(From the diaries. Participatory journalism at its finest -- kos)
Jim Greenwood and I go back a long time... Twenty-one years plus change. I was 23, he must have been in his early 30s... but I digress... first I'll cut to the quick.
At 7:00 a.m. this morning Jim called his chief of staff to say "I've made a decision." He explained that he was dropping out.
Why?
He believes Kerry is going to win.
And it's payday. He got offered a $400,000-a-year job with some company or other. I didn't get the details on that because I was more interested in the political ramifications... and when you call people who haven't heard from you forever and know they should NOT be on the phone with you, you have to pick your shots.
The Bush people are livid. They feel they will hang on to the 8th District seat (locals will understand when I say: it's Conti or Fitzpatrick, and Boss Fawkes finally gets to pick a Congressman, that's what the Repubs are saying), but they are really mad at Greenwood because he was supposed to be the "moderate Republican" point person in Southeast PA...
I met Jim Greenwood on a snowy January day in his little house on River Road in Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania. It was a strange meeting. I was with Abbie Hoffman, who had just been contracted for a dollar-a-year by the environmental group Del-Aware Unlimited as a consultant to fight the planned "Point Pleasant Pumping Station" of the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO), known as the Pump. He was the local state legislator, a Rippon Society liberal Republican, and he was against "The Pump," a project to divert water from the Delaware River to supply water to the Skuykill River where a nuclear plant named "Limerick" had been build on the banks of a river without enough water to cool it... Think about that for a moment... Construction was to begin on January 7th and time was running out and the local Republicans were so desperate to stop it that they had hired... Abbie Hoffman.
I was there as a result of an ambush, really. I had gone from my home in Massachusetts to my dad's apartment at 2922 Grand Concourse in the Bronx... the building where he was born and where he would eventually die... and Abbie calls me there. "Al! Pack your bags. We're going to Bucks County Pennsylvania."
"But Abbie, it's Christmas Eve!"
"And where would this country be today if George Washington hand't crossed the Delaware on Christmas Eve?"
We left on xmas day.
Anyway, Greenwood was our point man in the media. He was an okay guy. Liked to come down to Dale Stauffer's Applejack Tavern down the street, where the clients all stood up and saluted every time "Okie from Muskogee" was played on the jukebox, which was a lot, and drink a few Rolling Rocks.
He was also a politician and that led to inevitable tensions with the social movement that Civil Society had launched to "Dump The Pump."
And perhaps one day or other I spoke badly of him. That can happen, you know.
So he comes barging into the Applejack Tavern and Rustic Cellar one night and saddles up next to me and says: "I hear you think I'm a pussy."
"Yes, you are Jim. You're a pussy."
I don't even remember what the dispute was about. But Greenwood had the idea that it was very important to convince me, a young squirt of 23, that he was not a pussy.
So I said, "okay, you wanna prove you're not a pussy? Come with me."
It was snowing. And we walked down the path between the canal and the river toward the construction site of the Point Pleasant Pumping Station, where guards were vigiling 24/7. And when we got across the canal from the guardhouse, with the Pinkerton type sitting out in the snow, I pulled some bottlerockets from my pocket.
"You wanna prove to me you're not a pussy, State Legislator? Shoot THESE at the guardhouse!"
And he did!
And we ran laughing all the way back to Applejack's.
It was, as they say, "a bonding experience."
My guess? Jim shot off bottlerockets today at the Court Appointed Bush Administration, because he wasn't having enough fun carrying their water.
Just a hunch.
