Henry Brown: The Petty Apparatchik

The State newspaper in Columbia, which benefits from being part of a chain that maintains a bureau in Washington, broke an exclusive story this morning about Lowcountry Congressman Henry Brown (Republican, 1st District).

On the one hand, its exclusive isn't all that new:  Brown, whose committee assignments give him clout over the U.S. Forest Service, managed earlier this year to get about $1,000 knocked off a $5,700 fine he'd been assessed for setting the Francis Marion National Forest on fire in 2004. The local paper wrote about that in June.

But here's what The State's Washington reporter did: He filed a request for documents related to Brown's case against the Forest Service. He interviewed Bush political appointee Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources, and got him to describe what happened. And The State had the guts to run the story now, even though Brown and his partisan supporters will no doubt complain to their bosses that the whole thing was "timed" to hurt him before the election.

The facts in the story are enough to make any fair-minded person cringe: Our Congressman set a national forest on fire by doing a lousy job of controlling a controlled burn on some of his rural property; when he couldn't get the fine reduced, he filed a frivolous countersuit against the forest service for damages in an alleged incident years before; and by the time his case finally reached resolution, his $1,000 reduction wound up costing taxpayers about $100,000 in Forest Service staff time.

But here's what's really great about the piece: It actually gives the reader a glimpse of the petty little tyrant glaring out at the world from that empty Congressional suit.

I met Brown, who hails from Hanahan, back when he was a rainmaker in the S.C. House.  Brown chaired the Ways and Means Committee, which most people figured made him one of the three most powerful men in the Statehouse, and I was invited to lunch with him to talk about legislative coverage.

There were four of us at the table that day in the otherwise empty dining room above McCrady's: Three newspaper editors and Brown. Behind each one of us stood a server. Every time you took a sip of water, your personal busboy would lean over and refill your glass. The subject was the legislative agenda for the coming year, but we also talked about our industry's legislative priorities.

I left that lunch feeling unclean, as if I'd just encountered something dark and fetid. It was my first inkling that a career as a newspaper editor might not have been my wisest choice.

Brown's rise to Congress was hardly a surprise: Every dealing I had with him, either directly or via reporters I assigned to cover him, further developed my picture of an ethics-free power-broker with a breathtakingly cynical view of the world. For Brown, politics has always been about favors and obligations, about power applied on behalf of those who purchase access to his office. He was ambitious, mean-spirited and mercenary. How could he not rise?

Even his campaign rhetoric reflected the essential emptiness of his bartered soul: Brown dubbed himself "The Republican Workhorse" and went around promising his conservative constituents that he would enlist as a foot soldier for President Bush and the House leadership in their war against  godless liberalism. He has quite literally campaigned as a log-rolling apparatchik who brings home the federal pork so disdained by his principled but annoying 1st District predecessor, now-Gov. Mark Sanford.

As the city editor at the largest paper in Brown's district, bumping heads with him was practically unavoidable. And though the details elude me now, I remember clearly that Brown's direct dealings with me typically began with suspicion, degraded instantly to hostility and moved rapidly to the heart of Brown's leadership style: Threats. Buffoonish, cartoonish threats. That others would refuse to bend to his will was unacceptable him, but persuasive negotiation was simply beyond his abilities.

I wasn't the only one who noticed this trait. Statehouse politicos both left and right loved to talk off-the-record about the man, particularly during his Columbia days. They recognized the insecure, vindictive bully in him, and even his GOP brethren often found him unpleasant, if not downright embarrassing. When Brown announced his first run for Congress, at least some of his Republican colleagues reacted with relief. He was finally out of their hair.

So am I in any way surprised to learn that the Forest Service fielded the same kinds of threats? That Brown's self-centered, inadequate ego simply couldn't stand the notion that all his clout couldn't buy him the kind of  special treatment and deference to which he has grown accustomed? Not at all. Neither does it surprise me to learn that Brown would waste $100,000 in taxpayer money and take a likely net-loss in legal fees to "win" a $1,000 reduction to a $5,700 fine.  He had to teach those Forest Service punks a lesson: Don't mess with Henry freakin' Brown!

Of course, Brown frames his fight with the feds as a win for The People, because he forced the agency to change a policy that penalized burners for damaging public land through negligence. Talk about blowing smoke. Henry Brown couldn't care less about forest service policy, as anyone who's spent 15 minutes with the man would tell you (at least privately).

Would Brown care that his personal vendetta has a policy cost for America?

As a result of Brown’s case, the Forest Service in June rewrote a criminal code to make it more difficult to prosecute people who negligently set fires on federal land — about 80 fires a year in the South alone.

“It will be much harder for us to go after people who allow fires to escape from their property onto the national forests,” said Jack Gregory, who was the Forest Service’s top law enforcement agent in the 13 Southern states at the time of Brown’s 2004 fire.

Why should Brown care? Forests are for liberals. Right?

Brown is running against a candidate I support: Linda Ketner. I've met the woman, and she's smart, personable and tough. What's more, she's running an aggressive, well-funded campaign against Brown's surprisingly befuddled, complacent, evil-empire machine.

Does that mean she'll surprise him in November? Different question. Republicans outnumber Democrats by a wide margin in the 1st, and Brown's Berkeley County base has traditionally voted 2-to-1 for the GOP candidate.

But let's put it this way: If Ketner can win Charleston County (which is not out of the question), run strong in Horry (where's she's been putting a lot of attention) and benefit from higher black turnout and youth voting across the district, then this one might just be in shouting distance. Too bad nobody cares enough to do public polling in these local races anymore.

In the meantime, let me encourage everyone in the 1st District to take a long, hard look at the man you've been electing since 2000. If you see something ugly staring back at you, then you're halfway there.

Comments

[Jeff Tompkins]

Very interesting story. Thanks for highlighting it; I had no idea that was going on. (Sad to say.) I found your blog through Lowcountry bloggers, by the way, and I'll definitely be back!

[JanetLee]

Great story! Thank you. I'm in Henry Brown's district. He sends out detailed surveys (and yearly calendars!) to his constituents. I filled them out. I wrote him e-mails. He sent me e-mails and letters telling my why my opinions were wrong. Somewhere after the second round of letters, I was dropped from the mailing list. I guess he just wants to hear from people who agree with him.

[Anna]

Why is this idiot still in office? Have the people in this district been sleeping for eight years? If I wasn't with Ketner before, I am now.

[Pam]

Boy, talk about needing change! We've gotta get Brown out of there.

[chip]

This is hilarious-

Janet pretending that you two don't know each other, and you're bringing up important information that she'll need to perform her vital civic duty come November.

Of course she's in Henry Brown's district, just like you are. She's your wife, and writes occasionally on this blog. But I guess it just sounds better if it seems that she doesn't know you, huh?

Henry Brown might be bad, but he doesn't hide from what he is. How many Ketner's ads from the TV mention that she's a democrat? How many mention that other quality of hers? You know, the one that doesn't necessarily disqualify her from office, but might be important to some of the people she's trying to convince to vote for her. Because I bet there's a LOT of people who don't know that, and don't know what she's planning on "fighting for" when she gets to Washington, if she does get to Washington.

Sounds like it's time for an IMPORTANT ACTION ALERT! lolz

[Daniel]

Chip:

That's not my wife. And I don't live in Brown's district.

And you make my skin crawl.

[JanetLee]

Chip - Sorry for the confusion. There are two Janets in the lowcountry blogosphere. That is why I attach my middle name, to help keep the confusion to a minimum.

[Janet]

Wait. Dan is a bigamist?!