there.

And Charlie is exactly right -- Charlie is my beloved friend, and he's exactly right: I would not have had a campaign, for a lot of reasons. Not only was Helen the brains and the enthusiastic spirit of the campaign, but, I mean, she was balancing an awful lot of things, too, and if she didn't feel like there was something in this that we could both do and have fun doing, and we could do in a way that would give us some fulfillment, then it wouldn't have happened. I can say that through my career. I wouldn't have run for the State Senate, I wouldn't have run for mayor, I wouldn't have run for Congress, I wouldn't have done the things in life -- I wouldn't have gone back to Harvard when I was 70 and living in a student dormitory with the Harvard kids were not Helen the remarkable person she is, and the way she can cope with things. So here she is, a young mother with young kids, and she somehow is coping in our basement with this campaign.

So in any event, it was really a helter skelter affair. I have a wonderful 17:00recollection about Helen, because on election day we fanned out all over this district as we knew it, 60 or 65 precincts or something. We didn't staff them all, but using some other young mother for maybe two hours, and we pieced -- some father who might have a little time, you know, two hours in the afternoon... We would basically have somebody electioneering pretty much the whole time. But anyway, it was Helen's fate to be assigned to the precinct on Stilz Avenue, which is right near the Ursuline motherhouse, near Sacred Heart Academy, near the Sacred Heart campus, which is now a series of schools, but... So that's where she stood up, and that's where the precinct captain for the Republicans was a fellow by the name of Charlie Eury, a wonderful man. We later became close friends. Anyway, Charlie was a Republican, and here Helen, bless 18:00her soul, was out there campaigning and working. She had called the Ursuline nuns, [laughs] and so at different times in the day a car would pop up and these little black-robed ladies would pop out, and they'd walk in and vote. We probably had 110% of the Ursuline vote, so... [Both laugh.] Charlie, about halfway through, Charlie Eury said, came up to tell Helen -- he said, "Why don't you tell these people who are coming in the polls that the candidate is your husband?" Up to that time Helen had been a little restrained about that, just, you know, "Vote for Ron Mazzoli." So from that point on, to the people that she didn't know -- the Ursulines knew that we were married -- but from that point on Helen told people, "Vote for Ron Mazzoli, he's my husband, we're married." Well, Charlie Eury was wonderful. He stepped aside and let Helen pretty much run that precinct, and we won it, obviously, hands down. And because this was a primary, 19:00running against the guy that had the endorsement, Dick Nash, another very fine man, who did pretty much what I would've done if I'd had the endorsement, which is to say "Let the party do it." And so he didn't do a lot of individual labor. We had no endorsement, so that's all we did was individual labor.

So anyway, Helen won that precinct, and that evening for our so-called headquarters -- because headquarters was a basement of our house -- what we did was allow, I was allowed to use the law office of Fred Goldberg and Jerry Lloyd, and the firm I had been affiliated with, to use their phone system. You know, they had probably six or seven phones, and so you'd dial in and the machine would find the available phone that wasn't being used, and so that's what we had. We had that phone number. We told all the people who were in the precincts, who were there for the last shift, to see if they couldn't hang around -- and these were the days, Kevin, of the old, clanky machine where you closed the curtain and then it'll open the curtain, and you put little markers down over 20:00these things -- very difficult to vote. And then at the end of the day they take the back cover off this big, clanky machine, and then somehow there had been some impression made using carbon paper probably to give you three or four different versions of this voting. Well anyway, so we asked the last person there if they could just stick around to see just what the precinct people were going to announce to be the final vote and call it down to our office. So that's where we were that night, and it was a, [laughing] it was a delightful experience. We had, obviously, apprehension, very big apprehensions, but it happened that we did win that race, and the people who called in were just as excited as we were that their hard work, which they had no idea was going to pay off, did pay off. So Helen's next recollection is she thinks that we, those of us who were down there at the campaign headquarters, went out to get something 21:00to eat, and they were probably White Castle hamburgers. I have an impression that we went -- because at that same time, and I need to talk about Wendell Ford, who's just been a marvelous friend and a very important political ally over the years. Wendell was on that ballot, too, and he was running for lieutenant governor. I have an impression, a recollection that --

KC: For folks who will check with this tape in the future, maybe you could identify Wendell Ford.

RLM: Oh, I'll identify him at length. Wendell was a state senator when I first met him, which was 1967, and he was running for lieutenant governor, and that was in the days... He's from Owensboro, and still very much alive -- very active in the campaign that just took place two days ago, very active for the 22:00Democratic candidates in that race. So he remains a very important political influence on Kentucky, but also a very important personal influence on me. But Wendell was running for lieutenant governor, and so we had an opportunity to do a lot of campaigning together during that election season.

I won't forget at all his running... The listeners may not remember Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, but they were pretty popular in the late '60s and early '70s, and Wendell had this music machine which he put on top of his automobile, and we'd go out to the plant gates, and he'd turn on Tijuana Brass at 4:00, 5:00 in the morning as these people came walking down, and he would hand out his cards, and he would shake hands and press the flesh and that kind of thing. So he was a big influence. He showed me a lot about how you need to put a lot of 23:00energy into the work you're doing. And that same one memorable moment, too, was when after we finished our leafleting, I guess you'd call it, at General Electric out there at Appliance Park, when they had 25,000 employees -- I mean, a big operation -- we then all of us adjourned to have breakfast, and we went to a place in Buechel, which is nearby, and it was one of these what then we would call a fast food outlet. And I can't remember whether it was Denny's or... Some one of those places. And so we -- cars pulled in, stopped. We piled out, found places to sit down, sat down. Wendell didn't do that. Wendell piled out of his car, went right into the restaurant, shook hands with all the people serving meals, went back in the kitchen, shook hands with all those people.

Henry Ward, who had been with us, as well -- as I mentioned before, very undramatic kind of guy. He was very competent, but he was pretty quiet and 24:00didn't seem to show a lot of energy. Henry, like most of us, went in and just sat down, waited to, somebody to bring us some food. Well, I saw the big difference between Wendell and Henry and how they campaigned and what they did. And I saw one further instance of that later on at a school when Henry basically just stayed put and let people come to him. Wendell, everybody in the room was fair game for Wendell. And so it didn't surprise me that night when Henry Ward lost and Wendell Ford won. And they were running -- in those days, Kevin, you ran separately; the lieutenant governor was a separate entity from the governor. Though they ran as a team -- and Henry Ward and Wendell ran as a team -- there were separate places on the ballot. And so Henry Ward lost to Governor Nunn, Louie Nunn the Republican, and Wendell won. I can't remember whom he ran against, but he won, so he became the lieutenant governor and the head of our party as the highest ranking Democrat on the elected ballot.

KC: Just for some clarification, so that's the actual election, but up to this point in terms of your campaign, we're talking about the primary between yourself and Mr. Nash.

RLM: Exactly right.

KC: Okay.

RLM: Exactly right. [Speaking simultaneously] --

KC: And in the end, you win that primary by about 1,000 votes, if my memory is correct?

RLM: That's about what it was, and -- like I say, I think we won it because of Helen. And Charlie's right: we won it because we could electioneer in those days. And I was toward the end of the ballot, if I recall correctly, but you could electioneer pretty close to the polls, and hand cards to people. And those are the things -- I said my brother Richard did all of that.

I have another recollection in the primary, which I was never -- I'm really pretty shy, to tell you the truth, and I still am, even though I'm in the field where you can't seemingly afford to be shy, but I actually have a little sometimes difficulty walking into a room. Well, I had to do some campaigning in Germantown, and on a Friday afternoon the guys would always come to the local 26:00pubs. And one of them was John Taphorn's place on Texas, Texas and Goss Avenue. And so I got a handful of these cards Rich had done, and I step out our kitchen door, and my stomach starts to rumble, and I go back in the house, and I just couldn't quite do it. So I wait for a while and I do it two or three times before I finally left the house, got in the car, and drove over to Taphorn's. When I got to Taphorn's I parked the car, I walked toward John's, and then sort of walked beyond it. I just couldn't quite get up the gumption to open the door and walk into the tavern. When I finally did do that -- and I walked up to the first guy that I saw -- I handed him this card and said, "I'm Ron Mazzoli. I'm running for the State Senate. I would appreciate your vote." So this guy took 27:00this card and he looked at it and he, you know, got it into focus, [laughing] and he said, "I'm damn glad that you got this union card here." Because my brother Richard, we always dealt with union printers, and it never occurred to me that that would ever be a factor. Well, this guy looked to see the union bug. If he hadn't seen the union bug then the ballgame was over. I mean, I might have still won, but I might not have, certainly would not have had his vote. So I never would forget that, you know, these little things, the plant gate appearances where you get on that...

So the, my father was, as I perhaps mentioned before -- we'll talk about that, too, when we get to the family -- my dad was an immigrant; he was born in Maniago, Italy, came to the United States as an 11-year-old boy in 1914, without speaking the language, and his father died soon after that. His father and dad 28:00came together, but his father died. They came here October the 14th, and my grandfather died December the 24th of 1914. So Dad was then, had to live with relatives who had preceded them coming here coming here to the US. But it was a tough life, and he didn't really get to school, and they pulled him out of school by the time he basically learned English to work the rest of his life. Well, he was a great craftsman, a wonderful worker in terrazzo tile and marble, and very proud of this country, very proud of America. A naturalized citizen. Very proud when his son Ron went to the University of Notre Dame. Very proud when his son was in the Army. That was part of serving your country. Very proud when I went to law school. That was a sort of a situation Dad had probably not envisioned. Well, he was also very proud when I ran for office. That was just like the maraschino cherry on top of the whipped cream. This was it.

So my dad, in his own basic fashion, if you've ever -- you have some pictures, 29:00you've seen pictures of my father, and you'll see more of them... My father did things just as it happened. You know, nothing particularly elegant about the way he did stuff. He did his tile work that way, but nothing else. He didn't dress elegantly, [laughing] he didn't... He didn't take care of the garden elegantly. But what he had was a sign that somehow he had hand-painted, a piece of wood that he mounted on his Ford Econoline truck, which he used for the business, of course. And he mounted that thing -- and I wish we had saved it. I know we had it for a while and it's no longer, but it's like that, "Ron Mazzoli for State Senate," something like that. And he would drive that truck, Econoline truck all over town. And of course, that was what he used for his business, obviously, but it was also his way of advertising his son, Ron.

And once we were having dinner -- because we lived side by side; I need to probably mention that. From 1959 when Helen married until '63, we lived on Eastern Parkway and Crittenden Drive, which is where we stayed because I was going to law school for our final year, and where we stayed until the kids were born and we ran out of room. And then we built our home on the empty lot which we had used as a playground for all these years. And so we were side by side, so often we'd go over to Mother's and Dad's to have dinner.

And once we were over there, and my dad was coming in from work, and he always would have concrete on him, and -- hard working guy, bless his soul -- and he said, "You know, Ron?" He said, "I think you're doing well." I said, "Why do you say that, Dad?" And he said something to the effect, "Well, the other day I was -- today, today," he said, "I was at a red light, and the guy next to me was 31:00waving like he," you know, like he didn't want me, like the last thing he wanted was Ron Mazzoli to be elected, because probably a mainstream Democrat and, you know, the party was endorsing the other guy. So anyway, he thought that I was probably going to do pretty well, because I must've incited the foe and, you know, gotten them excited.

But anyway, Dad did that, and my brother Richard did the advertising. My sister Patricia was active in those early campaigns, and her late husband, Paul Maloney, was very active. And we -- just was a truly family affair. Our kids, Mike and Andrea went out with Helen in our neighborhood -- you know, we wanted them to be safe, but -- in our neighborhood, and they'd knock on doors and hand out Daddy's card. And Don and June Eastridge, who were with us, along with John Kilroy, at the very start of this -- I put them down as like being here in creation -- and they were on the list of names that I've submitted that we may someday want to speak with... But it was White Castle hamburgers that gave us our sustenance [laughs]. And the day after the primary there was like a "kiss 32:00and make up session." They're having one, I think, Saturday for the Republican Party in Kentucky, which has been riven by this Tea --

KC: Here in 2010.

RLM: That's right, here in 2010. And the Republican Party has been riven in 2010 by the Tea Party thing, and they're having a kiss and make up session Saturday. Well, we had a kiss and make up session of our own after the primary election to try to get everybody to come together and, you know, make sure people would work with one another and this type of thing. And I remember vividly that the chance to meet Ned Breathitt, who was our governor, and that was just really amazing. I'd never met a governor in my life before, and so I sort of walked into this room at the Seelbach and kind of worked along the perimeter of the room 33:00[laughing] because I wasn't that comfortable. And then this fellow walked up to me that I recognized, but I didn't really know him, particularly, but he reminded me of somebody, and it was... He said, "Well, congratulations on your win." I said, "Oh, that, that..." He said, "I'm Ned Breathitt." "Oh, Governor Breathitt, wow!" You know, that was really a thrill. I mean, I've obviously in the meantime had a lot of opportunities to meet different people, but that was my very first time to meet somebody like a governor, somebody who was at the very top of the heap.

KC: Let me ask you about the primary. It seems like the -- an accurate characterization would be that it was full of energy and invention, not a bunch on political substance. I read someplace that at one point there may have been 34:00some sort of discussion or issue in terms, I mean, in terms of an issue of Citizens for Decent Literature.

RLM: That's right.

KC: Do you remember that?

RLM: Oh, I remember it very well. In fact, that's where John -- [both speaking at once]

KC: What was the controversy involving?

RLM: Well, that where John Kilroy, I first met John, because we were part of this group called Citizens -- CDL, Citizens for Decent Literature, trying our best to get taken off the pornography -- which by today's standards would be probably considered pretty tame stuff. But in those days it was such that we thought that was not good for the youth, not good for the community, not good for adults, for that matter. So there was a group called Citizens for Decent Literature, which, because, there are people who believe that anything ought to be publishable, that you should not have restraints on the freedom of speech, and this was considered by some to be a restraint on freedom of speech, they considered that to be a negative when it came to, you know, the campaign. But I don't know that that was such a huge issue. I think that primarily what we campaigned on, if we campaigned on any issue -- and we didn't campaign on an 35:00issue of "get rid of pornography." I mean, it was an issue that I may have addressed because people brought it up to me, but I mean, we just campaigned -- it was just time for, you know, something new --

KC: Energy and youth and... [both speaking simultaneously]

RLM: -- yeah, new and, new and different.

KC: Yeah. New approach.

RLM: You know, we were having fun. You would probably have more access, Kevin, than I to the actual documentation of that race and to what extent we actually did have issues. I think it was... I don't know. I have a letter in our basement, which I have under glass that I'll have to look at today to see if I can be reminded if there was any sort of an issue. I just think it was -- basically, like I told those people who turned me down for the endorsement, "My name is Ron Mazzoli. Because of my dad and mother's hard work, I've had a good education. I think I'm prepared to do work in the political field, and I just need your support." [Laughs.] And it was probably nothing too much more that. 36:00You'd think that I would've been more imaginative and carved out some kind of an environmental issue or a war and peace issue or something, but --

KC: It worked! [Laughs.]

RLM: It worked, it worked! It worked because, again -- I thought you said it very well -- imagination was a big part. Just like we imagined this district using this map -- and it was a sewer map. It was... The map that John Kilroy got for us was really a map of like, public works. It wasn't a precinct map at all. And so we just sort of had to imagine where the precincts were. We had to imagine how do people look at material, imagine what would be appealing and attractive to them, so it was interesting. It was a remarkable primary. Dick Nash, like I say, is my good friend today, but he did what I would've done, which is not to do a whole lot. He depended on the party to do the work that, 37:00you know, he could've done himself and we did ourselves. So I've said that the best thing that ever happened to me, almost, politically was not to have been endorsed, because had I been endorsed I would've done very little. I might've won, but from that point on I wouldn't have known how to campaign. By not having the endorsement it made us create a campaign from whole cloth, a green field operation, and from that point on we knew how to campaign. We knew what you had to do to get things done, how to get an organization in place, how to have something done by a certain due date. We knew, started to keep track of records and things like that. So I credit the fact that those good people turned me down for the endorsement as having done me a lifelong favor. From that point on, in all the races, I believe, Kevin, we always had some part of the campaign our own. We either had a separate headquarters from the party headquarters, or we 38:00had some phase of our campaign in the party headquarters but separate from it. But we never did ever let anybody run our campaigns, and that was all the way through to Congress as a result of that experience of 1967, so it was an interesting thing. I have a couple of... After we had -- I think that the primary -- well, the primary was over in May, of course, and then the general election, and unless you have another observation about the primary, I'd move a little bit to the general.

KC: No, I just want to say that the general election is November 7th in 1967, your opponent is Mr. Martin, and you squeak that out by 422 votes.

RLM: 420 -- I've won the [laugh] --

KC: Something on the order of 13,000 to 12,500 or thereabouts.

RLM: Is that right?

KC: So your thoughts on that.

RLM: Isn't that interesting? I didn't realize -- I thought it was more like 1,000. I'd won the primary by 1,000, but I won the general by only 400 votes. [Laughs.] Well, that's interesting. You know, then, of course, we'll talk later about my first election to Congress, which I won by 211 votes, [laughing] so I think I've been "Landslide Mazzoli" from the start! [Both laughing.] I didn't realize that that landslide appellation really fit in.

To get back to beloved Helen, I mean, she was so much a part of my life and so 39:00much a part of this political thing. In the springtime she stood at Stilz Avenue and she worked with Charlie Eury and got all the Ursuline nuns and so forth. In the autumn, she stood at St. Francis of Rome, which is on Payne Street, and it turned out that that November was a brutally cold -- November the 7th, and we can check the temperature records, but I think you'll find that November the 7th of 1967 was a very cold day, and Helen had the entire day. She was there the full day. And she was, by the time the end of the day came, so frozen that we had to put her under covers to basically thaw her out. [Laughs.] So anyway, we have that memory of the both those two, those two sessions in the primary -- or the one primary, the one general election -- where Helen was so intimately involved. One was -- they both turned out successfully. We won the precincts 40:00each time. Who could turn her down? I mean, nobody could turn her down, even today after these years. Nobody could turn her down there, because she -- by that time she had it down pretty pat. She was the candidate's wife, and everybody knew it, and we didn't keep it under wraps at any point.

Going to Frankfort was just an amazing experience, and I have some pictures which I'll put in the Archives of the very first day that Helen and Mike and Andrea walked onto that floor, and they were such an appealing -- we were all just such an appealing family, and they were just such beautiful kids, and with such a beautiful mother, that every photographer there wanted to take pictures. And so we were vivified in pictures, and we had pictures in the Courier the next day, and so it was a wonderful experience. The only other time I'd been to Frankfort, and the only other time in the Capitol, was when I took the bar exam. And we took the bar exam in the House of Representatives, not the senate chamber, which is smaller and a bit more ornate. But it was a big thrill. I 41:00mean, it remains a thrill, that I was able to have accomplished that.

And so I had a chance to meet some of the great people in Kentucky politics, to work with Wendell Ford. He was -- in those days the lieutenant governor was the president of the State Senate, so he actually presided over the State Senate day by day. Currently, the president of the senate is an elected position from within. President of the senate is a senator, in this case David Williams from Burkesville, but the... So I had a chance to work with Wendell Ford, who became governor and later became US Senator. Dee Huddleston was in that first senate. Dee was from Bowling, from Elizabethtown, and he became a US Senator from there. Carroll Hubbard was in that senate. Carroll and I -- Carroll a little bit later 42:00wound up in the House of Representatives. Julian Carroll was Speaker of the Kentucky House, and Julian Carroll became governor Kentucky. Richard Frymire was, remains my close friend -- he and Phyllis and Helen and I get together every summer. And Dick became -- he would've been governor, but he was in the military at the time, and because of the Korean War, I mean the Vietnam War, he went to serve and that interrupted his political career. But became Adjutant General of the state. Helen Garrett's husband Tom was in there. Helen herself wound up. And I went there to the State Senate with Georgia Davis Powers, who -- first black woman senator who, even today, if I'm not mistaken, today -- which is May the 20th of 2010 -- I read in the Courier-Journal that there's going to be a road named after Georgia, a part of the interstate system is going to be 43:00named after her for her many contributions. But I mentioned before, but we may mention it again, that one of the first votes that I took in the State Senate was a vote against reconstituting what amounted to a Kentucky version of the Un-American Activities Committee, which, of course, because of McCarthy and because of McClellan and some of those people in Washington, became an item of great interest, pro and con, but it was a very controversial vote. But Georgia and I were together on that vote, and we've been working over the years together, see her periodically. But she was in that Senate, and then in the House, two black members from the Louisville area, Mae Street Kidd and -- let me see, oh gosh -- Hughes McGill, Mae Street Kidd and Hughes McGill. And I think at 44:00that time they were the only two African American members of the Kentucky House. I believe that we could maybe get from the Kentucky Research Commission, the Legislative Research Commission, the exact data on that, but I think that's the case. They may have been not only the only two but maybe, since Reconstruction, they maybe have been the first black members of that, and again, Georgia -- you can check with LRC -- but she was certainly a pathfinder. So anyway --

KC: Let me ask you, before we get into, before we get in deeper into the question of your service in the Kentucky State Senate, just to finish off with the general election: your, your opponent in the Republican Party was a Charles Martin.

RLM: Yeah.

KC: Were there any issues in that campaign, too, or was that, again, pretty much imagination and energy and getting out there so the voter could see you? And do 45:00you have any thoughts on Mr. Martin?

RLM: If the records don't, I have no recollection. I hate to say it. I just don't think that issues were a part of the election at all in this state, either in the primary or the general election, and it just was a local race with people running against people. I knew Charlie Martin, a good man, and there would be no animosities at all, there would be no reason to be negative. I don't think either one of us advertised. [Laughs.] I think it was the same way, door to door stuff. I don't think either one of us had radio or television or anything, to tell you the truth. So I would leave it to you, Kevin; maybe you can dig up, as an archivist, find out something that might have, illustrate -- maybe newspaper clippings... I do have a lot of clippings that I have not brought to the Archives. My mother was a very assiduous clipper of things, and so we may have something in there about that Senate race that would designate that something 46:00came up, that there was an issue or two, but I have so little recollection of them that I just think it was just basically a personality kind of thing, an energy kind of thing, a who's going to put out the effort kind of thing, and --

KC: I wanted to ask you -- you had mentioned about the possibility, and I presume it happened, of the establishment in the State of Kentucky of what amounted to a state version of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and I wanted to know if that was a popular... Was that a concern just for the State House, or was that a popular issue amongst the general population for the state of Kentucky?

RLM: Well, the fact that it had -- I don't even know who introduced it, because it was a bill, so it may very well be, again, the Legislative Research Commission could trail that a bit. But I think it reflected -- I mean, that was, you know, 1967. That wasn't long after the heyday of McCarthy. McCarthy was in 47:00the '50s and '60s, so, I mean, part of that was residue left over from those efforts. Part of it might have been because it was the Vietnam War and, you know, that raised issues of loyalties and students who marched and protested and didn't feel like the war was a legitimate war and things like that, so... That was in the early phase of the war. The war really heated up in my congressional race. But it could've been that that was the reason why somebody would introduce that type of a bill, but I really -- I don't remember the debate. Whatever debates, I'm sure, just like in Washington, the debates are a matter of record in Frankfort, so there may be something that might come out about that.

Let me proceed just a little bit, because I know time is of the essence here, [laughs] but a couple of things that might be of some interest. Once I was 48:00elected State Senator, almost every Saturday I would set up a card table in the Mid-City Mall or someplace and just open, open telephone. People could walk up, sit down, tell me what they wanted, not wanted, what we were doing, not doing. So that was my first, what -- I always had town hall meetings afterwards, but that was the first experience with what amounts to town hall type meetings were those I had with my trusty -- probably the same cardboard table that we had in the basement on Ardmore Drive, [laughs] a couple of card table seats and we'd have at it.

Also, I remember in the primary were -- and this was sort of expected. One of my dearest friends in political life, he became one of my dearest friends, was Jeff McIntyre, and Jeff was active in the Democratic clubs. An older gentleman, and 49:00this happened to be in the All Wool & A Yard Wide Democratic Club in Germantown. I remember being there for something, and Jeff pulled me aside and he said something to the effect -- he said, "Why don't you just, you know, sort of cool it, kid? You know, get out of this race. Don't upset the applecart, don't spill the milk, and then we'll run you next time." And I guess I must've been just either adventurous or crazy or impetuous or something... I was respectful, because Jeff, as I said, became a close friend, but -- I was respectful to Jeff, but I said, "No, I think we've already done this and done that, so I'll see it through." So anyway, that was one of the first inklings I had that I might've also been doing pretty well, that some of the party elders had figured that maybe I should get out, because --

KC: [Speaking simultaneously] Somebody was concerned.

RLM: -- otherwise, that I might beat their candidate is what it amounted to.

KC: Let me ask you a question. That's a fascinating name for a local political club, "All Wool & A Yard Wide." Got any clue about where it comes from?

RLM: Yes. As a matter of fact -- and if you check the provenance of that -- you could probably Google it, but my understanding was that was a verification that people gave to show the authenticity of something. "It's all wool and a yard wide." It's not all wool and 34 inches wide, and it's not partly wool and partly something else and 33 inches wide. It is all wool and a yard wide, which means you're authentic, you're real.

KC: Complete and genuine.

RLM: You're complete and genuine. You're a true Democrat.

KC: That's fascinating.

RLM: All Wool & A Yard Wide.

KC: That's great.

RLM: We had all kind - we had Mose Green Democratic Club -- and, of course, Alben Barkley was one of them, and --

KC: I don't know Mose Green. Do you know him?

RLM: Mose Green was a local guy. He was one of these local political heroes. There was a triumvirate here of three people who pretty much ran the Democratic Party, and they were just about moving out when I moved in, which is another 51:00fortuitous element here, because if, you know, hadn't had Mike Duffy retiring there wouldn't be an open seat, which is an easier one to win than if I were trying to run against somebody. I would never have run against Mike to begin with because he was too much of a friend, but... The three, the triumvirate were Johnny Crimmins, McKay Reed, and -- oh my gosh -- the lady -- and Lennie McLaughlin. It was McKay Reed, Johnny Crimmins, and Lennie McLaughlin, and they were the -- you know, we called them the blessed trinity of Democratic politics, and what they said went. And down at Democratic headquarters their pictures were emblazoned and everything. But as I say, they were sort of moving out to other pursuits or leaving the area, and that opened it up to those of us who were sort 52:00of moving in, which allowed me to win. You know, I wouldn't have won if those guys were still in their heyday. It just wouldn't have happened.

When I was in the State Senate I found that I seemed to have some pretty good talent, both in the first year, the 1968 session, and the 1970 session, the two sessions I served in. I was named an outstanding senator, in one case the outstanding freshman senator, and then even better than that, later, the second one was the outstanding senator from the public's point of view, from public service. So I have those plaques at home that I'll, of course, give to the Archives. But they're very important because, like I said, I walked in as a kid from Jefferson County, which -- in those days, to some extent today, Jefferson County is not looked at too fondly by the outer counties. It's less so today, 53:00but to be given an award by my colleagues -- these were awards that came from the press, but by reason of information from the colleagues.

And then I'll never forget -- first couple three or four days I was in the State Senate I was sitting at my desk, which was all you had. You had no offices in those days. They now have offices and secretaries and special buildings and things, but in those days the only thing you had was your State Senate desk on the floor of the Senate. And there was a typing pool that might get some of your letters done, but I typically did my own. But I was sitting there one night, first week maybe, and -- by myself -- and a reporter, Livingston Taylor from the Courier-Journal walked across, and he said, "What are you doing here?" And I said, "Well, I'm writing letters, I'm reading bills, doing something." He said, 54:00"No," he said, "Why aren't you in Lexington for the ball game?" I said, "Well..." And it turned out that there had been a bus set up from University of Kentucky to take the legislators to Lexington for a UK basketball game -- and of course you know, you've been in Kentucky long enough, Kevin, to know that there's a -- it's like a rite of passage, it's like a religious ritual to go to see a UK basketball game. Well, I didn't want to make a big deal of it, I didn't want to be a hairshirt, but I said I just really didn't feel comfortable doing that because, you know, they're up here trying to get money for their activities, along with the other universities, and so I just, just wanted to have a little bit of distance from that. Well, you know, Livingston wrote this story, front page story the next day, and I'm mortified because I didn't want to point fingers at my colleagues, and some of them thought that I had. I didn't 55:00want to get myself into a jam, because lord knows I was just pleased and honored to be there in the State Senate, and I didn't want my tenure to be an awkward tenure with people who didn't really like me or something. So in any event, it eventually blew over. Wendell helped a bit. I went to talk to him about it, and I guess he had some advice on what to do and how to do it. But that was one thing -- and to this day it has been -- what is 1968 to 2008 would be 40 years, 42 -- is that right? Or 52. Forty --

KC: 40.

RLM: -- 42, whatever it is, 40 years, four decades later, there are still people who remember that. There are still people who will tell me, "I remember that UK thing, and you were right." [Laughs.] You know, so... Anyway, it's one of those peculiar, totally unexpected and totally unplanned events in life, in the life of a politician, that'll make or break him or her, and in this case here it was 56:00something that people still remember and have never left.

Then I guess my final thought for the moment would be to talk about my father who, as I mentioned earlier, came to this country as an immigrant and was a naturalized citizen, never got any education to speak of -- very intelligent man, but not well educated. And all of this thing about his son being elected a State Senator was just overwhelming. So when my dad was ill -- my dad died just a very few months -- he died April the 1st of 1968, and that was when the session was still underway, I believe, or barely over. So it was in the year, it was within weeks of his death -- we didn't know it, but -- Dad came to Frankfort to see a session. And the way the State Senate chamber's arranged, there's a 57:00gallery above it, and so the gallery casts a shadow down below, and so the people sitting along the perimeter of the State Senate are in sort of a shadow. So anyway, I had my desk, and of course there's a big skylight over the chamber itself, and so well-lighted, but there's a shadow in the side. And I have this article, and I'll bring it to you -- it's going to be in the Archives -- I've made several copies of it, different times -- I introduced my father, and I said something very, very simple. I said, "My father" -- I introduced him as an immigrant to the country and a hard worker, and who, along with my mother, I guess I said something to the effect, really their sacrifice has allowed me to be... "I'd like to introduce to my colleagues my father, Romano Mazzoli." And with that, Dad sort of walked out. I, you know, motioned to him to come out from his chair in the, below the gallery, and he walked out from shadow to sunlight, 58:00and it was really amazing. It was just something I'll never forget. And my colleagues stood up, gave my father a standing round of applause. And that had to be one of the great moments of his entire life -- not just his life is this, but his entire life was that moment when the State Senate, men who came here eons ago, whose lineage goes back to Virginia, people who were patricians, landowners, and that he would be given this type of a standing ovation was really something, so...

KC: Must have been very thrilling for you, too.

RLM: For me, too. I was in tears at the time. I'm almost in tears now. John Murphy, who was writing -- it did not get carried by the Courier-Journal but it was carried by the Northern Kentucky paper -- John Murphy wrote about that. My 59:00father -- I think the headline, believe it or -- "My Father Romano Mazzoli" is I think the headline. And in it he talks about what I said about my father, and next time we're together I'll bring a copy of that in, because it illustrates how proud all of us were about this opportunity that I had, about how I realized from the very start that it was not mine, it was Helen's, it was the people who worked hard, it was my father and my mother, the people who had sacrificed to give me a chance for an education, because without that nothing would've happened, so...

The State Senate was a remarkable first experience for me, and it was the one that solidified in my head, and my heart as well, that this would be a way that I could use my talents. I could use them in the law -- and I did for a while prior to my election to the State Senate -- and for a little bit after that, for a couple years, a little bit of a desultory practice, but nothing much. But this 60:00was what allowed me to believe that I could work with people from Harlan County, I could work with people from Livingston County, I could work with people that had come to Kentucky 200 years ago, I could work with people that had come just the other day -- 'cause we had a fellow from Louisville who was there, Richard Chin, C-H-I-N, a Chinese American. I could work with people who were from states and counties I'd never been in, and still haven't been in, and have some kind of common ground, have some sort of something we could agree upon. It was just a startling feeling, a startling feeling.

And though that then when -- and we'll talk about these, I guess, at other sessions, but talk about my movement from that into a losing race, but Kevin, it was the -- except for the Senate race -- I really learned about how to campaign and this sort of thing. Except for that, I believe honestly that the mayor's 61:00race, which I lost in the primary to the eventual mayor, a remarkable man, Frank Burke, and the then-president of the Board of Aldermen, Jim Thornberry -- but that was a race really that taught me about my city, because that was a citywide race where the Senate is a, you know, compact district. So I had to go all over the city. I had to debate a lot with these men. These were very intelligent -- both lawyers, both well briefed on the issues. And I had to stand up in different fora and be able to speak, I hope somewhat persuasively, about what I wanted to do, what the issues were, what I'd like to see for my city. And so it was a learning experience.

KC: Before we leave your -- just to make a note before we leave the campaign aspect of the Kentucky State Senate, we'll be doing a future tape on your work, generally speaking, in the Senate and -- in the Kentucky State Senate -- and 62:00what committees you were on and issues of interest at that time, at the time that we do your, when we cover your work in Congress.

RLM: Okay.

KC: So I wanted to ask you -- so at the time you're a Kentucky State Senator, and you decide you'll take a run for the mayor of Louisville in '68. Was there -- did you have any conflict about whether or not you had obligations to finish your State Senate term, or what persuaded you to do, to take a shot at the mayor's race in Louisville? RLM: I wish I could help you on that. I really don't know. I asked Helen last night -- you know, today's May the 20th of 2010. May the 19th I asked Helen, "What prompted me to do that? I mean, was I nuts, or was I just so full of ambition about this thing that I decided to run?" And even Helen had really no clear idea. I think that we -- I really believe I was 63:00prompted into it. I mean, I don't think I would've done this except I was prompted. And I have a recollection of a conversation I had with someone in Frankfort who is from Louisville, but I had a conversation in Frankfort, of taking a look at this race -- you know, "We need somebody because Republicans have had it, and we need a Democrat, and, you know, you won this primary, you've done a good job down here, you're making some movement here for the party, and you're the right age." You know, I was 36, 37, I guess, because I got to Congress when I was 38. So you know... "And you seem to have the attributes. Why don't you think about running for mayor? We need a good candidate for mayor." Well, I can't remember the actual sequence -- if Frank Burke had announced for mayor I would never have announced for mayor, because I knew him too well, I admired him too much. So again, once again, maybe the Courier-Journal's archives or, the morgue will show the sequence of who announced when, but I would be very surprised if I really announced for that with Frank Burke in the picture. It may have been that he, as you would imagine, he -- because he was a former member of 64:00Congress, he'd served two terms in Washington with LBJ, and an esteemed lawyer and an esteemed human being -- he would be the person many, many people would want, and not possibly, you know, sort of an upstart like me who ran against the party to begin with. And so I wish I could be more clear on that, and maybe some combination of records or people that you would speak with, you know, maybe Don and June Eastridge. I wish John Kilroy were here because he's not, and Charlie didn't come in until after that race but he may have seen something, he may have heard people talk about the mayor's race.

KC: Charlie is Charlie Mattingly, of course.

RLM: Excuse me, Charlie Mattingly, thank you, yes. It could be if you have any further interviews, discussions with Charlie Mattingly, you may ask him to put a little bit of thought to any recollections he has of why Ron got into the 65:00mayor's race at all, and was he an insurgent against somebody like a Frank Burke who already had announced and was deemed to be the proper candidate from the party's standpoint. Did I try to throw more, you know, roll more booby, I mean roll more hand grenades under the tent, or was this, I announced first and other people came in? But Charlie could have a recollection based on what he's heard from other people -- maybe not on a personal recollection, but what he's heard. And it could be that looking at the newspapers -- this would be an interesting experience -- I don't know whether or not there, in the Archives you have a computer that could get into the Courier-Journal's newspapers, you know... Those were all microfiched anyway, so it may be that taking a look at 1968 at the primary, would've been May of 1968, and so, you know, maybe the spring of '68 or 66:00the late winter of '67 might give some indication -- maybe there's such a thing as Googling. I don't know whether you can Google microfiche and say, "Show me the newspapers that have Mazzoli..."

KC: Well, they have a full collection of that here, as you say --

RLM: Do they?

KC: -- on microfilm, and they have card catalogues, so I can look up your name and find out what was written, at least in the local newspapers --

RLM: Good.

KC: -- up to I don't know when it covers, maybe 1980 or thereabouts.

RLM: Well, let me make a plea. Maybe, if you decide to do anything like that, maybe I could be here. It would be delightful for me to read that stuff and fill in these terrible gaps in my memory. I mean, I can remember that Michelangelo was born 1475, died 1564, but I can't remember what I did [laughs] when I got started, you know. It's weird. I got a weird memory.

KC: [Laughs.] Sure. So we're looking at the mayoral primary in 1968, and at the 67:00time in the primary there is yourself, there's a Mr. Thornberry, and there's, of course, Frank Burke, who's the eventual winner in the general election.

RLM: That's right.

KC: Mr. Thornberry, any thoughts about him?

RLM: Good man, good lawyer. Wasn't a very colorful man, but he was a president of the Board of Aldermen, so he was a person of stature in Democratic politics, and a very intelligent man. And he and Frank both were really intelligent people, and I think I learned by being around smart people. I mean, when I had to stand on my feet, I wasn't going against some dingbats. I mean, these were really accomplished people who knew how to use the English language with precision, and I had to learn how to do it myself. So I think it was a great training ground for me on that.

KC: I have some notes that say at that time in the primary you supported a constitutional amendment calling for annual sessions of the state legislature, 68:00and also there were some issues about crime, and was there a shopping center in Southwick or --

RLM: Yeah. It's --

KC: -- shopping center parole, or...?

RLM: Yeah. I'm probably going to have to be reminded of that, as well, but that was in a part of town we used to call the West End. Now it's called Western Louisville, but it was the place where most of the African Americans lived and where there were the terrible evidences of poverty and lack of education, lack of opportunity. So that would be where you would possibly have this thing on crime and maybe how to try to address that issue, but... [End of Interview]