Washington In the outer office, constituents were dropping by unannounced, more or less demanding to see the congressman, “right here on his doorstep,” as one visitor insisted. In his inner sanctum office, Representative Gary Ackerman was happily contemplating his departure from all that after 30 years in Congress. “I like to work, but in order to work you need a work product,” said the New York Democrat, who described arriving in the Capitol as a “bright and bushy-tailed liberal,” up from a childhood in a public housing project, eager to pass a law on his first day. He is exiting not so much in despair as relief to be gone from the legislative intransigence that he sees extended across the aisle by the House Republican majority. Sounding like an anthropologist, Mr. Ackerman talked of spending enough time in Congress to remember dealing creatively with an extinct species known as moderate Republicans. “Oh yes, compromise,” he said nostalgically of such long-ago behavior. “They’ve all been quieted, muzzled, taking pledges before they ever get here,” he said, his tone unabashedly partisan. “It’s not that they’re running a Do Nothing Congress — they’re running an Undo Everything Congress.” He quoted a Capitol truism: “Any jackass can kick down the barn.” The low point, he said, was when a Republican friend told him that private caucus meetings featured prayer gatherings where lawmakers hold hands and invoke God for or against specific measures on the House agenda. “In the past, a fight was over how to make a good bill better. Now it’s become Good versus Evil.” As one of scores of lawmakers expected to depart this year, Mr. Ackerman may be typical, with no big, historic law named after him, but a number of successful efforts like spearheading a campaign to feed the starving in Ethiopia and sponsoring the “Baby AIDS” legislation, which required that mothers be notified if newborns tested positive for H.I.V. He survived a political scuffle or two, resigning from the ethics committee in 1992 after being entangled in the scandal over abuses of House checking accounts. In campaigning, he recalls taking out a loan of $160,000 for his first run, and three decades later he admits to cringing at the need to beg people for $1 million-plus every two years to keep his job. He described slinking off to his party’s campaign committee office near the Capitol where, in separate phone cubbies, lawmakers must turn themselves into jolly mendicants to check-writing supporters. “A sad tale of woe to see famous politicians calling and schmoozing, and everyone knows why.” Constituents from the old Sixth District, which straddled the Queens-Nassau border, couldn’t accuse Mr. Ackerman of losing track of home. He chose not to sink deep roots in Washington, and lived on a houseboat on the Potomac called the Unsinkable, which sank and was replaced by Unsinkable II. Over the years, he watched sizable yachts owned by lobbyists tie up at his marina, but he loathes the idea of cashing in as a lobbyist after retirement as so many colleagues do. Only more “hat in hand” behavior, he said, describing a pathetic subgroup of ex-congressmen. “Guys who lose or give up their seats and never go home and hang around town because home is no longer real — and this place became real.” Sometimes he sounds passionate enough to go another two years. But at 69, Mr. Ackerman suddenly decided he had had enough of politics where healthy compromise is off the table, with no sign that the majority pendulum would swing back in time for him. So he quit, and then quickly endorsed Assemblywoman Grace Meng, to help her win the primary in the heavily Democratic district. She fit in with the philosophy he celebrated at a recent farewell dinner, that politics, at its heart, should be driven by a desire to help people, not attack government. Looking back, he says he’s still haunted by some votes he took. One was for the repeal of the 1988 Medicare catastrophic coverage plan. “We were so proud” when the plan passed, he said, “but the seniors became outraged it would cost them $6.35 or something, and started a big rebellion. The public isn’t always right, you know.” Democrats quickly repealed the good measure, following their panicked leadership “like a bunch of sheep,” Mr. Ackerman bitterly recalled. “I didn’t come here to go along, but I went along.” And he regrets voting for the Iraq invasion, he says, on the basis of “contrived, phony evidence.” Still, he departs as he arrived — an optimist about the public’s eventually making good choices. He sports a carnation every day just as he did as a city public school teacher, his first job. His sense of humor is intact. “What do I do with all these plaques?” he asked, puzzling over 11 cartons of them, collected over the years from groups like the East Bayside Homeowners Association and American Veterans for Equal Rights for being a solid public servant. More constituents were coming and going in the anteroom, looking for the congressman who was happily making his own plans to be gone.
