Tom Steed Remembers Tom Steed
Tom Steed Remembers Tom Steed
Lasalier: Congressman Steed, let’s talk awhile today about some politicking, some campaigning, out on the trail again. What inspired you to run for Congress your first term?
Steed: Well, I don’t really know, and I have a hard time making anybody believe I don’t really know, but the truth is, I don’t. Now, a situation and some circumstances came along and one thing led to another, and I ended up being a candidate for Congress and I suppose that it always felt like people who ran for congressman had some kind of a missing link in their head or something, but, see, I’d been a reporter for a long time, written a lot of politics and knew a lot of politicians and covered a lot of campaigns. And the more I’d seen and learned about them the less I was – what I wanted. And then, since my great ambition was to be a Washington newspaperman, I promoted myself to be a congressional secretary. And after running through three congressmen in four years, and having to close offices and start over again, I got all the Washington I wanted and I didn’t even want to be a newspaperman up there.
So, it had all these things working against it, but Congressman Boren – Lyle Boren had been in office for 10 years and after the war, and, why, after the war they had a lot of this “get behind the man that got behind the gun” sort of thing. And so, Glen Johnson over around Okemah ran against him and defeated him. Well, Johnson hadn’t been in office 6 months until he began to – he was very pro-labor and my – that whole 4th District was not very strong in the labor movement. And so, first the editors and then several other people began to get very disheart – an, disillusioned with him. And they began to look for somebody to run against him. They figured one term was all they could stand of him, and so, by that time I was running an auto agency down at Holdenville, and you get three cars a month and already had them sold when you got them, and then the rest of time you pat your foot, and try to stay out of trouble.
And I’d go around and visit editors – that’s – the newspaper offices were about the only place where I felt at home. And so, the finally decided that since I had been secretary to the congressman from that district when P. L. Gassaway was in – Boren had defeated him 10 years before – that I knew a lot of promising young fellows around the district and why didn’t I bring them some names and backgrounds of these fellows. First you start out with members of the legislature and county attorneys and folks of that sort who are active in politics. So I went to League of Young Democrats’ 4th District Convention and saw – watched the kids operate, you know, and saw several pretty promising young fellows. I don’t know – I think I brought in together 18 names and they’d get together and they’d find something wrong with them. They had a list – they had to be a veteran, they had to be this, they had to be that, and all that. So finally I just got busy doing something else and told them to quit bothering me about it.
So I came in one day – down in the coffee shop at the Aldridge Hotel right across the street from the newspaper office in Shawnee. Four of five of them were in there. And they said, “We’ve been looking for you.” I said, “Well, what do you want to see me for? I told you I done all I could do about your politics.” They said, “Well, we found our man.” I said, “Well, good, who is it?” And he said, “You!” And I said, “I thought I came in here – I thought I just met five friends. Now I know I haven’t got a friend in the house!” Well, anyhow, I don’t know when – they just kept arguing and arguing around, so – well, I began to get kind of the bug. I decided, “Well, I’ll go and feel the pulse and see, first.” Having been secretary of the congressman, I knew a lot of key people in all the towns and had a lot of newspaper friends. And so I began to float around and see what was on people’s minds. And I found four or five things that no one else was interested in and I found out the public had a – like runaway fathers, you know.
And so, I began to study these things and somewhere or other – now see, this is in the first year of a two year term. It’s even before Christmas. Well, somewhere along the line Glen Johnson decided that he wanted to run for the senate. He got a lot of publicity, but in politics I thought most of it was adverse, but I guess he likes his name in the paper some. But anyhow, Lowell Busby down at Ada who (garbled) was on the supreme court – he’d known me when I was in the Boy Scouts and he’d become the father of the Boy Scout movement in Ada. And he was very upset about getting somebody that he realized what seniority was, and he said “We’ve got to find somebody that’s got enough – got the sense that once he’s in there will know how to stay there until he became experienced enough to do some good.” So the first thing I know, I’m a candidate, but in the meantime, by the time Glen – now, if he wasn’t going to run, well, there was several others decided now that they didn’t have to run against – he was a pretty guy on the stump, you know. And a lot of these folks don’t like to tangle with rough opponents.
So finally, there were 8 people, including one woman that got in the race in the Democratic primary. Well, I knew the district well enough to know that I had the largest county in the district, that all I had to do was get in the runoff with Boren, because he was by far the best known of the 8 candidates, and that he would probably shoot his wad pretty well in the first primary – that if I behaved myself and made a good showing and didn’t get anybody’s feathers ruffled I’d have a good chance to put together a winning campaign in the runoff, which I did.
So it – there was one thing I didn’t do, and I was amazed how many people helped me, because I had lost a son – had two sons in the service and I was, too. But I didn’t use that at all as one of my qualifications for office. And so many guys come back from the war were using that, and a whole lot of voters got fed up with it. And when I’d make my speech and – you get a loud speaker and put on top of your car and you drive around and find a shady place on some street in any town you could and play three or four records and make a speech. People thought you were crazy if there was only 5 or 6 people there, but they forgot, you know, up in these windows of – in the offices and in the front of the stores around, there would be a whole lot of people listening that weren’t there looking at you. And they were the ones that I was aiming for because I figured they were the substantial backbone of the community and if you got them interested, why, you’d have a pretty good thing going. And, um, so I’d make about 6 of these appearances a day and run around all over the state. Try to talk to people, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. And – but I was a newspaper man – I didn’t know whether I was making votes or just learning about people – both of them fascinated me.
Lasalier: How did journalism help you in your campaigns in politics?
Steed: First off, it helped me find out what was in people’s minds. I’d ask a question without telling them why I wanted to know. “What would a congressman – what would he be like? What would he be doing? What would you expect of him?” And everybody would tell them, just like if you asked them how they ought to run the postal service, they’ll up and tell you. And besides, if you’re editor of the paper, they wont’ – they don’t wait for you to ask them, they just come in and tell you how to run it anyway. You know, people know more about running a newspaper or the postal service than any other two things in the world! All you have to do to find it out is just get into that business.
Anyhow, it helped a lot because politics are wrapped up in current events. And this gives you a broader concept. Especially since the big issue in those days was this runaway father thing, with this aid to dependent children. Believe it or not, the law in Oklahoma was it was a crime to abandon a child. Well, the welfare office under federal law was feeding that child that the parent had abandoned. But the law prohibited that office from notifying the prosecuting attorney that a crime had been committed. Now here are two government tax-supported agencies that – meeting a problem that a guy violating the law has committed, and yet he is protected from the very law that he violated from having to stand the consequences. Well, one of the first things I did after I got elected, I promised I would and I – through Wilbur Mills, who was then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee – we got the law changed. It made it mandatory that they notify the prosecuting attorney, instead of being prohibited. Things like that interested me. They knew about these kinds of cases. And so. . .
Lasalier: Well, now. . .
Steed: And so, when you talked about things like that instead of the usual what do they think about this or that, you know – things that had already been worn out – people got interested and I knew how to write a story, so I knew how to tell a story verbally. That’s what I did mostly in my speechy work. Narrative treatment of issues.
Lasalier: If I might be presumptuous, when did you start using television?
Steed: Well, I only used television the last three or four times. It wasn’t anything at all. The first time I used television I helped those folks at Ada put in that new television station down there. And, so, I guess it was about in my fifth or sixth campaign. And, so, the first time I appeared on television, I took my wife and my son and my daughter-in-law and my grandchildren down and introduced my family on television and then I made a little Sunday afternoon talk about what had been going on in Washington. The best campaigning I did – after the first one – in the off-times – see, Congress didn’t meet all the time – it would be three or four months a year that they wouldn’t be in session, so that gave you a lot of time to come home and visit with the folks. And you’d be surprised how much you’d learn that would come back home to you in the next session – just by making the rounds.
Well, the business of trying to – I don’t know – be a television star – I’d been a newspaper man and kind of jealous of television and radio both. So – and it cost a lot of money and I didn’t have much of that. And so, I just depended on the printed word most and, so, I didn’t push much time on television.
Lasalier: Well, now, campaigns have become so expensive – a couple of questions: Do you remember how much your first campaign cost in 1948?
Steed: Well, I don’t know the exact amount because we didn’t have to keep those kinds of records then that you do now, but it had to be – for all three elections – the first primary, the runoff primary, and the general election – I had opposition in all three. My total expenditures, including all my printed material and postage and everything else, was less than $15,000. And, ah, the only reason I didn’t spend anymore, I didn’t have anymore!
Lasalier: That’s a good reason. How about the last serious – ah, the last campaign in which you had a serious opponent?
Steed: One year, in my tenth – in my twentieth year – my tenth campaign – the, ah, the nominee for Democrat for governor had gotten into difficulty with the voters and turned off a lot of people, and, so, my district came up about 18,000 votes lower than in normal. Most of those voters were Democrats. That put me in a runoff – in a recount. And I finally won by about 280 votes out of, probably, 60 or 70 thousand. That’s the only real tough one I had, but that was something you couldn’t do anything about because you couldn’t get people to go vote. They were mad at their governor. Of course, he got defeated any – too. But, also, that’s at a time when the Republicans finally got smarter than they had been before. And Henry Bellmon came along and he knew how to organize. And he did a wonderful job of it.
Lasalier: He, ah. . .
Steed: With the result that he. . .he got the maximum vote for the Republicans out. And while it was still a minority on the record, it was – well, it was a majority on those who went to vote. See when the majority stays home, the minority becomes the winner, and that’s what happened.
So all the rest of the times, though, including the time that I lost all my district except my own county in the legislature one day, and had to start from scratch. See, I was a freshman to 50 or to 500,000 of my constituents in my twenty-first year as a member of the House of Representatives, which is almost unprecedented. And, ah, they not only took all my district away from me – they – even the Oklahoma legislature with all the miracles they performed couldn’t figure out how to take a man’s home county away from him. So I got to keep that. But I got 12 other counties, and, ah, so, the transition was quite an experience. But, ah, the people, though, you see, down in Southwestern Oklahoma where they had shifted me over, they had been swapping congressman back and forth – they’d had four or five guys in the same time I was in congress. They never kept anybody more than four years and mostly two. So I came down there as a 20 year veteran. And I was a curiosity. A lot of people came to see me just to see what a guy that could win two or three elections in a row looked like! But they had a lot of unfinished business. And I knew if I got through the first time, which I did, and. . . actually, though, the members of the legislature down there told me, they said “We stole you on purpose. Now we’re going to help you get elected.” And they did. I found out I had a whole lot of eager friends and helpers down there I didn’t know about. But I figured “I got to deliver.” So that’s how I got busy and got some things straightened out that had been hanging fire along time. But, then I became very fond of these folks and I really hated to quit them, but old age took up with me by then.
Lasalier: Let me ask you about during the politicking days about how you raised your campaign money.
Steed: Well, most members have fund raisers. They have dinners where you sell tickets or they’ll have all kinds of parties. I never did have one. The only way I did, I would have a few friends pass the hat here and there. But I guess a lot of the money I got was voluntarily sent to me by people that I had helped or done something for or they just wanted to give me a lift. But, ah. . .
Lasalier: A few dollars here or there – nothing like we read about in the paper today where some political action committee sends a congressman twenty thousand dollars . . .
Steed: They came into the picture late in the day. And I was kind of like Mike Sinar is today, I would take donations from organizations if they operated in Oklahoma. But I didn’t want any foreigners coming in my office and putting their feet on my desk. I was very independent and . . .
Lasalier: Did you ever send any money back?
Steed: Well, if it was not – if it didn’t meet my standards we just mailed it right back at that time and thank them and let it go at that. Now, I was scolded several times by fellows that I had a part in something that their – their business or their industry was brightly interested in and they would say, “Well, you’ve been very beneficial to us. We’d like to help you, but we can only buy tickets to a dinner. Why don’t you have a fundraiser?” And I’d say, “No, I just don’t want to – I can’t do that.”
But, you see, I had something that most politicians don’t get – I had a lot of very strong newspaper support. You can’t buy editorials on the front page like I had. And, ah, if it would sell the papers – if I could rake up money to buy an ad and pay for it, which I insisted on doing if it was an out and out ad. Then the fact they’d run it another ten times before election without telling me about it, I couldn’t do anything about that, see, but I had a lot of help from the press. And, I guess, it was because I knew how to get along with them. I had no secrets to – I felt like I was a public servant, and the best way to let the folks know what I was up to was through the press. And if I was going to come down and make a visit in your town and be there and want you to know and have you come see me – anybody that wanted to – I’d – if I couldn’t find any other good place, I’d ask the editor if I could use his office. So I made him be a party to it. Many times I’d call them on the phone. I’d say, “Look, I got a problem coming up here. What’s the pulse down there?” And, you know it, most of them would say before it was over. They’d say, “Look, you’re getting paid to do that – don’t bother me – whatever you do is alright with me.” (laughter) But the fact that you knew how to communicate with them. You see, newspaper men don’t last very long if they take something in confidence and violate. The rest of the industry will boycott them, too. So I knew how to trust newspaper men.
I, ah, and, you see, (garbled) you have many opportunities, but after I got to be chairman of the Appropriations Committee where I built all the government buildings – let’s assume that we come to the point to where in the process that we were going to build a very nice federal building in your district in one of your towns. Well, there comes a time what we call ‘markup.’ After you’ve had the hearings and you’ve gone through this, but it takes a few days to get that all put together and printed and made public. Well, I give you a card the day we make that decision inside the executive session of the subcommittee, I hand you a card giving you all the details about that. I’d say, “Now you can go ahead and that won’t be a public record for two more days, but you go ahead and announce it in your paper. And be sure you say you did this. And when we have the bill on the floor, why you interrupt me and I’ll brag on you for helping us get this project through.” Well, you see, they all were – it wouldn’t make three lines in any other paper, but it was a big story in that town, wasn’t it? Alright, that was to his advantage, and I didn’t have to do it, and so he was grateful. When my bill’s on the floor and you come around wanting to amend my bill and I don’t want you to, that guy’s going to be on my side. You see, that’s how I’d fix it so that if you didn’t show me the courtesy to trust your amendment with me before hand, you probably wouldn’t get it in the bill.
Lasalier: That’s 32 years of political knowledge right there, isn’t it?
Steed: Well, I just thought it was being practical, you know. Reciprocity is a way of life in our country.
Lasalier: 1948 to 1980 – you had to see all sorts of people running for office during that period of time. Have you thought about then and now and see any kind of difference in the people now as then running?
Steed: It’s altogether different. For instance, I don’t know whether you can get very many people to come out to a political rally any more or not. You know, you used to have all the candidates speak and they’d have pie suppers and that’s why I’ve always said of the three things you really needed most if you’re ever going to run for office, a cast iron stomach is one of them, so. . . Maybe not so much now as used to be.
No, it has changed. The way you communicate with people, of course, with television. But I found out that it depends on what part of the audience you’re trying to contact. Now, there’s one – the country radio station is a very useful tool. People down in small towns with a radio station keep it turned on all day. That’s the only way they have of knowing if anything breaks in the community. The housewives listen to it all day. And so, you can get a lot of mileage with very few dollars in those stations. Now if you’re running advertisements in the paper, all you need in the big town papers is your picture and your name and what you’re running for. That’s about all the people will give you any glance at. But if it’s a weekly paper, you have a lot of reading matter because the people who live in little towns, you see, and have weekly papers read every word in it. You learn things like that.
And, also, the most important thing, after you are in the office, you get scads of mail. All kinds of mail. And you better respond to it. And if you do that – if you have a problem and you write me and you want me to do it, and if I do my very best, even though I don’t do it, I’m not going to lose your gratitude, you see. But if I delay it or ignore it or don’t pay much attention, I’m in trouble. For instance, the last two or three elections I ran, I’d have as many as 35,000 case histories in my files of people that had had problems and that I had either helped them or tried to help them. Now, half those people vote, which is the average. Well, then, that half of those 35,000 who vote, already know all about me. They may not have ever heard of my opponent. And since there are two people in every house, you know, that means that half of the 35,000 becomes 35,000 when the voting comes. Now, if you spot me 35,000 pretty cinch votes before you file against me, you don’t have much of a hill to climb to catch me, now do you? (laughter) You see?
And all the time I’m in the – I’m the only one of those running in that race who is in a position to continue to those personal services that are so important to people. I can give you some case histories that bring tears to your eyes about what you were able to do. See this government is such a huge, vast thing, and the average American has such small contact with it, that when he bumps into a problem, about the only person he can think of that he can – in the federal government is this congressman. Now, if you – if you’re helpful to him or if you just try to – if you can do anything about it at all – he will not forget it. Now, what I did though, see I had one rule – no matter who you were or what I did for you or how successful, I never wrote you a letter during a campaign and said ‘I helped you, will you help me?’ I figured if I hadn’t already won your gratitude, it wasn’t worth asking for it. You’d be surprised, though, how helpful some people – you’d hear of somebody that just set the woods on fire in some community for you, and go down there and they’d say, “Well, you – you know, you did this for me, why shouldn’t I help you?” And it was amazing how many people like that you run into.
Lasalier: There’s a lot more, a lot more, what would you say “help” today in the form of patronage. How much patronage does a US Congressman have?
Steed: Well, not near as much as you used to have. When I became a congressman, you could name rural mail carriers, post masters, and a lot of things like that. All that is a pain in the neck, and it’s very detrimental. People who play the patronage game in politics always end up in trouble.
Lasalier: Yea, but those are votes, aren’t they?
Steed: You get – you make a guy – you got 10 guys that want to be post master and you appoint one, and under the rule, he’s out of politics – he can’t campaign. The other nine guys are mad at you! (laughter) It’s not a very good percent in my book. But, ah, on the other hand if you help the community through the other means at your command, and you get a darn good post master – everybody appreciates it, see? What they really want is service. And, ah, so I didn’t – I didn’t like patronage – I helped get rid of it.
But the thing that you can do now, you can have – I could have – finally, they increased – the work load got so heavy that I could have had 18 secretaries.
Lasalier: Eighteen?
Steed: Eighteen. And they could be stationed in my district or in Washington or wherever I wanted them. Every congressman can do that. You had a certain amount of money, something over $100,000 that you could hire them with. Now, you couldn’t pay them above a certain amount or below a certain amount, but in between you could divide it up any way you wanted. Well, I ended up with always 8 or 9, but I paid a lot more money than the others. And I kept – I had 4 people that had been with me when I left that had been with me over 20 years. Now what they had stored in their head about my district and my people and my state was priceless. And you could only keep people who were a heartbeat away from no job at all, which all congressional employees are. They serve at the whim at the member. And if he drops dead, which one did yesterday, they are all out of a job instantly. And so, they’re not – it’s hard to get good people to live under those circumstances. So I got good people and I paid them good wages and they became as valuable to my constituents as I did, but through seniority and experience. I had been a secretary, see, and I knew what was going on on that side of the table.
I had certain other rules, too. I wouldn’t hire anybody – the first thing I’d tell if I was going to hire you, I’d say, “Now the one thing I won’t stand for, if I ever catch you doing something when I’m not here,” let’s see, “if you’re afraid to do it when I’m here, and I catch you doing it when I’m not here, you’re done for. I’m hiring adults. You have a job to do. If you need an extra hour for lunch, I’m not going to ask you why. If you’re late getting to work, I don’t care. Just as long as you get your work done at your own pace. I know you will be more efficient if you – if I let you use your adult judgment and pace yourself to get this work done.” Well, I had people that worked on nights and on Saturdays and Sundays during election time – I wouldn’t ask them to do that, but they just insisted it on it, because, after all, I had given them the best job they had every had and they couldn’t afford to lose it. So they’d fight their head off to help me get elected. But it had to be a team, or it wouldn’t work.
Lasalier: During politics time, election time, campaign time, in that period of time in which you ran for office those sixteen campaigns, which was the nastiest, roughest campaign you were ever in?
Steed: The first one.
Lasalier: The first one was the toughest?
Steed: Yes. We had some people in it that were very, very nasty, and, for instance, the rally that actually tipped my first primary victory in my lap was held at a little country store out in Seminole County, called Little, Oklahoma. A graveyard, a store, and a church. And I went out there and I took my speaker equipment and everything, and some entertainment, and I invited every county candidate to come out and use my equipment after I had finished. Well, four of my opponents showed up. And, thinking it was a different kind of rally, I guess. But I insisted all of them speak. And I spoke first. And I promised them, now, when I’m through, I’m through. You can say anything you want to, and I won’t retaliate. But I did retaliate in this form. After the one man had been very mean – he called my wife a whore and me a murderer or my own son and a few things like that – and, of course, I’d been to a lot of political rallies as a newspaper man, and that didn’t phase me, but . . . because I handled all mud-slinging this way: I said “Ladies and gentlemen, when any person, man or woman, will try to destroy somebody else’s reputation in order to obtain something they want, that’s a sign that they are mentally sick.” And I said, “You and I have a deep sympathy for people who are sick, don’t we?” (laughter)
Well, what else can you do? You know, it’s . . .if you haven’t anything to do but to tear the other fellow up, what are you in there for? I didn’t retaliate with anybody. I traded – I defeated 39 people in my lifetime and you can’t find where I ever said a derogatory thing about the personal life of any of them.
Lasalier: That’s a good record.
Steed: Carl Albert and I think – set a pattern for the young folks who will follow that proves that even though people say politics are dirty. Sure, I had mud slung on me, but it will wash off. The only time you’re dirty is when it’s inside you. And if you can keep yourself clean inside, you don’t have to worry about any dirty politics. And that’s, ah, that’s one thing I hope that will have an effect on young people choosing a political career because our government needs brains, too. And you can’t be turning them off by the conduct of some of those people in office. And it is a rough game, but after all, who wants a bed of roses? It’s a . . .well, if you ever decide to run for office, I’ll give you a little advice. The first thing you do when you make up your mind you’re going to run, you go in and imaginary room with nothing in there but a table and, and, no chairs, just a table and two mugs. These mugs will be filled with a liquid. One of them will be the most bitter, galling thing that will ever pass your lips. Almost unbearable. The other is the most gorgeous, sweet, juicy nectar that will ever go down your throat. One of them is called defeat and one of them is called victory. You look at both of them. And unless you can convince yourself without any quibbling that you can drink either one of them, don’t you run. Because just as sure as you decide, “I won’t have to drink that nasty one,” you will. And it make (garbled) all your life. It’s a nice way of saying your gone up salt creek, or something, but after all, that. . .
And there’s another thing you get out of running for office – one reward that’s probably not worth the effort! But, you can campaign, you do everything you can do and on election day you haul voters and you just keep on and bingo – at a certain time all polls close. And you can’t quit. You’ve jumped out of a building, now you’re going to have to go all the way down! You don’t know what’s down there. You don’t know whether it’s a feather bed or a bunch of rocks. It’s your life – your future – your pride – everything that’s important to you is there, and you don’t know what it is. One time I had to wait three weeks to find out what it was! It’s going to be hours before you know. Now there’s no one can explain that to you. The best way I know to describe it no one can explain to you what it’s like to get married. You have to do it to learn what it is. Well, you never know – never going to know what that hiatus from the time the polls close and you get the verdict what it’s like. You just have to live it, and it is an experience. Well, having been – going on my newspaper experience again, what I did – they were having a party, you know, to console me if I lost and pat me on the back if I won. And so I just went to the picture show all by myself, and for the next two hours nobody could find me. And all my friends were wanting to knock my head off when they finally did find me, but what good was it? Nobody knew anything.
Well, then, ah, I played a scheme on my opponents. There were 8 of us running. We had a presidential race; we had a senatorial race; we had all kinds of elections. We had 8 congressmen in. And as the returns came in, you know, the television and radio were full of it. They finally would only announce to two high candidates in the races for Congress because they were of secondary importance. Well, I went down to the News Star – see, I was on the Oklahoman when we set up the election news gathering system for the Associated Press in Oklahoma City. So I went down there and I said “Send in 10 or 11 of these little country precincts and then hold off all the rest of them.” So the returns were coming in from all the different counties where my opponents lived, and I’m running a good, strong fourth all the way. Well, by one or two o’clock in the morning, they don’t even mention my name any more because I’m not one of two high ones. And, of course, my friends are all worried and everything, but in the meantime, I had somebody at the election board in every county calling me privately, and I knew what the latest returns in those counties were, and I knew what they were in my home county. But now, we’ve got about 60 precincts in Pottawatomie County, and they only had 10 or 11 in the finals, you know, they were announcing. So finally, I go to bed and it’s all over. I know that I’m at that point number one in the race. And Boren and I were just nip ‘n tuck all along. So the next morning, when the day press comes down, they look for something that’s different, see, and that’s what I shoot for – if I’m not – if I’m not going to be in the runoff, the sooner I’m forgotten, the better. But if I am, here’s what’s going to happen the next morning: the only new thing that the newspapers guys are going to find when they come down and put – get out the afternoon papers is a change in the situation in the congressional race in the Fourth District. All across all the afternoon papers that afternoon said “Dark Horse Named Steed Leads the Congressional Race. . .” Well, when I went out campaigning in the runoff, people came from all around just to see who that dark horse was.
Lasalier: To see who the dark horse was. . .
Steed: It was a million dollars’ worth of free publicity all to do with that little stunt.
Lasalier: Well now. . .
Steed: And that’s what the press can help you do, see, if you know them well enough!
Lasalier: Since – and how you can use the press.
Steed: Yes.
Lasalier: Since 1948, though, you haven’t really been known as a dark horse when you were campaigning. When you got out to campaign each two years, was there any particular approach? In other words, did you say “alright, we’ve got to do this first, and then follow these steps”?
Steed: Well, not really. The – of course, you bent one way or another a little bit by what the burning issue of the moment – you can’t ignore them. But, also, there would be some very hot potato votes you’d cast, like voting to raise your own pay, which is something that everybody’s mad at you about. They think you ought to be a hungry, ah. . .
Lasalier: Public servant?
Steed: Yea, public servant, but you know how I got around that, don’t you? When we voted the first pay raise, why, ah, one of our delegation tried to explain it and the Daily Oklahoman batted us around for 38 consecutive days with nasty stories about us – what a bunch of cheapskates we were for wanting to make a decent wage. Well, they finally run me down at a big Democrat meeting in Tulsa. And if you’ve ever seen a big room full of people, noisy, you know, as they are – I used to think it was whiskey made the noise, but I went to a Bob Kerr party when he didn’t serve anything but buttermilk and orange juice and they made the same amount of noise, so I figured it was people after all. But at any rate, here came the press, and they said “well, we’re going to interview you on why you voted you you a pay raise.” And I said, “well, sure, boys, come close, I don’t want you to miss a word.” All of a sudden you could hear a pin drop. So I said “the question is why did I vote me a pay raise? And the answer is, is because I’m a greedy S.O.B. and I’m – that’s at the end of this G.D. interview.” And I walked off. And they printed that in the paper. Well, if you ask me why I voted that pay raise, you impugn my integrity. I have no other way to get one. Now, if you don’t think that I’m going to wait till I need it and can justify it, well then, you’d ask me why I did it. If you did that, I give you an answer you can’t top, see. I can make a worse answer than you can, and that ends it. Now you can make whatever you want to out of, ‘cause you’re going to anyway.
Well, people said – how – you know, I had some friends and after it was all over and everybody had laughed and had their fun over it, some of my friends said, “now there is a better reason than that, and we want you to tell us what it is.” And I said, “very simple: I wasn’t able to pay my bills on the salary that I went there to get. I didn’t know that, but I found out that – “ and so I said, “I had no intention of running again unless they got a pay raise, because I can’t afford it.” I spent all the money I had getting elected, and now I’m going in debt, and, I said to these people, “If I don’t get some more money, I’m going to end this job in debt.” I said, “I don’t want the guy who takes my job, even though he takes advantage of the fact that I voted me a pay raise – I don’t want him up here trying to do this job when I knew he can’t pay his bills. I know some people around here who would pay them for him. And the minute that happens, he don’t work for you and me anymore. And I’m going to have to live under laws these characters are making up here and I want to make sure that they are all able to pay their bills whether I’m here or not. And so, since I can’t run if I don’t get the pay raise, and since they agreed to make it effective immediately, the least I’m going to get out of having voted for it is that I won’t end up in debt. If it costs me the job, I’m going to be exactly where I was if I don’t get it. Because if I don’t get it, I’m not going to run. If I do get it, vote for it myself and get beat, so what’s the difference?”
But in the meantime, I do know that these fellows making laws, here, I know what they are up against and I know they need this raise. And so, I have to be confident by the fact that I did some good. Well, as a matter of fact, I only had one guy run against me and he didn’t amount to anything, and so, all that dire thing that was going to happen to me for that. . . I told the truth about it, see, in a way. And so people just forgot it – it never was made an issue.
Lasalier: You know, about Oklahoma politics, outside of your own personal experience – your own personal campaigns, what do you remember the meanest, nastiest race to ever take place?
Steed: I don’t know that there’s been – ah, they had a race in – used to be a Democrat – a doctor from Guthrie, and that’s a Republican county, and there was a Republican up there – I have forgotten their names now, but they were just at their peak when I came along first. And they really ripped each other good. And then, they used to have some rip-snorters down in Johnson County. In fact, there been – sheriff races and things like that used to be almost shooting affairs. And, ah, of course, I saw most of those when I was a reporter covering political campaigns.
But, ah, I used to be an assistant – an understudy, though, to (garbled), the famous political radical at the Daily Oklahoman, and I don’t mind too much now telling people I worked for the Daily Oklahoman three different times, but there was a time when I tried to keep that quiet. But, anyhow, it – they had some very talented people, and I associated with them and learned a lot from them. And Otis was one of the – one of the old salts in that business. He got mad at me, and in my first campaign, he made his tour, you know, and of course, I hadn’t started mine yet. I had a limited amount of funds, so I’m going to make the last 10 days a big splurge. I wanted to finish in full sail, you know, instead of starting out big early, and then running out of money. So, by the time he got there, I hadn’t made my big play yet, so he didn’t find me very far in the picture, except in my home county, and, so he didn’t write up a very good story about me. Then when I came out and won it, he blamed me. He said, “You held out on me.” He said, “You let me make a fool out of myself by predicting that you weren’t going to win.” And I said, “Otis, you know, and I know you well enough to know you know, that you wouldn’t have believed a word I told you. That’s why I didn’t tell you, you know, ‘cause I didn’t know myself whether it would work. I just knew what I was going to try.” Well, he forgave me for that and after that, why, I had his help and good will.
But, you know, it’s – there’s a so many things you can’t expect. You have to have a political reflex to be a good campaigner. For instance, in my first campaign I had spent the night at Bristow and the next morning I went down to DePew, which is off the road there a little ways. And, I – it was early in the morning and I drove up. Three men were sitting in front a bench in front of the grocery store across the street from the bank, and I went up and handed them my card. They through my cards on the sidewalk with a great deal of insulting tone and said, “wouldn’t vote for you if you was the last man in the world. . .” and all that. Well, it kind of, you know, startled me a little bit, you know, early in the morning – people ain’t tired yet! (garbled) So I looked at them a minute, and I said “Gentlemen, I know you didn’t intend to, but you did do me a favor. And whatever else happened today, you fixed it so when I get home tonight I’ll know I met three honest men.” And I turned around and walked off. Well, after going to the newspaper office and the post office and the bank and the grocery store, I come to get in my car and here they came. They said, “Hey, we’re not through with you.” Well, I said, “You guys don’t know what a sharp-tongued man I can be if I get a little time to organize it.” So they came up with a big grin on their face and said “You know, there are eight of you running and you’re the last one we’ve“– because I was late getting up there. He said, “We’ve wondered where you were.” He said, “We’ve pulled the same stunt on everyone and you’re the only one that passed!” He said, “We want some of your material,” and he said, “we guarantee you’re going to carry this town.” And I did for 20 years with those three guys. I said, “Well, what’s this all about?” And they said, “You want to go up there and lock horns with those big shots in Washington, and we wanted to see how you’d act under fire.” And he said, “You’re the only one that knew what to do with yourself! So you’re the guy we were looking for.” Now how would you know that something as crazy as that would hit you in the eye.
I made a vote one time, and I made a speech with the – all the joint civic clubs at Ada. Well, this was a very unpopular vote in the House, and I got about 3,000 meanest letters and telegrams the next two or three days you ever read. And when I got down to Ada and walked in there where I grew up, started my newspaper career, got married, all that – knew all these guys – there wasn’t a guy in Ada that would shake hands with me, they were so mad about that vote. So I took all five bills and laid them on the table and I said, “Now. . . ,“ it was a labor deal, see, “I know all about your prejudices and your bias and I know who in Washington has used you and played on that and I know that it’s my hard luck that you can’t see eye to eye with me. You’ve hired me to find out and I did. And it’s not what you think it is, but that’s still my bad luck that you don’t know that and I can’t make you know it because you don’t want to know it.” But I said, “On the outside chance there might be one guy in this town that would be fair enough to realize that there wasn’t one bill, there were five, and I brought them all here, and I’ve brung the reports with me. Now I want you to see what this whole thing is all about. If one guy will do that and give me credit for having done a little bit more than you think I did – put a little bit more into it than you think I did,” I said, “then I don’t mind it because I know. . .” I said, “I knew you were going to take my political life when I cast the vote – I had no – that’s why I didn’t sleep three nights before I cast the vote. But you’re so wrong. That I had to make a choice of living with a damn coward the rest of my life or give in on my job.” And I said, “You’re just too high priced, fellows. I’m going to keep my self-respect.” And I said, “I’m going to walk out of here now and I want you to use your imagination. I’ve got an imaginary sprig of mistletoe on my coattail, and I want you to accept the invitation thereof,” and I started for the door!
There’s an old doctor down there, named Dr. Suggs, that had that big clinic. He never messed in politics. He and Bob Kerr were boyhood friends, but he never publicly supported even Kerr, the man he thought the most of in the world. I didn’t even know he was there. He came up to that platform – that microphone – and he said, “You said you wanted one man – you’ve got him.” He said, “I thought when I came in here that you were wrong, too, because I’d fallen for all this stuff you talk about.” But, he said, “If you believe this so much that you’re willing to give up your career to do it, then I didn’t think I’d ever see a politician like that. Now I’ve got one, I’m not going to give you up.” He turned to these guys and said, “I brought half you guys into the world when you were born. You may be dead set on taking this measure, but,” he said, “I want you to know from now on, you’re going to run over me first.” It took me three hours to get out of that room! That’s the first year I got elected without an opponent on either ticket. That’s a true story. How much sleep I could have slaved if I’d have known that three days before I did it!
How do you know these things? They are inexplicable. Politics don’t have any rhyme or reason sometimes. Well, what you have to do, you have to – you’re a member of the most powerful law-making body the world has ever known. You’re going to have to sign things that will affect every human being on the face of the earth. You can help or hurt the most wonderful way of life and the most prosperous and free-minded nation the world’s ever known. How are you going to be one of the key members of the board of directors of that outfit without having to take some heavy licks? I mean, it can’t be a bed of roses – it’s tough and it’s dead serious. And, ah, even to prepare for war where thousands of people get killed – it’s nothing frivolous about it in any way, shape, or form. You, ah, you can’t find perfect people to run a perfect system of government, but then that makes us less than perfect because we have to use our – do it with people. But you can be as good as you’re capable of being if the people trust you.
Lasalier: To describe your district, the Fourth District, would you say it’s a fairly conservative district? I’m leading up to a question here.
Steed: Well, it has to be because it’s made up of capitalists. The farmer – he’s in business for himself. You’ve got lots of them. You can see there’s – you don’t have a big labor force in the sense that you have at Tinker Field out here with 20,000 employees. So, the small businessman, the small farmer, ah, the professional people – there are so many people that are individualists in their own world. And they have to be conservative, you see, the rank and file taxpayer, and they like to feel like they are getting something for their money. So, you, ah, you, ah, also, they have a – they don’t take all government spending as wasteful. They are not like some of these reptile papers that we read. They know that you can make an investment in education. You can make an investment in vocational training. And there are a lot of ways you can spend money to make money. And the government can do that as well as individuals if it’s done wisely and after full examination and thought. So there’s opportunities for you to be very outgoing, even though you are, what you’d consider, a conservative. Now, I, don’t’ know what I am, but, ah, I just like to do all I can to let every . . . make your deal stand on its own bottom. I don’t like to be a labeled guy. I like to be an open-minded fellow. I thought I was hired by some of the people to represent all of them, and that was my job. They didn’t have time to go up there and find out what all the fine print meant in these bills; that’s what they hired me for. And I tried my best to do that. So, if it got to be one of those damn if you do and damn if you don’t votes, which they have too many of, I guess, you just have to make up your mind and just go and then pay the price.
Lasalier: In light of the conservative nature of this district, do you suppose a woman could ever be elected congressman?
Steed: Well, we had a woman congressman, Alice Robertson, you know, from Muskogee?
Lasalier: Well, I know, but she was over in the Second District and they don’t have any sense at all over there!
Steed: I wouldn’t think that – I’d think that, ah, the right – yea, I believe that, see, the women members of Congress increased two or three times over while I was there. And I didn’t see very many of them that were not average or above. They make good lawmakers. They make a good leavening of the – there’s certain things that women know and react to that escape men and we have all sorts of legislation for all facets of life, and there are times whenever they are very helpful. And they are less apt to be – apparently, they are less apt to be with shenanigans. I don’t know, they just bring a good atmosphere in it and I was very fond of most – all – there were very few of the women members that I thought were a little less than they should have been. Some of them are real stalwarts, and I don’t think you’re ever going to see the time when we’ll have less women in Congress than they have now, and I wouldn’t tell any young lady that I know today that she couldn’t aspire to being elected in this state.
Lasalier: How about just any young person period. What would you say to someone who said, “I think I’ll run for office.” Would you encourage them?
Steed: Well, yes. I think – I encourage them to even go further than that – to think about the government as a career. There are all – we hire over 600 skills to run this government and we have to have some of the brains. We can’t just take the leftovers. You’ve got to make the career service as attractive to some of these aspiring young people as you can, and we have a pretty good system under Civil Service to do that. You have to have a certain kind of temperament to work in some of these, but I don’t think it’s too different, though, what you’d have at General Motors or any of these huge corporations where they are so big they are bureaucratic, too. But, ah, some – I like to live dangerously. I didn’t want to work – I had a job during the war with the War Information and that’s all of that type of federal service I wanted. I’d rather be my own boss and put my neck on the block every two years and see if I can get a renewal of my contract. And then it’s more exciting. It’s – it’s the spice of life to have that club hanging over your head and see if you can survive it. And it’s such a wonderful thing when it comes out alright for you.
You know what you have to remember any young person who’s going to run – the first thing they should know is very few people will ever vote for anybody they don’t respect. It’s just not natural. And so, if you don’t have your own self-respect, you probably won’t have anybody else’s. My dad used to say that a poor man can be a millionaire in self-respect. He said any man who loses self-respect is a pauper. He wasn’t very well educated and he didn’t know a lot of things, but he had a few of those old-fashioned Arkansas ideas that I found were a lot of help to me when the pressure got hard and the roads got rocky, because you need some crutch, you know, sometimes, to help you over the hump. But, ah, if you think you’re going to be a congressman and not have some stormy nights to wrestle with and, ah, have to learn to read what kind of a low-down sneaking rascal that somebody thinks you are – if you think like that, you’d better not get into it. But I’ll tell you, what nine ingrates that you run into, that tenth guy that is grateful wipes them all out. It’s a funny thing.
And, ah, but, see, I like people and they fascinated me, and even when I was a reporter I used to go down to the Union Station and just watch people coming and go because I like to see – just see people, and, ah, I never – there was somebody wrote a book one time, I forgot now who it was, but I had an opportunity to read it and I did, and I got a lot of it, I guess, but they said why we behave like human beings. And from that time on, I just wouldn’t let myself get too surprised at anything anybody was capable of doing. But environment – all sorts of things play a part in it. But, ah, the thing I liked about it, I guess, the most – of course, I like to be able to get some things done that I knew – like the super highway bill and things of that sort that I helped on. But the thing that I liked the most is the fact that there are a lot of human beings in this state that are doing alright today because I could make the difference. Somebody was mistreating them, somebody was neglecting them, they needed a crutch, they needed a helping hand – I always felt that if I reached my hand up for you to help pull me up the ladder, I had to have my other down here to pull some guy below me up the ladder. And so, it’s kind of a – I know people think a silly philosophy, but I always what you had to pay to get . . .and one of the ways you paid for what you wanted, you had to pass it on to . . .
Lasalier: Sounds like you’re about ready to run for office again, Congressman!
Steed: No, I tell you, what I am interested in, though, is helping any aspiring young person I can to some of the dos and don’ts. There are – the thing I hate the most is to go to a political rally and see some bright nice kid get up there and he begins to make boo-boos and you just cringe, like watching a kid on Friday afternoon reciting his lines when he forgets them, you know. You think, “why don’t somebody tell the guy that you don’t do it this way?” You know, I finally came to the conclusion, politics is the only profession in the world where the old ones never teach the young ones – they are afraid they’ll run against them, I guess. But it ought to be – it ought to be handled differently. And, ah, so, that’s why I’m always available to those who want to know some of my ideas on it. And, ah, mostly I don’t know anything about politics I didn’t learn from somebody else. And, ah, it’s – it’s a contribution, I think, to bring in better people in the government and getting better government if you do help. And, ah, it’s like – it’s like everything else, there’s tricks to every trade, and it’s no point in the fellow that has the talent not be able to have it guided enough so he can make full use of it if he aspires to public service.
Lasalier: That’s an offer right there, Congressman, Tom Steed, U.S. House of Representatives, retired, offering free consultation services to any young person who might aspire to public office. Thank you very much, Congressman. We appreciate the politics this afternoon.