Interview with Romano (Ron) L. Mazzoli, May 21, 2010

Kevin Collins: Today is Friday, May 21st, 2010. This is Kevin Collins, and today's interview is with Romano Mazzoli, former Congressman for twelve 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.

Romano L. Mazzoli: Good morning, Kevin. How are you doing?

KC: Very good. And yourself?

RLM: I'm doing well, thank you, doing well.

KC: Good. Today's interview is a continuation of our conversation yesterday on political campaigns, and yesterday we covered your campaign for the State Senate. And I wanted to ask you, before we continue, is there anything relative to the campaign on the State Senate that we didn't cover yesterday that you'd like to comment on this morning?

RLM: I think I'd like to add one comment, which would not only apply to the 1:00senate race, but to the congressional race as well as the mayor's race -- in effect, every race that I've run -- and that is that I benefited greatly in all the campaigns by the wonderful reputation that my mother and father had crafted over the years. Before they went into business for themselves, which was 1941 -- but before that as well. As I mentioned before, Dad was an excellent athlete, and Mother was a wonderful mother and had a good circle of friends. So, when it came to pass that I ran for the State Senate, and then later for mayor, in a race that I didn't win but I learned much from, and then finally for Congress, when I did win, I had certainly a great advantage over a person who was not as well-known as perhaps my parents were. And being able to parlay their reputation into some category, some credential for me, to warrant a person voting for me. I like to think that I had on my own part talents and abilities and had shown experience and had, on my own part, warranted these votes, but I just don't want 2:00to minimize how important it was in those early days, when I was not well-known -- as well-known as obviously I am now and was in my career. And when we didn't really have a whole bunch of issues. We talked yesterday and I drew a blank on what type of issue was in the senate race, and I'm not even sure how many issues were important in the mayor's race. There were important issues in the congressional race, but I say, how it is that I was elected at all? Well, it was a lot of things, a lot of hard work, a pretty extensive group of friends who were willing also to work. But I just don't want to minimize the importance of the reputation that I carried into these races via my mother and father.

So, then the mayor's race, and I think we --

KC: OK, we wanted to turn -- right, we want to turn to your campaign for the mayor's race. [Mazzoli laughs.] And I think yesterday we discussed the business of your interest in the mayor's race by virtue of the fact that people in -- in the State Legislature had approached you and spoken to you about the possibility of running for mayor in the city.

RLM: They did, because it was based on the fact that the two terms I served in the State Senate were really quite productive terms for the Senate, and for the Commonwealth, and also for me, as one member of that body. And I guess, like anything else in life, the amount of attention the press gave me, and in those days, television was on the senate floor and it was not in years before, probably. So, it really made me well-known throughout the community, and it 4:00probably caught the eye of some of the folks who studied politics carefully and who felt themselves to be pathfinders in locating new talent and promoting them to run for the various upcoming offices. So, I think it was that, really, that planted the seed. And again, I really loved what I was doing and I really felt that the senate proved out the fact that the talents I had matched the abilities that a public servant needs and should have, and therefore, I found these pieces fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle. And the next opening to be filled and -- within arm's reach -- was a mayor's race. We said yesterday that we weren't sure -- I believe it was yesterday -- we weren't sure exactly when I got into the race, and I'm still not sure exactly the timetable, the sequence of events. It may be that looking at the newspaper archives will let us know that. But last night, Helen and I talked at length about this, and we both agreed -- because of my great admiration for Frank Burke and my equally high admiration for Jim 5:00Thornberry -- that I would not have just thrown myself into the race if these gentlemen had somehow expressed a serious interest in running, or had themselves filed for office. It would just not have been what I wanted to do. I knew Frank Burke for so long, I had contact with him in the law practice, he helped in one of my very first "big" legal cases. Frank was my mentor. So, I think it's pretty clear -- though we'll have to see the evidence -- that it certainly would be highly unlikely for me to have thrown myself into a race for the Democratic 6:00nomination for mayor had Frank expressed serious interest in it.

But... So, here I am as a State Senator, and via different stimuli, I guess, [laughs] decided to run for mayor and had these two wonderful men who were my opponents. And I mentioned yesterday just how -- or in an earlier interview -- just how intelligent they were, how well-briefed they were on city issues, and I probably was not. But I had to function in the setting in which I was with these very intelligent people, speaking very, very carefully and insightfully about these city issues. And so, I not only had to move myself up to their level, but I had to learn and study, and I did. So, I found that this mayor's race was extremely helpful for me, in functioning in the public setting and answering questions -- we had a series of debates all over the city. We went into every 7:00kind of venue that you could imagine, from basements of churches to these really fancy halls with chandeliers, and somehow, Ron Mazzoli had to stand on his feet and into the microphone, describe something about the city that would encourage somebody to vote for me. So, I found it a very important learning experience, and having these two fellows as my opponents -- friendly opponents, we were a very, very, devotedly clean and upright campaign, without any negatives -- was really quite a learning experience.

I may not have mentioned in the earlier interviews, but one other thing that prepared me for public service was the fact that I had taught for two or three years at Bellarmine, and I think I may have mentioned, had to put a class plan together, and... So, that experience of being on my feet, along with the experience in debating, during the mayor's race, were very important to me.

In my showing, I didn't -- you would have the data as to where I wound up in that three-man field, but it was a creditable showing. Everybody felt that we had done -- given the fact that I was running city-wide for the first time -- Frank had been a member of Congress for two terms, so he had the experience of running city-wide, and Jim Thornberry was a member of the City Board of Aldermen. And I believe in those days, I think that you ran from your district for the nomination, but you ran across the city for your general election. So, I believe I'm correct in saying that both of them had run city-wide campaigns and I had not. So, given those, the esteem in which those two men were held, and then the fact that they had that experience, I think our race must have indicated to people that we were legitimate candidates.

But to back up just a little, our chairman in that race, in the mayor's race, was Ken Keily, who was -- Kendall Keily -- K-E-I-L-Y -- from Quincy, and I've mentioned before that he taught me how to pronounce Quincy, Massachusetts, not Quincy. Anyway, Ken was really quite a talented young guy, and he was our campaign chairman and did a wonderful job of getting all the parts pulled together. We actually started the mayor's race in the same place we started the senate race, which was from our basement. We didn't stay in the basement entirely for the mayor's race -- we moved to a headquarters in the downtown hotel, but we were in the basement for quite a bit of that. [Laughs.]

One of the people who came to our side -- and because he's no longer with us, I wish he were, he would be one I'd ask to have interviewed -- but his name was George Clark Martin. And George was a local builder and developer, and a person 10:00who always stood for -- even before there was such a thing as green architecture and green building and environmentally-conscious development, George stood for that. And once again, he must have seen something because I did not know him, and I can't remember that Dad ever did any tile work for George, but he might have. But somehow, he came to our side and he was very helpful from the financial side. We put up billboards, first time we had ever done anything that extensive. But several of these billboards alongside streets were purchased, and because of George, his ability to provide some money -- we didn't have money, basically. But he did that, and we had -- so, we had some public exposure via these posters. And I have a picture at home that was taken of one of the posters, so that'll be in the Archives, so we'll actually see exactly what it looked like.

Another one who helped us quite a bit -- I might say parenthetically that George remained our dear friend all the way through future elections, and he did pass away as a young man, and taken from the community was not only a good builder/developer, an excellent person. But another fellow who came to our side is Bill Boughey, B-O-U-G-H-E-Y, who had an advertising agency. And -- And how he found us or how we found him, I cannot remember, Kevin, but he was the one who first got us in -- he was the one who did these billboard ads, I'm sure, designed them and that sort of thing. So, it was Bill Boughey. I saw him the other day at -- unfortunately, it was in a funeral home, a member of his family had passed away. But Bill himself is with us, as is his wife, both of whom were active in our campaign. It was Bill Boughey's idea that we try to do some little glitzy things with -- if you remember these straw boater hats that you have, they had the plastic equivalent of the old, woven straw boater, and we put a red, white, and blue hatband on it, [laughs] and we gave those out. And sashes 12:00for the girls and women because we had car washes and stuff like that, and they would wear these boater hats, and they'd put the sashes on. And we have a beautiful picture of our little, then little daughter Andrea, who's now in her forties and a mom of two teenagers, but with her and her next-door neighbor, [Kathy Manford?], wearing these sashes and the boaters and -- at some kind of a rally that we had. But it was really an interesting race, in the sense that we started out with some understanding of politics.

At the State Senate, we fashioned that campaign as a green field operation, so we transferred some of those knowledges into the mayor's race. But of course, it was much bigger. And we had to look at a way and get further -- to further found our campaign, and that brought us into -- along with the billboard advertising, we did some radio advertising, and we did some jingles. And Harry Watson, who's very much still with us -- he got a big family of his own -- but Harry was then 13:00in the seminary. But that was a time after Vatican II, where the seminarians were sort of encouraged to get out and about a little bit, not just to live a totally cloistered life. So, some of the seminarians over at the Passionist Seminary on Newburg Road, not far from where we both live, were permitted to get active. And so, Harry, who happens to be -- continues to be a very talented musician, composed a campaign song for us, and it was used in the radio ads. And I believe we have a copy of it here, and if we don't, I have, I believe, in boxes of tapes and film at home that it'll be in. But that was a one, and we used that in the mayor's race, and used it also, with a change of lyrics, in the congressional race. So, Harry did double duty on that. But one of the lines in there, which we put into our posters because we did -- by the time we got to the mayor's race, we had pretty good-sized posters.

The senate race was a pretty narrow thing, just a small picture and a couple of cards. But in the mayor's race, we got into some interesting things that were expansions of this, of the advertising part of it. And we had the coffees, I don't know if that had come up before, but as a -- I was still a State Senator, so I mean, I was riding the wave, you might say, as I was in this mayor's race, but still being a state senator. And I believe in one of the things, it's "Senator Ron Mazzoli for Mayor," and I may have done the same thing, "Senator 15:00Ron Mazzoli for Congress" because that was, again, an identifying feature of what I was doing. But we had -- courtesy of beloved Helen who, in the same way, did them in the senate race, would go from -- well, not from house to house, but by invitation, with ladies that we knew, families we knew, we would have coffees. And Helen would drive -- we had an old, beat-up station wagon I bought for fifty bucks, and the thing drove beautifully for a long time, [laughs] till we sold it. But anyway, she would load the back of the station wagon with pastries that we would have bought, and then drove to the place where the coffee was gonna be, and then the lady of the house would make the coffee, and then I'd show up, coming in from the law office or wherever, and we'd do these. And these -- these coffee calls became so engrained in the people that when we had, in one summer -- I think it was the summer of probably '68 or the summer of 1970, probably the summer of '68 -- we had a picnic over in Swiss Park, which isn't -- which is right near Preston Street and Eastern Parkway. And it was almost like the old days, it was just a neighborhood park. Because they called it Swiss Park 16:00because that's where the Swiss-Germans were, the Germans and the Swiss background. And so, anyway, it was an open area with different booths, with sometimes you would auction things off, sometimes they'd have a wheel. But you'd always have a lot of fun over there in the summertime. And we did that, and my brother, Richard, put together two things. One, the coffee caucus, we called it a coffee caucus, a little brown badge, you know, à la the brown of a cup of coffee. And it would say "Ron Mazzoli" -- I have copies of them at home and I'll show you, but... It'll have copies -- we would have copies of these to give out to people that they were members of the Mazzoli Coffee Caucus -- they were there 17:00at the creation, so to speak. And then, Rich put together a certificate, which we had printed -- he was working with a printing company along the line, and also with a gold seal on it. And that gold seal, to make it look more official, was called the "Grand Army of the 35th District," and the 35th District, of course, being the senate district. And so, in there he would -- with calligraphy -- would put in the name of the individual who was being made a part of the Grand Army of the 35th District.

KC: Now, the Grand Army of the 35th District is relative to the mayoral campaign? Or did you -- [both speaking at the same time]

RLM: To the senate campaign; it flowed over into the mayor's race. I think that that -- I believe that that summer picnic we had, which would have been a senate activity, was really not long before we decided -- or had decided for us -- that we were going to run for mayor. Because we started running for mayor in late 18:00'68, and then the primary was in the spring of '69. But we again, to continue -- because I continue to have these little town hall meetings in the shopping centers. I mentioned before having a coffee table and -- I mean, a card table, and two card table chairs, and I'd just set up shop in a mall. Incidentally, I never asked permission, but [laughs] I probably should have. Today, I'd probably be shooed right out of there for politicking. But in those days, they didn't ask all those questions. But in any event, that's how we sort of expanded our advertising, by going to Harry with his jingle, Bill Boughey with the panel 19:00advertising, George Clark Martin's help provided that, our coffee calls, the Swiss Park picnic. So, little by little, we were sort of expanding our horizons a bit, and just how we were going to get to the... [Recording paused]

KC: Yes, we're continuing now after about a minute's pause.

RLM: I thank you. I was trying to collect my thoughts and get the sequence, and without jumbling because these races -- all three of these races -- occurred within the space of about two-and-a-half years. And so, what we did in one flowed over into the other and affected the other. But on the other hand, we want to try to keep these discrete and separate. One thing I would, should mention and failed to, and that is I have high admiration for Frank Burke and Jim Thornberry, and that admiration was reflected during our campaign. It happened all three of us -- Frank Burke, Jim Thornberry, Ron Mazzoli -- all three of us had graduated from Saint Xavier high school, so -- and you can imagine how proud -- in those days, there were a lot more brothers. Now, it's pretty much like most Catholic schools, lay teachers. But in those days, they 20:00had an awful lot of the brothers, and I'm sure that that was a source of pride.

KC: Were you students at roughly the same time, or you had attended at different times?

RLM: We attended differently. Frank was -- I think of the three of us, Frank was the oldest, then Jim, and then myself. I was in my thirties then. I would say probably Frank wasn't much more than ten years older. He probably was in his maybe late-forties or something like that, and Jim probably pretty close to that. So, we were not contemporaries in that setting, but once again, when you're in your middle-thirties, I was elected to Congress at 38, so I guess it was 37 in the mayor's race, and somebody is 47 or 45, there's not a whole lot of difference. It was -- we were pretty well contemporaries. And I mentioned about having -- expanding our campaign reach via advertising, and Harry Watson, who did our wonderful jingle, which was very captivating, very, very compelling, music and lyrics. Snd we used that "face the challenge," and it's woven 21:00throughout the campaign ditty and it's also on our posters. "Facing the challenge" -- "Ron Mazzoli faces the challenge." And we felt that the cities -- and understand, 1968, that was the riots, that's Washington was ablaze, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, I mean, these were pretty tumultuous times. Now the --

KC: Vietnam War. [Both speaking at the same time.]

RLM: -- Vietnam War came even a little bit later, the -- the political part of it, but it was very much in evidence at that time, the Vietnam War. So, these were not placid times at all, and every city, every major city, every city of medium size like Louisville, were faced with real challenges. And so, we adopted the theme that there were challenges and that we would face those challenges. And those challenges were manifold, they were social challenges, economic challenges, political challenges, racial and ethnic challenges. I mean, there 22:00was just a raft of them. But we did adopt that theme of "face the challenge," and I think that that helped us first of all organize our campaign, but secondly, I think it became a theme that people identified with. They felt this was an interesting way to establish who you were, what you were, and what you felt was going to be the situation in the city, and what you might want to try to do if you were to have been elected mayor. So, I think we may have just stumbled on it. It may have been the product of Harry Watson himself because he's a real serious thinker, and as I mentioned, was in the seminary at the time when these young people were doing deep reading on a lot of subjects, peace and war issues, so... But one way or the other, we did have an interesting theme.

I've mentioned before how key this race was to me. Obviously, I would not have been in the mayor's race had I not won the senate campaign, so you have to go back to square one to say, square one is occupied by the senate campaign. On the other hand, you can't go far beyond the mayor's race for having taught me those lessons. I've said it already too many times, about the debates, about having to learn about issues and about having to traverse the city and feel comfortable in all parts of the city -- places I'd never been before. And so, it was an awful 23:00lot -- I was learning about the technique of campaigning, I was learning a lot about the problems of a major city. But most of all, at the end of the day, Ron Mazzoli had learned an awful lot about himself, and what made him tick, what made him function, what his issues were, what his thoughts and ideas were. What his ambitions for the city and for the country were. Because, once again, remember going back to L&N days, I premised politics on something more than just a local issue. Even when I was in the state, we talked about the Un-American Activities Committee vote, and there were other votes that I took that made me 24:00believe that it was more than just a Jefferson County issue or a Commonwealth of Kentucky issue. It was a national issue. So, each place I came, in this scheme of elections leading to the congressional, I believe really had an element in it of looking at things nationally. And so, that was where I put myself into these issues because I probably even then was sort of thinking, "How would this translate into a larger, broader area?" But it taught me a great deal, and we threw everything into it that we could. And we put all of our money -- we were just a young married couple. This was, what, '67 and we were married in '59... See, no, this was 1969, so we were only ten years into our marriage, still young people, children that were just little kids at the time.

So, this was a pretty big commitment, and as time went on, I had to probably 25:00wonder if the commitment was well-founded or not [laughs]. Was it a smart move to have made? Almost like when I left the L&N, I think I possibly said, when I went to the law firm and I could look right down Broadway from where I was in my little, tiny office in the Commonwealth Building, I looked down Broadway at the L&N building, with that L ampersand N sign which still is up there as a state monument of sorts, and say, "Oh my God, what did I do? I gave up a sure job, a sure job forever, but here I am." So, you make the most of it [laughs], and so I said to myself probably many times, "Oh my God, what did I do? I'm in this mayor's race, I'm in up to my eyeballs, we put every money that we could afford 26:00to spend into it -- what did I do? Should I have done it?" [Laughs.] But you're here, so you make the most of it. And you're buoyed by the young people around you and the enthusiasm, and you're buoyed by the, you know, by the adrenaline. You're buoyed by pressing the flesh, like LBJ used to talk about. When he got down in the dumps, he'd press the flesh for half-an-hour or so, and all of a sudden, he felt great again. John Kennedy the same way -- all of us, all of us.

KC: It also seems interesting, to me at least, that had you begun your political career in the '50s, there weren't that many -- by my memory, anyway -- that many pressing national issues that were pushed across the country, to every city and, you know, every community. But by the time you begin to look at politics, the national issues are in everybody's living room: the Vietnam War, the assassinations, the turmoil, is every place, so you're almost required to look at things in a national view.

RLM: And television. Understand, television didn't come to Louisville until '49. So, I mean, I'm running just basically 20 years after television came in its most rudimentary form. And so, all of a sudden, television was in the State 27:00Senate and I'm being beamed back to Louisville, and the 6 o'clock news, I'm home and I see myself on TV. The big news from Ho Chi Minh Trail was, you know, coming into our living rooms and to our dining rooms as we sat there with our families. It was everything in life, I mean, it really is truly sad that...almost everything in life is a product of a lot of accidentals. Now, you can plan and plot and scheme and organize to your heart's content. In the last analysis, it's mother nature, it's father time, it's events in some godforsaken part of the world, that's going to overwhelm those plans and programs and schemes. So, that's really what it was.

If I had gotten in ten years earlier, things would not have been the same. If I had gotten in maybe ten years later, when the big money started piling up, I couldn't have functioned because I couldn't have raised that kind of money. I -- frankly -- I don't even -- I don't want to mention the names because they're two 28:00very good friends of mine, but there are two men, both lawyers, both patricians, both from very prominent and landed gentry families, who had eyed this senate race and had they decided to make the plunge, I don't think there's any way I could have probably handled it. Because they were pretty well entrenched in the Democratic regime, and also, they were, like I said, products of a very different economic background and a very different pedigree than mine. But they didn't run. KC: Very quickly, just because you mentioned it, and in these early two races for mayor and for State Senate, did you make use at all of television? Did you advertise, or -- RLM: We did not have any television, Kevin, and Mr. Mattingly -- Charlie -- may be able to back us up on this, but I don't think we had any television until the congressional race. Now, we did, in the mayor's race, I mentioned, have radio jingles. There may have been some little bit of television, but I really think -- and I've always believed -- that we really 29:00started television in that -- in the senate -- in the congressional race. Now, understand, I was on television, so, you know, as a State Senator at times, but to actually have a paid political ad, I don't really think that we did until the congressional race.

But it was interesting that... I was, like I say, learning a lot, and I think it -- in a way, without knowing it, just like at Bellarmine, I was learning a lot about public speaking without taking a public speaking course, not knowing I'd ever go into politics. In the Congress -- In the mayor's race, I may have been looking at this thing because, once again, on that veranda of the Hotel Washington, in 1960, looking over the Treasury Building into the White House, that had to plant seeds about would it be fantastic to go to Washington? Wouldn't that be the ne plus ultra of life, in the political vein? Wouldn't that 30:00-- you know. So, it probably, as I was cruising the city of Louisville with this mayor's campaign, I probably had a little bit of something like that kind of bouncing around in the back of my head.

But in any event, we threw everything into that race, Kevin, that we could. Helen worked indefatigably, all of our friends did, Harry Watson and the seminarians walked neighborhoods, our friends did, and my dad was still alive, obviously -- in -- not -- I take it back, was not alive, but my brother Richard was there and did more advertising for us. And my mother, who lived until 1998, actually, passed away just a -- ten-twelve years ago, was also into -- and this was not her cup of tea particularly, but she was in it. My sister, Patricia, whom you may one day interview was very much involved in it. So, this was a product of just an awful lot of people. And if there was ever had been a really honest-to-God grassroots campaign [laughs], this was the grassroots campaign. I mean, we had nothing going for us except a few people who had a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of optimism about the future. And we ran a very 31:00credible campaign.

But it all eventually, eventually, eventually, eventually boiled down to election day. And at election day, we were down at the headquarters in the hotel, and I -- I think it was -- it was not the Seelbach Hotel, which is still there. It was one of the other hotels. It might have been the Brown Hotel, but in any event, it boiled down to that night, and we had some people out, poll-watchers, to give us a little advance idea of what was happening. And it was not happening that we were gonna win it. So, it was pretty demoralizing and pretty difficult. We have some pictures to show that situation. And I have them framed, and I really meant to bring them today; that would have been a wonderful segue into the congressional campaign, but... I have at home, above and below, 8"x10" photos. The above photo was taken election night, which we'd been May -- 32:00sometime in --

KC: 28th?

RLM: May the 8th of --

KC: 28th.

RLM: May -- Yeah, late May is always -- I think it was the last Tuesday of the month. May the 28th of 1969, and this top picture --

KC: No, no, 1968? For the primary election, was May 28th, 1968.

RLM: Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. That's right, exactly. I'm getting my dates mixed up. Exactly, that's right. Frank took office in 1969, which was a year later, right. In 1968, May the 28th of 1968, and here's that top picture, there. And, well... [Recording paused.]

KC: We've had a pause of about a minute. Congressman, we took a pause to check on the dates of things, and it turns out that I had misinformed you, that, in fact, you were correct that the campaign for Mayor of Louisville was in 1969, not 1968. May 28th, 1969.

RLM: Exactly. And that leads me to -- for the statement about this wonderful picture, which I want to show you. Because things were -- you can imagine. We 33:00were very much demoralized at the campaign headquarters, that night in May, in 1969, because we had poured everything into the campaign -- everything that we had, every bit of energy, every spare dollar -- and we had very few spare dollars. [Laughs.] All of our friends were there, and all of a sudden, the word was that not only did I not win, I actually wound up coming in third. I was behind Jim Thornberry and was won by Frank Burke. So, anyway, there was a photographer there who took a picture. I'm on the telephone, Helen is standing with me. Behind us is my sister-in-law. And I mean my face was as long as you 34:00would have for a -- who was -- who was the Giacometti or one of the art -- who made these very long -- [Both speaking at the same time.]

KC: Long, elongated statues, right. The Dog-Walker.

RLM: -- faces, and that was -- my face -- yeah, that's -- my face was twice as long as it would normally be because I was so dejected. Now, that was May of 1969. May of 1970, and we'll have to talk about that later. May of 1970, almost 365 days to the day, almost one exact year, below it is a picture of us radiant, radiant, because that was the night I had won the Democratic primary to run for U.S. Congress. And so, you have the above and below: the above, dejection, the below, ecstasy. So, anyway, I have that picture which is gonna be for the Archives, which is one of the great connections that I've ever made in my lifetime.

And I use that sometimes talking to young people because Lord knows, things 35:00happen -- they don't get selected for the program they want to get in, they don't get invited to the college that they wish to go to, they have setbacks and this and that, and it's very tough to handle. It's tough for us to handle. And I mean, when we walked out of that hotel room, and I got a couple of thoughts about that, that night after having lost the mayoral primary, believe me, I was not looking forward to a next year. I had no idea that there was a next year. I had no idea what lay ahead. All I knew is we had pretty much impoverished ourselves, [laughs] and we had lost. And so, here we were in that situation. But I tell young people: try to keep the faith, try to keep forging on, doing what you can do, and, you know, the good Lord willing, and almost always something good happens, and then you'll find where you go.

But we were there until the end of that night, the last ones to leave the room. We -- in those days, it's sorrowful to say, but everybody smoked, it seemed like. And so, you know, we emptied the ashtrays and we straightened up the 36:00chairs and we tried to polish the place up just a little bit, and then we eventually closed the door, just Helen and me. And... we were closing the door not just of a hotel room, and not just of the headquarters, but of a phase of our life that we had really immersed ourselves in. So, it was a very difficult situation to finally close that door and lock that lock. As we were walking down the hallway in the same hotel because Todd Hollenbach -- whose name I don't think has come up yet, but it will -- Todd was a young man, a Notre Dame graduate, a friend of ours via the family. Our son, Michael, married into a branch of Todd's family... Anyway, Todd was running at the same time I was running in the mayoral primary; Todd was running in the County Judge Executive 37:00race. And Todd really was a remarkable -- is a remarkable man. He's still in town, and he and his two sons are building and developing, and Todd's quite a guy. Anyway, Todd won that thing, and as Helen and I walked down the hallway, up through the elevator shafts and the plumbing chases and all this, came all this raucous noise from Todd's headquarters, doing what everybody does when you win, they're having a whole bunch of good times. But we were walking down that lonely hallway by ourselves, all our friends had long since left and they were going about their business, and so, we really had -- it was a tough, tough night.

And Helen -- I didn't remember this. I probably had that selective memory to just blank it out of my memory, but she said as we drove home -- we lived on Ardmore Drive at the time -- as we drove home from downtown, I must have come out Third Street by U of L, and made the left-hand turn to go up Eastern 38:00Parkway. Because she said that somewhere around Eastern Parkway and Preston Street, the big intersection where I -- even today, there may be some billboards. There was a Mazzoli billboard, and we had just come back from the most disappointing thing practically -- politically, the most disappointing thing that's happened to us. And here we were, driving past this sign with Ron Mazzoli smiling and obviously looking forward to becoming Mayor of Louisville, and all those wonderful thoughts on his mind as the photographer had taken that picture. And then, Helen says she remembers my having said, very clearly, that now it's time to put Ronnie to bed. And it's another evidence of how we ended a chapter of our life. I mean, Helen actually -- and I'm kind of near it myself -- she actually, when she said this last night, she had tears in her eyes because 39:00this was -- it was very difficult for us to handle. Because we didn't know what the future held -- no one does. You and I don't know, as we sit here, in May of 2010, do not know what lies ahead. But having poured everything into that race, emotionally, financially, physically, and then to have it all come to such an abrupt end, it was very difficult. But anyway, we obviously moved ahead, and I guess Helen did put Ronnie to bed. [Laughs.] I guess that... And so, we may have stopped at the White Castle to get some of those famous sliders that we were so prone to eat in those days. [Laughs.]

But anyway, we did go home, and then a couple of things happened that I think will give us the sort of segue into the congressional race. But the next day, Helen's recollection is -- and it'll be in the newspaper morgue -- but the next day, the editorials in the Courier, they must have editorialized, or maybe the 40:00New York Times because, I mean, the Louisville Times -- because they were both being published, then -- the morning paper and the afternoon paper. But there was an editorial in the Courier, she recalls, that said something to the general effect that this young guy who ran in this race is a person to be contended with. It used the word either contender, will be a contender, to be contended with -- somehow, the word contend is in Helen's memory bank as to what that editorial talked about. So, that may have been laying the groundwork, you know, like I say, that's exactly one year to the day before the Democratic primary for Congress. And it may have been that that sort of added to whatever feeling I might have had from those sessions in Washington, looking at the White House, and to look about the issues in a major city like Louisville. It may have been that that sort of said, well, you know, maybe there is something to look forward to. But that was the first thing that Helen remembered.

The other thing was that without wasting any time, I volunteered to help Frank in his campaign. And when you volunteer to help in a campaign, typically speaking, one of two things happens: nobody pays attention and you quit being a volunteer, or they pay a lot of attention and you become very active. And so, in Frank's mayor's race, the general election phase of it, I was very much involved. And I was down at headquarters quite a bit, and that was something that I enjoyed doing. I learned from him because once again, he's a major -- he was -- he unfortunately has passed away, but he was a major thinker. Frank Burke was one of the most intelligent people I ever met in my life: spoke French, wrote French, majored in philosophy, football player, the guy was a full package and a great political strategist. And so, I learned a lot just by being in his company, just by being around. But I did also, by my work, suggest to people 42:00that once -- I wasn't just a flash in the pan. I wasn't just a springtime episode. I didn't sulk because I lost, I didn't embitter, I didn't say I'm going to support the other guy, or something like that, or you didn't treat me fairly, or, you know, this and that and everything else. I mean, I just said, let's --

KC: Lost without excuse.

RLM: Lost without any excuses -- I had no excuses, these were two very good men [laughs] and we had nothing but a very uplifting type and upright kind of a campaign. But on the other hand, people said, to hell with it -- I didn't do that. I said, let's get into it, and so, there, I think, the combination of possibly that Courier-Journal editorial, or some comments that might have been made even beyond the editorial, people say, "Boy, that was a" -- you know, walking down the street -- "that was a good race you ran, Ron, and, you know, I hope you -- hope you stay involved in stuff in the future."

And then, little by little by little by little, it emerged that people felt that 43:00while the current incumbent then -- the then-incumbent of Congress, the Third District seat was a two-term mayor, William Cowger, and a man of good reputation, was one that we might have a shot at. I can't remember the lay of the land in 1970, but that was after Richard Nixon's election, and once again, the turmoilsome part of the Vietnam War, I know that a lot of people who were against the war were anxious for somebody to challenge Mr. Cowger, who was not necessarily for the war, but didn't vote against it. You know, people say, well, you're for abortion or you're against it -- it's not that way. It's just -- there are different degrees of being for and against, and sometimes you can be not necessarily for a war, but you follow your party in voting for something, which may have a war element to it. So, in any event -- but there are a lot of 44:00people who felt that he wasn't voting the right way, and wanted him out of Congress.

So, I guess all these things, over the period of that next several months, during the time I was helping Frank and working with him, sort of coalesced and they moved to the point where more people were talking about my running. And I can't again remember when I decided to run.

There was another primary, a primary in May of '70 -- but I can't remember when I decided to run, how I decided to run. But I believe since my opponent in the mayor's race -- in the congressional primary, I believe the only opponent I had was Tom Ray, but your data may show to that effect. But I think it was Tom Ray, essentially.

And I believe that if -- two things were happening. If I were, had somehow been felt to be still somehow an enemy of the party, having run against it in the 45:00senate race and having challenged people like Frank Burke and Jim Thornberry in the mayor's race, then, you know, they may say, "Well, this guy's credentials are simply not good for being a Democrat, so we're going to get somebody else." But somehow, the fact that Tom ran -- not to take anything away from him -- but that there wasn't some high-profile -- more high-profile person to run suggests that by that time, the Democratic Party had pretty much come around to believe that my beginning may have been challengeable, but what happened in the meantime shouldn't have been. The second thing could have been that they say, "Well, you know, Cowger's not going to be beat anyway -- he's a two-term incumbent, and who is this guy? He's a State Senator, he just lost a race for the Democratic nomination, and you think he's going to beat a two-term incumbent? I mean, you don't beat incumbents. That's just not done, for the most part." So it could have been one of those two things. One, they said this guy's -- make a perfect sacrificial lamb. He looks the part, and once we get him to really be beat up by 46:00this Cowger, we won't have to worry about him anymore. [Laughs.] He's off the stage. Or it could have been that they said that I ran a good race and I could run a good race again.

KC: Well, just to close out our commentary on the mayoral primary, the final votes in the primary separated Mr. Burke and Mr. Thornberry and yourself roughly by a thousand votes. You had 45 -- 4,500 -- Mr. Thornberry had 5,300, and Mr. Burke had 6,000.

RLM: Really? Well, I didn't realize it was that close. That's --

KC: Yeah. Relatively close.

RLM: So, we did run a good race, and so it may have been, that like I said, and the fact it was a clean race and I didn't, you know -- I didn't call people names and you couldn't, for those guys. I mean, there's no way you could malign them. They just weren't malignable.

KC: Let me ask you a general question: in these early days of campaigning, was it -- do you remember if negative campaigning was done very often, or as often 47:00as it's done today, for instance? And was it as strong as it seems to be today?

RLM: It's certainly, certainly not like today. I mean, if you just -- we just went through a mayoral primary, as you very well know, and I think you're in the same district that I'm in, and you've got -- every day, you got these big postcards that just knocked the living devil out of the fellow who eventually won it, Greg Fischer. Time after time -- every time I opened the mailbox, there was more stuff in there, almost all negative. So, nothing, nothing that approximates today existed then. However, negative ads, going back to -- was it Thomas Nast and some of those early political cartoonists and things like that, I mean, some of those early races, I mean, you talk about the Founding Fathers, those guys were really vicious. [Laughs.] I mean --

KC: Including duels.

RLM: That's right, exactly. [Laughs.] That's right. But in our race here, for one thing, Louisville happily was then -- and to a lesser extent now -- was 48:00really a smaller town. I mean, you know, a good size, 2-300,000 people, but a smaller town. People did, for the most part, know one another. We all lived here. We didn't have any ambitions to leave Louisville -- you were born in Louisville, you grew up in Louisville, you got a job in Louisville, and you died in Louisville. I mean, that was it. So, there's this old story about you don't want to foul your own nest: you don't want to do anything that's going to cause you to not be held in esteem in your hometown. Plus, these were two classy guys. These two men were very classy men in their right, very intelligent and everything else, but they were men of good repute, men of good character, men of good reputation, and their tendencies would not have been to do anything this way. So, my early races, the senate race was sort of an anonymous thing -- it just meant a lot of hard work and basically no issues, and so forth. The mayor's 49:00race was more on issue basis and much more media and much more widespread, but once again, because of the nature of the people that was in, everything was clean. Now, I -- you'll have to look at the newspapers for the autumn campaign, but I don't think Frank -- I'm not sure even whom Frank ran against, to tell you the truth, in the...

KC: A man named Mr. Sawyer? And that was a relatively close race. Mr. Burke won on the 5th of November, with a vote of roughly 48,000, and Mr. Sawyer got a vote of about 40,000.

RLM: Is that right? It was the man we called E.P. "Tom" Sawyer, and his daughter is Diane Sawyer, the one who's on television, who's become a great star. But yeah, Tom Sawyer was, I think, the County Judge, and I think he may have been County Judge before and was running for -- because everybody was term-limited, you know, even Frank. Frank had a four-year term, and that was it. Governors had four-year terms and that was it. You could come back and run again, but you had to have a separation of service -- you had to have a break in the service. But 50:00that was -- I didn't realize that was Tom Sawyer. He ran a good race -- he was a good man. And I think again, you'd probably not find all that negativity because Frank and Tom Sawyer knew one another, you know, and they lived together. I think Sawyer might have been a lawyer, but if he wasn't, was again, you know, an upstanding member of the community, and you're not prone to...

But as the campaigns have gone on, they become much more financed -- heavily-financed -- and in many cases, by outside of Louisville people. All of a sudden started -- these media people started coming in from outside of Louisville to give advice to candidates, and candidates unfortunately took the advice, which meant that you're trashing your opponent because the outsides say, "That's how you do it, that's how we do it in New York, that's how we do in L.A., that's how we do it in Massachusetts -- that's how you've got to do it in Louisville." And then pretty soon, everybody went along with that line of thinking, and so we have the same campaigns waged here as you had waged in the city of New York.

But it was -- I don't remember any negative stuff. We had -- Even in the congressional race, I don't think there was anything really negative. That I -- I did say, and it was pretty much the case, that Bill Cowger, Congressman Cowger, was a Tuesday-to-Thursday congressman. I mean, he basically was up there 51:00just as little a time as possible, and his -- his life was really centered back in Louisville. And I did say a couple of things when I ran in the congressional race, and one was I would not be a Tuesday-to-Thursday, and then secondly that instead of having my office in my law office, which is typically how it had been, I was going to make my congressional office in the Federal Building, which is where all the other Federal people were. I thought myself part of the federal family. But prior to that time, nobody -- even Gene Snyder, who was then in the Fourth District -- the adjacent district -- everybody had the congressional office as part of whatever they did in their private life. If they were a lawyer, it was in a law office. If they were an insurance broker, it would be in the insurance office. If they were a builder/developer, it would be in that office. But I was the first one to say, I don't want that; I want to have it in the Federal Building where all of the other federal agencies are. And of course, 52:00it was helpful, too, because I got to know them all and many, as you know, the so-called case work that you've winnowed through and are keeping a percentage of for the Archives, it's heavily involved with Social Security, Veterans Affairs, you know, some kind of food stamp program, some kind of housing program, some kind of HUD program, this and that, FCC, FAA -- and they're all there. So, it was wonderful for my staff because they could work out a great relationship with their counterparts in the other federal offices, and we got things done probably quicker and better than some other [laughs] congressional offices could do.

KC: Well, let's take a look at the 1970 campaign. This is for the 92nd Congress, which would have seated in 1971 and '72. And the primary is May 26th, 1970, and you win that almost 2:1. You get 8,000-plus votes. A Mr. Ray gets 4,600, Mrs. Small is just something short of 1,000, and then there's Mr. Baker who pulls in 53:00less than 200. Any thoughts on the primary?

RLM: Well, I hadn't -- You know, I haven't really studied those results [laughs] until you brought them up just this moment... Yeah, it was pretty substantial. I thought it might have been a little bit closer, but that's good. I mean, I think maybe that also might have been what encouraged people to think that possibly I could take on Bill Cowger.

KC: Did Mr. Thornberry and Mr. Burke participate in your primary for Congress or your subsequent election campaign?

RLM: Oh, I'm sure they did -- I think everybody did. I mean, I can't know -- and I'd have to check, and Charlie would really know because Charlie, understand, I met him -- I don't know if I've really established how I've met Charlie. Because part of --

KC: No, but we will cover it in more detail when we talk about people. [Both speaking at the same time.]

RLM: Because in this how you got the staff -- but Charlie Mattingly was with me 54:00at that time -- a matter of fact, he was one of the crucial elements of our winning the congressional primary, along with Rick Hausler, whom we've spoken about, the sort of unlikely relationship of a kid from Harvard and a kid from a dairy farm. Both brilliant people, but very different backgrounds. How they could come together and do it. So, I can't say that in every campaign stop, Frank Burke and Jim were there, or even Todd Hollenbach, but I know for a fact because I have pictures at home that we were very much part of a team. And it would be very helpful for them for a lot of reasons, in Louisville, to have me in Congress. So, there was not any back -- you know, back-falling from that position. And I'm sure that when we had any rallies, such as there might have been during the congressional race, that the mayor's office was there and the 55:00County Judge's office was there as well.

KC: Well, we've done an interview with Mr. Mattingly specifically on your campaigns. He has a remarkable memory and we went through your campaigns one at a time, [laughs] so just to refresh your memory, in 1970, he was at Bellarmine College as a student, and he was a volunteer in this first campaign. And of course, later on, he goes to work for you. And he's more formally involved in the subsequent campaigns.

RLM: That's right. Charlie was with me for the full 24 years. He was the only one who actually was with me the full because some, unfortunately, like Cecil Noel and others passed away before they were able to be there 24 years, and some left for other things. But Charlie was, in my judgment, the one who was there the entire time. And I met him at Frankfort -- he was -- and it was purely luck of the draw. He and George Siemens were assigned as interns to the education committee, which I -- the Senate Education Committee, which I chaired. So, Charlie would be the one -- I'm going to be anxious myself to read his 56:00interview, whenever it's eventually transcribed, because he would know, he remembers that stuff, and I don't. [Laughs.]

KC: Any more thoughts on the initial primary for the 1970 campaign for Congress?

RLM: Well, I'm going to have to yield to Charlie. He would know whether or not that original -- that primary -- was -- and I believe it was conducted from the loft on Clarks Avenue -- Clarks Lane. For our general election, against Cowger, we did use that loft and I believe we used it for the primary as well. But that was something I'll have to check with Charlie on, but it -- my recollection was that we had -- we either worked from our basement or maybe from one of those hotel rooms in the primary because the primary was not a really big, Bo Jangle kind of an event. I mean, it happened. But the general election was, and I think 57:00that's when we got the loft and that's when Rick came into our lives and parachuted in for that summertime. Because he would not -- that's right, he would not have been here during the primary because that was during school year. He had to come during the break, so he came when Harvard was not at school. But I have recollections of that headquarters, which we'll talk about in due course, about how rudimentary and really Spartan it was, and how we turned it around with the help of a lot of people into a halfway-decent headquarters.

KC: Let me ask, for clarification, in 1970, did the local Democratic Party in a primary back a candidate or help to choose a candidate? Were you the official candidate for the Democratic Party at that time?

RLM: That's a very good question, and understand, because I had beaten, you know, one of those candidates myself in that senate primary, it could have been that they just sat aside or, as I mentioned in an earlier interview, the Party's 58:00effectiveness at the polls was waning. You know, that was in that era when everything was bubbling up around the country and the parties were being scorned because they -- and I think the rigid party control was pretty well done with by the time I came along. And certainly until after the primary. I mean, in that primary, they were for -- for Dick Nash, but I won that senate primary. So, I think as that time went on, they were less a factor and they probably less tried to, you know, wield their muscle. And so, I don't recall that I was really the Party's candidate in the primary for Congress. I think, however, given all the information we've been talking about, that it was pretty well felt that they were for my election. I think they felt that I would be the kind of candidate that would be able -- even though Cowger would be a hurdle -- but that I would be probably the best one to be able to do that. So, they were looking at it pragmatically, I believe.

KC: Well, let's look on the question of the general election, which is November 3rd, 1970, and you squeak out a vote of [Mazzoli laughs] 211 votes!

RLM: That's right.

KC: And you're the victor over Mr. William Cowger, of course.

RLM: You know, you reminded me, in an earlier interview -- because you did the score for me in the Senate race, and I won that one by only, say, 400 votes. And I thought -- I had this mental picture that I was, you know, like -- like, you know, I'd come marching in like Alexander the Great, you know, and lay waste to the whole thing here, but I'd barely won that Senate seat, [laughs] and then, of course, I mean, I literally just skin-of-my-teeth kind of stuff on the congressional race.

KC: What are your memories of Mr. Cowger?

RLM: Well, Bill Cowger was a good man -- good-looking man, very, very well-dressed and very well-coiffed. He wasn't a showy kind of guy. He was a good mayor, you know, he and -- they had -- we had the ticket of Bill Cowger, Marlow 60:00Cook, and Bill Cranfill -- The Three Cs. And these were all young Republicans, they were all in their thirties at the time, and they basically beat the Democratic machine. The machine, at that point, had won election after election after election, and owned the city of Louisville. But along came these three Junior Chamber of Commerce types, JCs, business people, not politicians by background, and so, out of the West, so to speak, rode into town Bill Cowger, and he ran for mayor and won. And Marlow Cook ran for County Judge Executive and won, and then later, of course, became a U.S. Senator. And then Bill Cranfill, who came into town to -- well, I say that allegorically -- these were Louisvillians, they were from here, but I'm saying -- using that Western analogy of riding into town and taking it over. But Bill Cranfill ran for sheriff and was elected. Just died the other day. He had a wonderful, beautiful picture of 61:00him in the paper. Very, very, reminiscent of Bill Cranfill when he was in action. But anyway, those three people, so they were very talented guys and I had good impressions. They were good mayors. I'm sure a lot of Democrats voted for them and I might have voted for them, for all I know. Just the idea that the people before them were all pretty much old-hat kind of people -- good men, good women, probably, though not many women. But they were all the product of that -- of the blessings of Lennie McLaughlin, McKay Reed, and John Crimmins. Good people, but they were the ones who just ordained, you know, they put the sword on your shoulder and you knelt there overnight, and all of a sudden you were the 62:00knight, you were the one who ran... Well, obviously, I didn't like that. And I didn't think that was -- and these young guys didn't, and I think they came in and did some interesting stuff. They revamped City Hall, they revamped county government. Marlow bought the boat that we still have down there, the Belle of Louisville, it was called the Idlewild, I think. And Marlow bought it, one of those Quixotic things that he thought would be good for Louisville, and it has been, definitely. And Cranfill did things, you know, the Sheriff was mostly a tax-collector but he sort of upgraded the office. So, I have nothing but, you know, good memories. But as I say, as far as Bill Cowger was considered, I don't think he did anything up there. I mean, I think basically his time in Congress, those four years, was really not notable, that I could remember, with any, any particular program, any particular issue, any particular cause.

KC: So, when you ran against Mr. Cowger, he was seeking his third term, at that time.

RLM: That's exactly right.

KC: Issues that you campaigned on or that were -- that were at the forefront of 63:00the public mind? Vietnam War? Others?

RLM: I think the Vietnam War was one of the big issues. It's probably a big issue that got a lot of support for me from certain groups, volunteer groups, because of the war being the galvanizing influence that it was, and even is today. I mean, it -- you know, you still can't get away from the Vietnam War, even today. But there were issues, I think, of working together with people in the party for educational reform. I remember -- of course, Carl Perkins, we'll talk about Carl in my congressional years. He was a big education reform, he was labor-oriented, and Bill Cowger was not a labor-oriented man. And I think labor issues probably played -- along with the Vietnam War, labor issue played a big part in my campaign. I had the support of -- I'd say probably most of the labor unions.

I think that probably the issue of just trying to make government more responsive to people, make it closer to home. I mentioned about having these little town hall meetings -- during my -- in the Mid-City Mall with a card table and card table chairs. I did the same thing after election to Congress, but much broader scale. We'd invite neighborhoods to some type of a school auditorium and have the same thing. So, I think part of what I probably campaigned on, Kevin, though I don't have anything in front of me, now. I've got to do some research on it. But I think probably making government responsive, making government listen, bringing government closer to home. Things that are, you know, kind of off-the-shelf sort of themes, but because they hadn't been in place in Louisville -- had not been in place with Bill Cowger -- I probably emphasized I was gonna have an office in the Federal Building and they'd always find where I 65:00could be. I didn't --

KC: So, access and community service and --

RLM: Access, transparency, all the words we use today. But I don't think I ever used access or transparency [laughs] in those days, but using it in today's parlance, I was -- I'd be there. You'd always be able to find me. You wouldn't have to be looking for me anywhere; I'd be there and I'd try to help you to the best I could. Make government personal. Make it, again, available to you, make it your advocate, was probably what I did, along with, like I said, labor issues where Cowger was simply not in their camp. Vietnam issues, because he was not in their camp. Would be probably the crystal of our campaign, yeah.

KC: [Speaking at the same time.] Of the campaign?

RLM: Social Security, you know, protecting Social Security because who knows, you know, with Richard Nixon as President -- I can't remember what he was doing in that first couple of years, but it's not uncommon to have Republicans wonder about -- just like Rand Paul now is wondering about whether there should be a 66:00Federal Reserve system, whether there should be farm subsidies, whether there should be any of these things. And it got him a primary victory, but it may not be very helpful in the general election. And those same things might have been bubbling on in Washington at the time. And understand, once I won the primary, then I got started getting on the mailing list of all these people from Washington, citizens for good government groups that are rampant and legion in Washington. And so, they were all sending me things, and I probably grabbed a, you know, a hunk or two of their stuff and probably used it in some of my campaign speeches.

I don't know how much of that continues to exist in the files that you've gone through, or how many, you know, early speeches -- I don't even know if we saved things like that. But it would be interesting, possibly your own delving into these records will come upon one or two of these so-called campaign speeches 67:00that I gave. Or, once again, I'd love to join you sometime as we go through the Courier Journal and the Louisville Times during that period of time, and maybe try to catch up with anything that had Mazzoli or Cowger's name in it, and then just read those articles. That'd be interesting to see, just how these themes played out.

KC: Let me follow up very quickly with a comment that you had made earlier: you had spoken, when you set up shop to campaign, putting up card tables in a mall to, you know, discuss issues or problems that various potential constituents may have had. Later on, throughout your congressional service, you come back home on a fairly regular -- on a regular basis, actually, and hold neighborhood forums of various sorts and so forth. Was that customary in Congress at the time, or are you one of the early people to do that?

RLM: I think I was one of the early people to do it, Kevin. I mean, I can't say that I had, you know, I was the first one to ever dream the idea because from 68:00your neck of the woods, I'm sure Tip O'Neill had something similar to these. It may have been just walking tours of Cambridge and the pubs that was, in effect, a town hall meeting. So, I think every member of Congress who had a feeling for the constituency had some mechanism to gain information from the constituents of the good and the bad that are going on. Ideas for legislation, Ideas that might help the community. But mine was, I found that that mechanism of face-to-face meetings in a setting in which I could take notes -- later, happily, [laughs] I had someone else to take the notes. And Charlie was with me, and Cecil and others, and so I had the opportunity of having eye contact with the people, and then somebody was always the taking the notes, so if somebody had a problem, "Charlie, would you make a note of that, and get the name and address," and this and that. So -- But in those days, I did it myself. And I just found that pretty 69:00comfortable, and so I was able to pursue that.

KC: Would you know if that was a feature of the two terms that Mr. Cowger had in Congress?

RLM: I'm confident that it was not. That was probably one of the premises that we worked on, in fashioning our campaign, was to be somewhat different than him. And one way to be different was to have these town hall meetings and to be there, and to be visible and to be seen, to be around. Because my recollection of Bill Cowger -- and again, I don't want to impugn the man because he was a good mayor -- but being an executive and being a legislator are two very different things. You can be a great legislator and a lousy executive, you know, in the sense of being a mayor or governor, that sort... You can be a great executive and a lousy legislator, because the legislation is hurly-burly, sweat and toil, it's a lot of people back-slapping, a lot of -- being an executive is sitting in an office and you got people and they do it for you, and it's a lot 70:00cleaner. It's a lot more organized. It's a lot more clinical. I mean, the hurly-burly of legislating is that, hurly-burly, and I think that Bill just was a born executive. He was an executive in his real life and he was an executive in his mayoral career, and I think going to Congress was -- he may not have even enjoyed it, I don't even know. I didn't know him that well to know if he really liked it or not. But he didn't certainly have the visibility that I had in -- throughout my full 24 years had. And I think it was just he was a different temperament, a different attitude.

KC: Let me finish up, if we can, with the '70 campaign. As I said, you win this election by the extraordinary amount of 211 votes, [Mazzoli laughs] and then eventually, Congressman Cowger concedes the election, but before that, there's 71:00some court action and some -- some strong push to -- for a recount, so --

RLM: Let me just fill it in. It's an amazing story -- Frank Burke comes into it again, very importantly. So, we go through this whole campaign -- I still have more I want to tell you about how the campaign was conducted, some of the interesting things that we did -- but election night, we're down at the old campaign, old Democratic headquarters on Fourth Street. It no longer exists. And we had some telephone people at -- now, this was the camp -- this was the headquarters of the Democratic Party. Not our little headquarters; this is the real McCoy. So, they had ways of having poll-watchers and people like that, and these results were coming in, and you know how you write down certain results that people scream and holler and jump up and down and that's good. And then, if it takes a long time to get some votes in, they wonder, why is it taking so long to get the vote out? So, we were going through that same kind of rollercoaster 72:00that election night.

But finally, finally, I just was in the back, off the stage, behind, in the back, and I was watching television. I said, "I've won this thing, I've won this thing," and I've started to jump up and down. And Frank Burke -- Frank Burke, he says, "Ron, hold it up, hold it up. So-and-so hasn't called in, this precinct hasn't reported..." I kept saying, "This man is a thinker." And he said, "This is it -- don't do it, don't do that, don't go out there and claim something, do not." And so, it was only Frank Burke and his prodigious knowledge of politics and the local scene that kept me from going out there like Dan Quayle did when he was down there with George H.W. Bush, he was jumping around like a little puppy dog, and you know, when he was named Vice President, they said, "Well, this guy's Vice-President? Give me a break." I knew Dan Quayle, I mean, good man, but I mean, you know, that -- that incident riveted itself in the head of the people. It's like when Gerald Ford unfortunately tripped down Air Force One. 73:00And that became the guy was, you know, couldn't think and chew gum at the same -- walk and chew gum. So, this -- this thing here, I -- if I had gone out there and jumped around and jumped around, they would have said, "This guy here is impetuous. He -- doesn't know --" Anyway, Frank cautioned me and I didn't go out there.

But what happened was, there was one basic machine in a South End precinct that either didn't function or didn't function the way it should, and it was that that caused us to go into a court for one month. Judge Marvin Sternberg heard the case. Joe Stopher represented the Republican Party, and Joe Stopher is one of the most elegant and tremendously talented lawyers I've ever met, and one of the greatest people I ever met. So, he was the best person for that job. I mean, he was impeccably honest, everything was -- I cannot remember who represented me, or us, the Party. It may have been Frank himself; I do not know. He was mayor at the time, he probably couldn't have gone into the courtroom. But 74:00somewhere, we're gonna find out who represented me and -- or really more precisely, the Democratic Party, in this vote contest.

Ultimately, it was established that I had won the race, and that these votes either didn't count or were counted, but the total was 211 vote difference. I didn't find that out for a month -- I was in Washington when I found that out. I had gotten so frustrated, I remember, Kevin, coming back home every night for that month, from my little office, and dying -- I can't bear it, I don't know where we're going. And I said to Helen, I said, "Honey, let's just get it over with. I mean, I -- Let me just bail out or something because I can't bear the tension." So, that's what -- and then finally, I couldn't bear the tension enough that I just said, "I have to go to Washington just to -- just somehow be there."

Also, we were thinking, and I'll have to back up a little bit -- Congressman Rodino had called me and had some advice. So, by going up there, it also gave me 75:00a chance to plug into the Democratic Party in Washington, who then could help us maybe in this vote contest or help me get established when I did win this race. Because, you know, the rule of the House is the House decides to seat its members, and so there may have been a situation, whereas in Frank McCloskey's case over in Indiana many years later, where it may have come before the House. And they have said, "Do you seat this incumbent or do you seat this fellow who run the race but there was a contest, and this one precinct, and this and that and everything else." So, anyway, I was in Washington when I finally found out that Judge Sternberg had ruled that I had won it. Now, Bill Cowger, to his great credit, didn't challenge it. He could have gone to every other court in, you know, in the universe and challenged it, and we'd -- I may never have gotten up there, or gotten so completely frustrated that I would have said, "Look, I don't want any part of it," so...

But anyway, it was interesting to do that, but there's some -- Helen reminded me 76:00that the people you talk -- like about the volunteer campaign, the volunteers for our congressional campaign -- part of it was born in the war. And there were people -- Blanche Mahoney, I remember Eva Spaid, and Marie Abrams -- are people who, I think, were spurred. They knew me and I'm sure had been involved to some extent in earlier efforts, but I think it was the Vietnam War that really targeted them. And they were powerful women and powerfully smart people, politically, in how they handled things.

So, I was the beneficiary of a great deal of that. I remember -- when I mentioned Mr. Rodino, he had -- he called me after the results -- it looked like I was going to win this thing, though I hadn't. I believe he called me -- I know he called me before I had officially won it, but where it looked like I had won it. Anyway, Mr. Rodino called, and I thought it was very interesting because he 77:00said, "Congressman Mazzoli?" And I said, "Oh, yes?" And he said, "I'm really surprised," he said, "I didn't realize there was that -- that Italian -- like, the Italian contingent in Louisville." And, you know, like it would be in his case, with Jersey City, or some places like Chicago, you know. Where you really had a -- where you really had a --

KC: Concentration.

RLM: An Italian concentration. Or in the North End of Boston. South part of Philadelphia. So, anyway, I -- he said, "I just didn't realize there were that many Italians in Louisville." I said, "Mister," I said something to this effect, I said, "Mr. Rodino," I said, "Thank you but I didn't get elected to Congress because I'm Italian as much as despite the fact that I am." [Laughs.] And that was an exaggeration, but it was one way I tried to put this thing together for him because there still were people. I remember one of our posters in... I guess 78:00we had, we did have posters in the congressional race, we had to have them. And one of them was defaced with an ethnic slur. But, I mean, it was rare, very rare. I mean, I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, I was born here, and I went through all my life with the name Romano Louis Mazzoli, and everybody around me was named Smith or Jones, and nobody made any to-do about it. [Laughs.] So, happily, Louisville was, you know, pretty well placid from that standpoint. But it was cur--

The other thing that Rodino said, I'm pretty sure, because he was the titular chair of what we would call the Italian Caucus in the House, and there were a lot of Italian members there, but he said that the idea of, you know, make sure you get to Washington, check in with so-and-so and so-and-so, because they'll be helpful. He also was -- I have a name here, an office staff that you've never heard of, but she was one of the most influential people that I've ever run into in my life, and it was because of Peter Rodino that this staffer -- her name was 79:00Olive Daddario. Olive's brother, Mim -- Emilio Daddario -- was a member of Congress from Connecticut, their home state. Mim, on that very same year, in 1970, ran for Governor of Connecticut, lost it barely to Tom Meskill, who became Governor of Connecticut and then later a federal judge. But because of the laws were -- relatives could work with relatives in the House by grandfather because, you know, the anti-nepotism laws had been -- had come in the '50s or early '60s, but because Olive had worked with Mim before that law went into effect, she was grandfathered and allowed to work with her brother right on through. Well, he lost, and he -- of course, his congressional office closed up, and it was Peter Rodino who, because of the Italian Caucus, knew of Olive and of her availability, and so he recommended her. That was another piece of great advice, and Olive was amazing -- just became for Helen and me one of the greatest people 80:00in our lives, one of the most wonderful people, one of the most thoughtful and caring human beings I ever met, who just was not only my secretary, but she was the one who just ordered things around the office so that I had as little stress and strain -- I mean, she was just an amazing woman. But anyway, so, Peter Rodino fits into that.

KC: How long was she with you?

RLM: Was with me until she passed away, and that was probably about... a short time, unfortunately, more like six or maybe eight years, I think we were together. I think through my Longworth experience, which was eight years. So, I think it was the bulk of that time, but we became friends. I still stay in touch with Mim, periodically. It's been a long time since I've seen him. But as far as the congressional race, it was very interesting because we had the... [Recording paused.]

KC: Yes, we've had a five minute break. And now, Congressman, we're finishing up our recollections, if I recall, about your triumph over Mr. Cowger and the subsequent difficulties with -- with court.

RLM: [Laughs.] That's right. What you're trying to say is now we want to talk about Landslide Mazzoli, right?

KC: [Laughs.] Right.

RLM: 211 vote landslide.

KC: There you are.

RLM: Well, it was, it was very interesting. It was obviously intensely complicated for me because I wanted so desperately to get this thing done; I was almost prepared to give it away, as this one day stretched to two days, to five days, to weeks, and we still didn't have a final count. And the problem boiled down to one machine, one -- and those were the days of the old mechanical voting machines. Nothing electrical, no electronics, no computerization. It was simply a mechanical machine that you would press levers and you'd smash things against a piece of paper to leave an image. Well, one of them didn't seem to work the 82:00way it should have, and so, on election night, a couple of things happened. One is there was a vote challenge filed, and I'm not sure exactly how that was done, but there was a vote challenge against the entire race based on the malfunction of one machine in one precinct. Probably Frank Burke again, who has just been most helpful, he kept me from making a fool of myself, you know, when I thought I'd won this thing handily. And go out there and make some sort of a statement I'd have to recant.

Anyway, Frank probably instructed Allen Hamilton, who was the Sheriff of Jefferson County, to sequester all the machines in the basement of the armory, which is now Louisville Gardens, and have them guarded overnight, so that nobody could tamper with them. It was bad enough that we had one machine, but to have any possibility that there would be further tampering or further problems... So, all the machines were sequestered, including the one that was challenged, and then began this roughly 30-day period of court tests of what constitutes a legitimate challenge, was this a legitimate challenge, was this -- was the 83:00malfunction of one precinct enough to impugn the election results for the entire city, or Third District, in that case.

So, as I best recollect it, in part because of Chairman Rodino's advice to get to Washington and just sort of check in with some of the people in the House, I was up there, and I remember walking out of the hotel -- it's now a House annex, but it was a Capitol Hill hotel, or something. And looking over across New Jersey and into the Capitol, lighted in those days -- brilliantly lighted against this dark sky, and I said, "Oh, my God, this is so wonderful." I was overwhelmed with it, and I then either just before that experience or just afterwards, I got a call from Helen to say that Judge Sternberg had made his ruling, and that I was really actually elected. So, that went on for quite a long time.

Joe Stopher, I mentioned before, I believe, on this tape, represented the Republican Party and Congressman Cowger. And there's no finer, more honest, more diligent and effective lawyer than Joe Stopher. And Skip Grafton, of similar -- I would say about Skip, Skip Grafton on behalf of the Wyatt law firm represented me and the Democratic Party before Judge Sternberg. And so, that was a test -- I have no idea whether or not there's anything that emerged from that that was, is precedent for any future vote challenges. I don't know whether or not anyone has challenged an election recently, and whether anything in our ruling was helpful there. But I do remember the dome in the dark, and I remember the ecstasy I felt when this whole thing was done.

You've already talked to Charlie Mattingly and perhaps will talk to Rick Hausler in Washington about their relationship and how they worked that first campaign 85:00as two young kids. But they pulled off not only sort of a miracle -- because when you win by 211 votes, every vote counted -- but they had figured out, along with John Kilroy, that it would be very helpful if we did some extra-intense work in digging out the absentee ballots, absentee vote. Now, unlike today, where you can vote by absentee quite easily and for a lot of different reasons and -- there's almost no challenge as to people who want to vote that way. In those days, it was really a tricky proposition. Forms had to be filled out, sent in by a due date, sent back... But somehow, Charlie and Rick and John Kilroy mastered the arcania of how you vote by absentee ballot. And they attempted to have young representatives on all the state campuses -- U of L -- well, not U of L -- but UK, Eastern, Western, Murray, Morehead, and -- just to be sure that to 86:00the extent we could, we'd have someone in there promoting the idea, if you're from Louisville, if you're from the Third District, we want your vote and here's a way you can vote for Ron Mazzoli by absentee ballot. And my recollection was -- and Rick still talks about this, Rick Hausler -- that when they got the vote total of the absentees, we basically split the absentee with Bill Cowger, and apparently, according to Rick, who's another one of these real geniuses when it comes to politics -- that just isn't done. I mean, if you're the incumbent, you get the big bulk of the absentee vote because for the most part, you haven't heard of the challenger to begin with, and you know, the ideas -- it's pretty deep and broad of the incumbent. But in this case here, we split the absentee ballots, and Rick -- and I think Charlie would agree, that probably was one of the keys to our very, very narrow victory, but-- Dennis Clare -- we were -- Helen and I were with Dennis Clare and his wife Lynn, as we had been for many 87:00years at the Derby this year, 2010. He was our campaign chairman for that first congressional race, and of course, just like Ken Kiely is forever in your memory as a major part of your life -- because Ken was the campaign chairman in our State Senate race and I guess in our mayor's race as well, but certainly the State Senate race -- and Dennis was the chairman in this race, my first race for Congress. So, that was a very important part of it. And he assembled a covey of these young lawyers. [Laughs.] We were all lawyers, and Dennis was very young, then. He's still young today, basically, but... He got this great assemblage of local lawyers and you know, we'd go out and knock on doors, but we'd also go to plant gates at 4 or 5 in the morning and strut our stuff and give out cards and do that kind of thing. So, it was a lot of fun, and I ran into Jeff Morris the other day, who's now retired from the bench, believe it or not. And was an 88:00outstanding jurist, but retired -- and he was one of that gaggle of kid lawyers who went out there [laughs] and worked for us. We had -- The headquarters, without going into it too much, Charlie may have talked about it -- that loft, they had no electricity when we were there. No running water. Had obviously no air conditioning in the brilliant summer then.

KC: What was the address of that?

RLM: It's a 900-block of Clarks Lane. It's at the corner of Clarks Lane and Preston Street. I pass it on an average of four or five times every day. Down below, they now have a Clean Sweep, one of these home cleaning places, and I think you have one of these places that you could use to sell stuff of eBay or Amazon.com, you know, they sort of, like, act as intermediaries. And then there's a third, I think it's, like, a beauty shop.

In those days, John Bruggensmith had at least one of those places downstairs, 89:00and he was the baker. And Charlie reminded me that John Bruggensmith used to go ballistics because -- or, ballistic -- because on a Sunday, when the bakers in Germantown sell all kinds of pastries to people coming from St. Elizabeth Church and from St. Stephen and from Mother of Sorrows, [laughs] we were working on Sundays. We had to. And so, we would use those parking spaces, and John would come clambering up those steel steps, raising hell with us, [laughs] because we 90:00were using all of his parking spaces. But -- and eventually, we placated him in some ways, maybe just being so earnest and so, you know, sort of lacking in deviant behavior, and we're guileless people. But somehow or another we got him on our side, and we were able to drop and electrical cord down through a hole in the floor. A chase was -- for plumbing or something. But anyway, we dropped an electrical cord down through there, and he would plug it in down below so we at least had a fan. And then, some of our labor brethren who were able to come in and put in -- they actually plumbed it and put in a bathroom for us. A very rudimentary and, you know, you had canvas instead of walls, but at least it was something. And then some of the electrical friends came in and wired the place, and so, we could actually have electric lights and we would have air conditioning in one cordoned-off section. We had that. But until that time, we 91:00had to go around the corner -- it's currently a shop that in-season sells different kinds of things, plants in the winter, Christmas trees, and this and that. So, they're now selling garden stuff. But anyway, it was -- there was a filling station. So to go to the bathroom, Helen says she, when she would work at headquarters, which was pretty often, that she'd go back home because we just lived a few blocks away, and probably tend to the kids. I guess maybe her sister was watching them or something. But anyway, she'd use the bathroom at home, but otherwise, you'd go up to the filling station and use the bathroom. I mean, it was really a down-home kind of a thing with a lot of wonderful memories of crazy stuff that we did.

But we did win, and like I say, won by 211 votes. And when you win, you then have an opportunity to establish who you are and what you can do for the people. And so, I had that opportunity, and I was not going to waste it. It came to me 92:00by the skin of my teeth, it came to me by the hard work of hundreds and hundreds of people, it came to me by the trust that was put in me by the voters of the Third District to do something, and I didn't want to -- I wouldn't -- couldn't -- countenance any waste of that effort. So, immediately, we moved our original office into the Federal Building, which happily and unexpectedly now bears my own name, the Romano Mazzoli Federal Building. But we moved into that Federal Building January of 1971, did not leave it until January of 2005 -- January of 1995. So, we were there from January of '71 to January of '95. And we did what we said we were gonna do: be there, be available, and be ready to help where we could.

KC: Well, as I had mentioned to you before, we've covered the campaigns in more detail, campaign of the time with Mr. Mattingly, which was very helpful. So, probably I won't take you through all of that now. I do have a couple of questions to ask you, but before I do that, on specific campaign decisions that you made, I just would ask some general questions about the atmosphere that you faced under particular -- particular times in your campaign. So, you did mention 93:00the business of busing.

RLM: Oh, yes.

KC: A general thumbnail sketch, relatively quickly, about how that affected campaigning.

RLM: Well, the two issues that affected me most -- there are three issues, truthfully, that over the period of the 24 years, there were three issues that really were important issues, controversial issues, and caused me to have a lot of political problems, one of which was right at the start, the Vietnam War. I mean, it divided the nation, it divided Louisville, it divided the Third District. It profoundly influenced people in one direction or another direction, and in that sort of analogy, you're getting your arms pulled from one direction and the other direction. I tried to cope with the Vietnam War as I tried to cope with busing and as I tried to cope with the question of pro-life or pro-choice, 94:00as I tried to cope with immigration -- all of these are very controversial issues. As I tried to cope with tobacco, I mean, I cast that vote back in 1988 on the tobacco issue. I tried to confront them honestly, Kevin, I tried to have reasons in my head why I voted for the Durbin Amendment, which limited the use of tobacco for -- banned the use of tobacco in some air flights. Currently it's all across the board, in those days, it was just the short flights.

I tried to confront the issue with busing and the fact that there were a lot of people who were not racist but whose children were being bused all over the place and felt strongly that this shouldn't be doing, and there ought to be some answers to it. And I tried to address that honestly by saying that I agreed that that wasn't the case, and tried to work with school authorities to minimize the busing, and do that sort of thing. But just like Louise Day Hicks, who became my 95:00friend when we both were elected to Congress the self-same year, she got caught up in that. Joe Moakley got caught up in that, up in Boston, both of them in that area. It's just an issue that's extremely difficult to deal with because it's heavily fraught with emotion and it's totally out of the control, basically, of members of Congress. You're being whipsawed by local school boards and parent-teacher associations and school unions, teacher unions. Very difficult.

But to try to put it into a word, I tried to address these issues as honestly as I could based on the information I had at hand. So, with respect to busing, I agreed that not everybody was racial or racist who felt strongly against busing. At the same time, I disagreed with taking kids out of school, I disagreed with obviously any form of violence or any effort to portray other people in a 96:00derogatory fashion, or to somehow hurt their ability to function in the community.

As far as the issue of the Vietnam War, I said, I agree, it's not a good war, I tried -- this is something Congress did eventually have some grippings -- some dealings with -- and some effect on. And that is, I tried to vote to end it, and the safe -- keep this troop safe, but to end the war, to cut off some of the funding, and so on. But that I agreed with other people that this was a war we had to fight to keep the dominos from falling because that was the big LBJ thought, there was a domino and one of them was Vietnam, and if that domino fell, it would be Indonesia, it would be other parts of Southeast Asia, and then eventually Europe. But I tried to confront that honestly. I didn't try to duck the issue.

When it came to the question of pro-life or pro-choice, the same way. I mean, I 97:00voted the way I vote because I feel that's the correct vote. Other people can and very much do disagree with me, even today, on it, but I tried to have an awareness of the other person's point of view. I didn't cease to work with people -- and you mentioned yesterday, Barney Frank and some of the people that have a different point of view on this and other issues, didn't stop working with them as legislators on other issues. But I didn't trim sails, and I tried to address the issue when people brought it up, and as honestly. And the same way with immigration -- so, I mean, if you talk about the Vietnam War to start out with, if you talk about the issue of pro-choice and pro-life, you talk about immigration, talking about those issues that are extremely controversial, the only way you deal with them is just straight-up, and I tried to do that.

KC: Was the Equal Rights Amendment also an issue in Louisville itself during the 98:00time that you campaigned that would have been emotional? Or just in relation to pro-life, pro-choice? [Both speaking at the same time.]

RLM: I think -- I think -- I think it was, I think it was. I think that was the first bill I introduced, was an amendment to the Constitution for equal rights. Where some of my friends and I had a falling out was in the extension of it because, you know, I think it was a period of seven years in which the states have to ratify it or it doesn't work, and I think there was an effort to try to just extend the period of time for ratification. And I felt that wasn't a good idea, said, you know -- you either pass another bill and then start another seven-year clock, or cease and desist, that people just don't want it, so. But any event, that was -- that had to be an issue because I -- that was a bill I introduced myself, so it had to come, as we talked. one other point about Arthur Campbell and the Americans with Disability Act, and how Arthur came to one of my 99:00town hall meetings and through his wife -- essentially was his interpreter -- told me that this was a very important bill. I went back to Washington and asked the staff to look into it, and indeed felt that it was and co-sponsored it. So, somebody at home must have talked about the equal rights. It may have been the people I mentioned before -- might have been Blanche Mahoney or it might have been Eva Spaid or Marie Abrams or one of those people who were active in the campaign.

KC: But here in Louisville as such, it wasn't a controversy that would have affected your campaigning?

RLM: Well, it... I don't really think so. I think in that era, I think it was -- 100:00it would have been probably overwhelmed by busing and by the Vietnam War because those were those early 1970 issues.

KC: Let me ask you in terms of campaigning, a general question: if you and your campaign staff or the head of your campaign effort, in any given election, had a different -- a difference of opinion, in terms of strategy or who to court or who to address or, you know, what issues to put forward and what issues to put on the back burner, how would you resolve these kinds of questions?

RLM: Well, you know, I guess in the sense of the word, they were resolved by me because I'm the guy. You know, I'm the person who's running, so I have to be comfortable with what I'm doing. And I've told many people -- and this is where I think the real problem comes in, these campaign managers from outside come into town, and they foist off this series of ideas on these candidates, and the candidates feel overwhelmed and they feel intimidated by these people who come 101:00in, they've run this campaign and that campaign, so they just go along with it. And I -- They make serious errors in the process. Well, I think in my case, because we didn't use outside consultants, except later on with Bill Spann, who's one of the ones that we'll be interviewing. He may be even here in Louisville. But when Bill Spann came in, in the -- I guess probably the middle 1970s. Charlie may have mentioned him, about -- he was South Carolinian who came in. But we had only local people, only local people. So, I mean, I think most of the local people felt like I did; I don't think we had that many differences -- stark differences -- of opinion. I mean, we may have said put this as number one and something else as number two, but I mean, I don't think there was anything profound disagreement. But for godsake, don't touch that with a ten foot pole, or, you know, cease and desist, get out of there, I think we pretty much agreed ahead of time.

And again, as you've already found out by these interviews, Kevin, you're looking at a guy right now that isn't as issue-oriented as he is people-oriented. I've always said people are the issue -- one of my early campaign themes, "people are the issue." I remember that vividly. People are the 102:00issue. So, I mean, the issues themselves, I never got -- I haven't marched or, you know, waved banners and done stuff like that. For me, it's the people. I mean, I really wanted to work for the people, try to help the people, give them something that they're entitled to have from their government. So, it probably doesn't shock you to know I probably had less interest in the issues that were going on around me, via my staff or the campaign consultants or the campaign operatives, as I have around the people. You know, the ones -- the campaign workers, and that type of thing.

So, if there was a disagreement, I don't remember any big one, and if there had been, I would have said, "Well, the buck stops here, therefore I have to make the decision one way or the other." And I think I would have resolved it in the basis of, if there were such a thing, that the issue that would most help the people, and one that would least hurt them. So, if I had a thing of...

KC: Two questions that come to mind relative to that, then: the first one is: did you do, over the course of your entire career in Congress, did you do much polling of your constituency to get viewpoints of interest for them or did you do it 103:00more casually, by conversation and meeting and forum and so forth?

RLM: Well, I used the latter more casually and more -- which would mean non-scientifically, which is to say, going to church, going to Kroger's, going to the Walgreen's, and going to the hardware store. You know, having these little town hall meetings, you know, which was my sort of real-life polling. Better than having some robo-call or somebody phoning in. However, we did do some polling. You know, there were times -- and Charlie probably has some of them, I think I may have some of them at home in the campaign box -- of polls done by a professional pollster to get an idea of what are the issues that 104:00people are more interested in, or causing the most happiness or most grief. So, we probably did fold some of those things into our campaign as we got deeper into it. But, I've always said, the only poll that really counts is the poll that you take at election night. And so all of the preliminary polls, the exit polls, really are very misleading. So, I never -- I don't disparage polling. I mean, people live by it -- and die by it, I guess -- but I never did want to put a whole lot of stock in it, and I don't think we did. We did do polling to help us a little bit, maybe get some direction from the people, but for all those 24 years, my situation always was to be available.

To have people able to come in and talk with me, and to sit -- and of course, I think I may have mentioned, or Charlie possibly, that unlike most members of 105:00Congress, I basically signed all my mail. Now, there got to be times when things were so hectic that you couldn't, but I always approved the letter that went out to somebody. And I always checked the salutation because if it was being a letter addressed to my wife, I wouldn't want to say, "Dear Mrs. Mazzoli," I wanted to make sure it said, "Helen," as an example. So, I mean, I took very, very heavy care to read the letters and understand what the issues were and sign those letters and put -- my tendency is to put a P.S. on those letter. One reason I think that happily we've raised a pretty good amount of money for our papers project is because all those letters that went out, I did a P.S. on all those hundreds and hundreds [laughs] of letters. Which personalized them and made sure that the potential donor knows that it just wasn't a routine thing. So, what happens to you when you answer the phone calls and when you get these letters on your desk or you carry them over to the House Chamber and sign them 106:00while you're listening to the debate, you get an idea of what's going on. So, I don't think you need too much help from the polls, and so I never did really rely upon them in any magic way as being the silver bullet to solve the problem that I might face in an upcoming election. I had to solve those problems by getting out and around to people, and making sure that I didn't fudge a bit on my early prediction -- my early plans --

KC: Promises.

RLM: -- which was to say, I'll be there when you need me and do everything I can to help you, and you'll know exactly where to find me. I'll still be in the phone book.

KC: The second question, with respect to your relationship to your constituency, is probably a little bit on the philosophical side. But generally, it seems to be that people who represent a constituency in a body like -- like Congress, can have one of two views: they can see themself as the megaphone of the people that 107:00they represent, so that if they know what their constituency wants, they state that and they vote that, whatever their own particular concerns are are secondary because they see themselves as the megaphone of their constituency. Others, along the lines of the philosophy of Edmund Burke, speak more about when you vote for me, of course I want to represent you and I want to represent your views, but you're also voting somebody -- you're voting for somebody that has a conscience, you're voting for somebody that will be thinking about these things. And so, in addition to knowing what you want, I also am obliged to try to know what the best answer is. So, in that tug-of-war, in that -- in those two pulls, how do you see yourself?

RLM: I see myself in the Edmund Burke category. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I can call it to mind right this moment, but I was very fond of carrying in my pocket, for almost all the years I was in Congress, the same as some members 108:00of Congress carry the pocket-sized Constitution with them, I carried Edmund Burke's quote: "Your representative owes you not just his industry, but his judgment, and he betrays rather than serves you if he sacrifices his judgment to your opinion." That may be slightly paraphrased, but what he was saying was, you owe your constituents your industry, your thought, your everything. But in the last analysis, you betray that constituency if what you do is just simply vote their opinion. You have to vote your own judgment colored by their opinion, influenced by their opinion, shadowed by that opinion, illuminated by that opinion, but it's got to be your judgment. And that's what I tried to do. And I was never oblivious because the other thing about being the megaphone, which is an interesting analogy -- I hadn't heard that before -- but I mean, to be the voice of, to vote -- you know, put your finger in the wind and whenever the wind 109:00blows, vote that way -- people do that. Members do that, so long as it's not against their conscience, so long as it's not immoral or, you know, unconstitutional, go ahead and do it. It's a safe way to be, I guess. But that's not my way. And my way, the Edmund Burke way, is the tough way in a lot of ways because that means you've got to explain votes, got to explain a busing vote, and you have to explain the tobacco vote to a tobacco state. You got to explain a Vietnam vote, where you got a lot of Veterans of Foreign Wars who feel -- and they're entitled to feel strongly that, that this effort should continue. We almost had the same thing with Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. But my position always had been the Burke position, and I carried that little card with me always, always, always. First to remind me [laughs] not to differently and just 110:00to simply be the megaphone for your vote 51% of the population, once again getting down to the fact I'm not sure you can discretely say what 51% of the people really happen to be for at any given moment because it depends how you phrase the question, what time of the day they were called, etc, etc. So, I didn't want to put it that way, but I'd like to say I'm -- I read all the mail, I listen to the phone calls, this is before the days of tweets and twitters, and that, but fax -- faxes were in being. People were never -- people are not bashful, people are not bashful. They'll unload on you, if you're doing something that is hurtful to them --

KC: And they have a chance to remove you, in this case, every two years, so...

RLM: That's exactly right. I always said that's exactly the Burke point is. I mean, if you -- if you -- if you betray the people, then they can vote you out. If you don't betray them, they can vote you out. One way or the other, it's a two-year term. That's all you got, and you got to keep proving yourself every two years, which is very difficult. So, I think the Edmund Burke school is the 111:00one I feel most consonant with my own views on things. But it is the school of thought that causes you to have to be continually reinventing yourself, continually moving around, continually talking, discussing, and understanding.

KC: Considering the fact that congressional terms are two-year terms, in 1988, you decided that you wouldn't run again for Congress. And I think went as far as drafting a statement which, in the end, you didn't release and changed your mind. Your thoughts about those?

RLM: Well, actually, I didn't know I had that -- I'd love to see that statement. But every two years, long before 1988 because I was elected in '71 so, you know, ten years later, probably in the early '80s or thereabouts, every now and then, Helen and I would sit down and talk about it. Say, where are we going, you know, because again, I -- and I cannot tell you how much Helen has meant to me as a human being, as a -- in my life, and how much she's meant in campaigns, and just 112:00how important it is for me not to do something that just pleases me or just something aggrandizes me. I've got to do something, and the only time I'm happy is when I'm doing something that she and I can do together in league, in tandem. And so, every couple of years, we'd think this thing out. And so, there may have been a time when I thought it out or we thought it out and we got pretty close and went back and forth.

But it wasn't really until 1993 -- and I think it was we took -- I believe we took our family down to Bethany Beach in Delaware for one week. When we were in Washington, we'd go down to Delaware for one week in each summer. And I think it was down there that we had a family powwow and talked about it, and -- you know, I got to Congress when I was 38, I left when I was 62. Got there when I was healthy, thank God I left when I was healthy. But anyway, to think of something 113:00else to do, and that's where the idea of teaching -- because I was in a lot of classrooms over the years -- had begun. Teaching at Bellarmine, which was a very important experience for me. Had taught -- lectured, more like, more precisely -- along the way at different schools and places. So, anyway -- but we decided at that point to call it a day, but there wasn't -- there weren't many years in a row that we went without thinking, is it time now or do we still have, you know, and so forth. But...

KC: So, there was no particular issue in 1988, except possibly fatigue or just, let's look -- we look at this every few years, and this is a good time to do it?

RLM: Well, understand another thing: it wasn't long after that that I decided not to take PAC funds. It was within the next few years. And so, it could very well have been that though I don't have -- I haven't seen the statement. I can't remember what the heck I said, [laughs] I would love to see it.

KC: Basically, if I recall it correctly, just that you and your wife were reconsidering, as you had stated now, the possibility of doing something else, 114:00and you thought it was time to pursue something else.

RLM: This whole thing, yeah. Well, we had -- there were a lot of things that came up along those years. But it was soon thereafter that we had the -- [laughs] I guess I know Charlie thinks it was kind of a crazy idea, but I remember driving with Charlie -- and that was one of the other wonderful things that I had, too. All these 24 years, always had somebody with me. Either Helen and I would go together to different places, or else Cecil Noel would be with me, and -- or, after Cecil passed on, Charlie. And so, always I had somebody. So, one of many trips that Charlie and I took around town to go someplace, I talked -- 'cause I think I was getting pretty restive about that time, in '88 or thereabouts, with this question of money, having to raise money. I mean, Charlie probably told you in his interview that I hated to raise money. I couldn't bear it.

KC: He mentioned that you weren't very good at it. [Laughs.]

RLM: Well, I was terrible at it. I was horrible at it, Kevin, and it was terrible. And if it hadn't been for some of the people around -- [Joe Helm?] and Tim Martin and earlier, Pat Hohman and Allen Priest and some of these people, and Charlie himself, bless his soul, who were part of our campaign fundraising activity, I mean, we would have foundered much earlier. [Laughs.] I mean, we would have foundered earlier because I wouldn't have been able to raise the money. So, the long and short of it, I didn't like that. I know that I had to be the closer and, you know, they'd set things up and then I'd have to be the closer and, you know, make the "ask," which is that terrible word I hate to use.

But I was really tired of it, and I thought that -- I thought a couple of things would happen. One is I could make a statement about myself because remember, I started out simple, we started out in a basement on Ardmore Drive and I had that sic transit gloria mundi and then I've progressed through these different 116:00things, and all of a sudden, I had a beautiful office and I had a wonderful staff, and I had all of these creature comforts and things like that. And campaign organizations. And I said, could I function again? I mean, really, it's almost like when people ask me, "Why did you go to Harvard when you did?" And I say, "Well, I'm reminded," going back to school when some people are just going to the links. And I said, "Well, I'm reminded of Arnold Palmer," who had that wonderful commercial where he poured this quart of Pennzoil into the crank case of this old tractor sitting out in the field somewhere in Pennsylvania. He wasn't from Donora, but he was from one of the Pennsylvania cities. And off-camera the voice says, "Arnold, what are you doing that for?" He says, "Well, every now and then, I got to see if the parts are still working." And that's why I went to Harvard: I wanted to be sure when I was 70 -- I'm 77 now, 117:00but 70 then -- were my parts -- could I focus, could I function, did I have the energy, did I have the attention span to compete with kids that are 50 years younger than me? Could we do the same thing living in a dormitory? Their houses -- they're called houses at Harvard -- but where all the kids are, a lot of noise, a lot of midnight music, could we do it?

Well, the same way here, I wanted to figure out, by giving up PAC funds, were my parts still capable of working? Could we really get a campaign organization again, à la the basement on Ardmore Drive, still functioning in a modern day era of 1992, 1994? So, it wasn't but a couple, three years later after that that 118:00we made that decision to give up the PAC funds. And then one cycle after that to limit all contributions to $100. People say, "Oh, you know, you're no big deal, I mean, you had ID for all those twenty years, people knew you, you didn't have to worry about all this television and stuff." Well, [laughs] it's called unilateral disarmament: nobody unilaterally disarms. It's just not done. It's not smart militarily, it's not smart from a business standpoint, it isn't smart politically. Unilaterally disarm? Give up money? I mean, are you completely berserk? So, I mean, I would say to those people, yes, I did have ID and yes, it might have been a bit easier for me to give up some of that money source than from somebody else.

And maybe now it wouldn't be possible -- I mean, it's been a whole new epic which is unreal, since I left Congress in 1995. But I did it, and I was so 119:00energized by it, and Charlie will reflect on it, I'm sure, that people came back, volunteers that had been absent those years because we were paying for things. We were paying to get this kind of job done, paying this person to get this done, paying... And we had gotten away from the volunteer aspect. So, anyway, all of a sudden the volunteers came back because they knew that I was vulnerable, and that's what happened.

And I'll tell you this: I'd go back to the Hill on a Monday morning, and there'd be people who'd ask me, say, "Ron, I understand that you're not taking PAC funds -- well, tell me what's going on? You know, how are you doing it?" They were really very interested because they were in the same awkward feeling that I -- they had the same awkward feelings I had about picking up this money. Because you can say that you're objective about how you vote -- and you are, I mean, I don't think you really are prone to vote for the -- for example, the Chamber of 120:00Commerce because you get $1,000 from the Chamber of Commerce, thereafter you're their lackey. I don't think that at all. But you're always wrestling with yourself. You always have this internal churning of whether or not this is your vote, or whether it's a vote that you were conditioned to give because of the money. So, everybody up there wants to know about how -- how did you feel, how did you handle it, what are you doing? Which suggested to me, though not many wound up doing it, because there's a lot of different conditions. You know, sometimes newer members didn't have the idea, sometimes they -- I mean, the ID -- sometimes they felt that they couldn't do it because the other guy was going to spin the living devil out of them. But everybody was interested, and so, I think we were a little bit ahead of our time. I think we were really on the cutting edge because after that came McCain-Feingold and those laws, they all have loopholes that are being exploited now, but at least they're an effort to try to do something about the presence and the influence of money in campaigning. So, it could have been that that letter was pitched along those lines. It could have been that -- that was also 19 -- let's see, '88?

KC: '88, yeah.

RLM: Wasn't that the time, I guess it was that cycle where I lost my chairmanship. I think that might have been in that same era, the same period of -- [both speaking at the same time]

KC: '87, I think, is when you lost that.

RLM: So, it may have been just a leftover feeling that -- 'cause that was not a happy experience, and that's... But it may have been all those things coalesced for that moment. But it wasn't until later, and I left, I tell you this: I was 121:00so, so pleased that... I entered -- We entered, because it was really Helen's venture as well as mine, but we entered politics on our own without encumbrances, without strings attached, [laughs] you know, without any kind of noose around our neck. And we exited the very same way. No strings attached, no noose around our neck, no yoke, no debts to pay, no nothing. We left -- entered freely and left freely. And that's very unusual. Most of the time, you don't enter freely because you're tapped or picked or you're encouraged, and this sort of thing. But we obviously weren't, in that race. [Laughs.] And when you leave, you're asked to leave, like Arlen Specter -- I've known Arlen as a good man, but Arlen was basically told the other day to leave office, they didn't want him anymore in Pennsylvania, that's a chagrining experience. I mean, it's got to be very difficult for anybody, you know, to be told that by your peers, by your -- 122:00by your --

KC: Constituency.

RLM: By your constituency, thank you, by your constituency. And then to have to face them -- well, they don't face them. They don't go back home. That's what happens. So, often they stay in Washington or they stay someplace; they just don't go back because it's really too painful. And so, in my case, in our case, it was just wonderful because we entered the right way and exited the correct way, with what's -- once again, no political bills to pay, no actual financial bills to pay. One of the things I was always so proud of, we always lived within our means. We never did -- which is why I'm still driving a 1985 automobile, which people -- which people chortle and laugh and scorn and ridicule, [laughs] but I said, it still starts, it still gets me where I'm going. But we were -- if we weren't frugal, we were pretty close to it. And we paid our kids' bills through colleges without having to borrow money and without having to go in 123:00debt, without having to consort with lobbyists. I know them and many of them are my dear friends, but we didn't have to hang around with them in order to try and get some money here and there. And so, it just was a wonderful experience of 27 years, counting the State Senate, of nearly three decades, going from my thirties to my sixties, but to enter and exit with honor intact and with head high.

KC: Let's finish our considerations for the day, then, with just your general thoughts. And some of them you've already touched on: the business of a political life. Again, today's theme is about campaigning, and you had mentioned that in the category of things that you didn't care that much for would be the -- raising of campaign funds and so forth. In terms of the things that you liked about campaigning, and in terms particularly of the kinds of stresses that might be developed, in terms of family life or raising children or anything else. What are your general thoughts about that?

RLM: Well, I hated fundraising. I continue to hate it today, and it happens that some of the groups that asked me to join them when I -- when I came back home -- to be on the board of directors were looking to me to be fundraisers. And I've disappointed them mightily because I'm not. [Laughs.] So, fundraising was always difficult and I didn't like to do it. What I liked to do was just being around people. But remember that first -- maybe our first interview, I'm getting a 125:00little punchy now, I can't remember when it was -- but I remember I talked about going to John Taphorn's bar and how I had to steel myself, first to leave the house, and then steel myself to go into the bar. And that's when I told the story about the little card and the union bug.

I mean, I loved to campaign, but it took me a while to get used to it. But now, I love campaign -- I'm not campaigning, but I mean I love to be around people, but it still takes me a moment to get myself geared up. Just the other night, to tell you the truth of it, I went down to Greg -- I supported Greg Fischer in that mayoral primary and they had a big wing-ding down at the Marriott. And so, I was invited to come down, which I appreciated, and I did drive down and went. But you know what, it took me a while to get up enough nerve to walk in that room because I knew what would happen: it would be a lot of fun, but it'd be a lot of people coming up. I'd have to remember names, it would be a lot of energy expended, and I -- you know, and I had to be watching here and watching there 126:00without being furtive. You want to not have your eyes dancing all over the place, but you've got to see what's coming, what's going. So, I knew it'd be a lot of work, and so, it -- it's that, but I love it. I met all kinds of people, saw all sorts of friends from the old days, we had a lot of gatherings and a lot of the people who said they wanted me to run again for office and I say, "If you can convince Helen Mazzoli, and you cannot, then I'll run, but you won't be able to do that." [Laughs.] So, I love to be around the people.

And I'll tell you stories about it. When I used to trail my dad when he did tile work in these companies and places, and I -- as I mentioned before, I wasn't the mechanic, my brother, Richard, was the guy that really did that. But I would ask 127:00questions of all kinds of people: what are you doing, why are you doing that, how can you? And I'd be fascinated to see plumbers plumbing and carpenters making those beautiful mitre joints that made the beautiful header, a beautiful crown molding. I would -- I even -- When I'd travel on trains, my dad and I went once, trip on a sleeper, and I asked the porter -- in those days, they had porters that make up the cars, and asked him about how he did that, how he could -- you know, I mean, I just was always... When I was in Notre Dame, I would take buses to come back home, before airplanes, basically. And that was when Camp Atterbury was open in Indiana, and the soldiers, you know, this was during the Korean War. Soldiers -- I asked them questions. I was probably an absolute nerve-nag, officious kind of kid, all the time asking crazy questions, but I think it was some evidence then, that while I continue to consider myself a shy person, that somehow I was very interested in people. I was fascinated by human beings, I was fascinated by what they could do. Fascinated by -- how do you make a chair? How do you do that? How do you build a building? I mean, where do you get started? Where do you put the materials because you don't have to move them when some other part of the building is done?

And I think that that was -- it wasn't necessarily a precursor of my going into politics, it could have been going into law, going into medicine, careers that I had thought about. I think I might have mentioned that I once wanted to be a doctor, I once wanted to be a priest. But it's just training you to be around people, functioning around people. So, that part of campaigning I liked. Took me a little while, I still have to sort of steel myself to the realities of it. But once I get going, I mean, people even now and then just say, that Ron still works the room, he's still working that room. You know, just like Clinton worked the rope line, they call it, I'm still shaking hands and going here and [laughs]... People still think, "What the hell are you running for?" I say, "Well, the truth of the matter is, I'm running for the border, I'm not running for office, I'm just running for the border, get out of town before the posse rides in, but..." [Laughs.]

KC: Was any of this a source of stress, in terms of your family life, your children and your wife were able to adapt to this? The demands of campaigning, 129:00for instance?

RLM: Well, it's an interesting question. I credit Helen with keeping the family on a very even keel through most of it. It was not easy for the kids when we left to come to Washington. I mentioned earlier that for the first two-and-a-half years, I commuted. I lived in a little hotel on Capitol Hill, the Coronet. I'd come home on the weekend and it was busy -- things were going on, and I would still try to have time with the kids, but it was getting tougher. And so, we did make a decision to leave and come to -- we settled in Alexandria, Virginia. But in order that we would have a family life during the week and not just on that brief, two-day period on the weekend, when it was pretty much of a helter-skelter anyway. So, it was Helen's willingness to uproot herself and it's the kids' willingness, and it was not easy on them, frankly, to leave -- and their friends and their home and come to Washington. I think both of them gained 130:00from it. It was easier for Andrea than it was for Michael; different personalities, different settings. It happens that our next-door neighbor in Alexandria had a girl Andrea's age, so it was much easier for her. But I think they both gained from it. I mean, they've gone places and done things and met people and had experiences and learned in ways that probably they wouldn't have if they had totally stayed at home. But it was Helen who -- every so often, we'd sit down and go over our books, and so, make sure our schedules melded so we could be at Andrea's dance recital or Michael's sport program or his debating contest, or... And I think for the most part, Kevin, we didn't miss. I mean, I think that we were -- we managed to keep the family going.

But if Helen hadn't been there, if it hadn't been her, if she were not the person she is, it would not have worked. I would -- For one thing, I wouldn't 131:00have been in politics at all, or just at any length, because if Helen hadn't found something fulfilling in it herself, something interesting, and if she didn't have this multifaceted way of handling life and the challenges of being a young mother and then being a mother of teenagers and being a wife of a member and going to the White House, and at the same time carrying out the garbage, you know, that would be a little difficult.

But I think having done that, we didn't have the stresses and strains that other families suffer. We've been married for fifty-and-a-half years, and happier now than when we first married, and still love one another. So, there's no -- none of that. There were obviously times when I came in at night and I was just beat up, and there were times when Helen's day was long and difficult and I tried my best to help her around the house. But, I mean, from the stress and the way you're looking at it, a situation that would lead to either emotional problems or marital problems or financial problems or things like that, none of it. I mean, we didn't turn to drink and didn't turn to gambling, obviously didn't turn 132:00to wine, women, and song -- that was never in my genetic makeup. [Laughs.] And it isn't in my genetic makeup now. So, we just -- we lived -- and it's hard to tell people that Helen and I lived a very normal life. Say, "Normal, my God, you work in the Capitol, you went to the White House, and you travel and you're with people that appear on television at night, and you say you live a simple life, a regular, normal life?" Well, we did. And it was because of Helen. We did live a normal life, we loved our children, loved our house. I cut the grass -- still cut the grass -- only once --

KC: You wouldn't consider coming over to my house and cutting my grass, would you? [Laughs.]

RLM: Well, you know, springtime is tough because that grass just jumps up. I'd probably would respectfully decline. [Laughs.] But on a given day, with the right price -- for the right price tag on, I might be over and you hear -- you hear that mower, and all of a sudden, there's Ron Mazzoli in those tattered shorts out there. [Laughs.] I got to tell you the story, I mean, if it's -- it's 133:00part of this whole thing. I wear clean clothes, but tattered clothes, when I cut grass. And Helen says, "God, you've got to just have different clothing." My mother used to go ballistic on me again because I would wear these tattered clothes, but they're clean. Anyway, once, I'm cutting grass in Alexandria -- now, it's one thing if I'm cutting grass in Louisville or cutting grass in the first phase of Louisville and the second phase of Louisville. But cutting grass in Washington -- and I'm in my tattered clothes, beat-up stuff, clean but beat-up, and I'm cutting grass in front of Alexandria -- our house, 1030 Anderson Street. And this car pulls up and slows down and pulls up and backs up. 134:00And I said, I can tell he's observing something. Gets out of the car, guy comes up, he's from Louisville. He's in Washington for a meeting, had some kind of a relative who lives in our neighborhood -- it's called Lincolnia Hills -- and so, [laughs] here he is looking at me, you know, I'm sweating, of course, and I'm wearing these clothes. And I told him, I said: "If my mother were to see what you just saw, she would not allow me to claim to be her son. She would just totally disown me because she's always wanting me --" She said, "You're a member of Congress, look like a member of Congress." I said, "Well, Mother, I'm cutting grass. I mean, that's, you know, you got to wear clothes when you're cutting..." "Look like a member of Congress." And she was always -- I think I mentioned about she'd watch me on C-SPAN and I wouldn't have my tie tucked in. I hope I've told that story, but she would watch me intensely on television and C-SPAN, and she would notice as I walked down the aisle that either had my tie slightly askew or I failed to note somebody's presence or something like that, so she was really like a surveillance camera, all over my life.

One last story about cutting grass, which I love to do because -- I can't say I 135:00love it. It does help me because it's a very orderly process. You start at a place, like a campaign, and you proceed, and then you end it at a place, like election night. It's orderly. You get something done. It isn't like paper, where I've moved paper from one to the other, I've got these phone calls, I never finished them, but when I do, they got more phone calls. It's done, you turn the motor on, you turn the motor off. Once -- and I can't remember what it was -- Andrea and her husband, Martin, and [Katie], our eldest granddaughter, lived in Sugar Land, Texas, outside of Houston. And Martin worked with this chemical company. And so, I'm down there to visit, and to save Martin the time and because I love to cut grass, I cut their grass. I fly to Louisville for a campaign event or some kind of an event, I can't remember what it was -- and 136:00once again, because I like to cut grass, I cut the grass at our house in Louisville. And then, I fly on to Washington to end the week and cut the grass in Washington. So, there was one seven-day span where I cut the grass in three separate states. [Laughs.]

KC: Well, you've persuaded me to go home and cut my grass, now! [Laughs.]

RLM: Well, you better go home and cut it because otherwise I'll do it.

KC: We've been at this for a bit of time today. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to cover quickly?

RLM: The only thing -- I wish I could, I can't -- One of my problems is, you can tell, I can't remember whether I've told this to you before or not. So, sometimes you may have to remind me that, "Congressman, you've already told that story about this, and so..." But I think I've said everything that needs to be said. I filled in some of the gaps. I'm happy that at some point you'll be talking one more time with Charlie, and then you'll be talking with Dennis Clare. Dennis will have memories of that first congressional race that I do not 137:00have. He's the son-in-law of Frank Burke, so there'll be -- he married Lynn Burke -- so there'll be some new info --

KC: And also Mr. Spann, I think, we have.

RLM: We have him, if he can come into town. I was with -- he's been in many businesses. He's owned and run railroads, no less, the American equivalent of the Orient Express, on these baroque-looking things. [Laughs.] He's been the manager and owner of a resort in what they call the "Redneck Riviera," which is down in Panama City, Florida. He has now taken up a new thing, he's representing this Irish whiskey outfit, and you and I talked about hoping to get some samples from [both laugh] -- from Bill. But he passes through town periodically. And I was at a wonderful -- when we talk about immigration, we'll talk about the Mosaic dinner -- M-O-S-A-I-C, which is sponsored by the Jewish Family and Career Services group, and based on Mosaic law -- because the group that supports this 138:00are from the Jewish community. It's also mosaic in the sense of all the immigrants that come together in Louisville, they're little pieces of glass and they fashion together a picture that is a beautiful mosaic. And the idea that -- with these various -- the immigration thing, is that we have wonderful opportunities in Louisville to advance the cause of immigration in the right sense.

And the other night, I was at the Mosaic dinner, and one of the sponsors and one of the people I talked to was Max Shapira, who is -- along with his family, own 139:00Heaven Hill, and I think Jim Beam and some of the big distilleries. And I happened to mention Bill Spann's name, and oh, yeah, Max's eyes lighted up, he said, "Yeah, Bill is --" he mentioned the -- it's not a brewery, I guess it would be a distillery in Ireland that's distilling this Irish whiskey. But anyway, he said Bill is now representing them, and does come to Louisville. So, I talked to Bill earlier and he's to let us know when he might come into town because I want to have dinner with him anyway. He's a lovely guy. You'll just get the biggest kick out of him. Smart as he can be, ran a lot of national campaigns. Came in to help us fashion our campaign around some of these tricky issues of the Vietnam War and busing and things like that. You'll enjoy him. But otherwise, that's it for now. [Both speaking at the same time.]

KC: Well, I certainly will. Yeah, I'll enjoy meeting him, and I've certainly enjoyed today, and both your time and your memories. So, thank you very much, sir.

RLM: Thank you very much, Kevin. I appreciate it.

KC: Look forward to the next one.