Will Flake Change Mind and Run Again in 18

PROVO, Utah —

It was Sept. 28, 2018, and Jeff Flake, the Republican senator from Arizona, stood in an elevator as two women blocked the doors from closing.

Both were sexual assault survivors. They wanted to know why Chip was voting to confirm then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who had been accused of assaulting a daughter at a party while in high schoolhouse.

The dramatic scene was captured on video and quickly went viral.

For many, that may be the lasting paradigm of Flake'south 18 years in Congress, and in some ways information technology embodies him: careful, considered, conflicted.

Simply Flake says it'southward not that moment that all-time defines his tenure in office, particularly his terminal two years. That's captured in a photo taken hours later, showing young man senators hovered effectually him to hear why he wanted an FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh before taking a vote.

Time magazine titled its photo of the scene, "Man in the Heart."

"The homo in the middle," says Flake. "I've lived in that space and information technology'southward not a comfortable place."

Since leaving Washington more than than viii months agone, Flake even so finds himself in the middle. He says at that place is no place for him correct now in the GOP, which is going through "spasms of a dying party" and could be "doomed long-term" if President Donald Trump is re-elected. Sitting in a friend'south condo in Provo where he and his wife Cheryl are escaping the Arizona oestrus while they stop a new home in Mesa, the like shooting fish in a barrel grin that seems to never leave Scrap'due south confront drops when he says he won't vote for Trump. In fact, he's surveying the field of Democrats in search of a candidate.

Erstwhile Sen. Jeff Flake talks well-nigh what he is doing a yr later on he stepped down from the Senate and how he plans to remain a voice for conservatism during an interview in Provo, Utah, on Midweek, July 31, 2019.

Steve Griffin

That's borderline blasphemy in today's earth of hyperpartisan politics, and it surely makes the 56-yr-old conservative stalwart even more than of a pariah in today's Republican Party. But in Bit's mind, that says more well-nigh how American politics and the GOP has changed in the Trump era than it does about him.

Crossing the aisle is something Flake has always stood for. It'southward consistent with the conservative principles he espouses in his volume "Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle." The championship is a reprise of the bible of conservatism published in 1960 past Barry Goldwater, Chip's political mentor, a one-time GOP presidential nominee and U.S. senator.

As Flake notes in the book, his Latter-day Saint ancestors were once Democrats. In the late 19th century, church leaders in his hometown of Snowflake, Arizona, assigned members of the congregation to a political party to ensure they were engaged across the national political spectrum. The story goes that those living west of Main Street would be Republicans and those east of Main would exist Democrats. "There are to this day Flakes in town who have remained faithfully registered Democrats their whole lives and who are always upward for a practiced argument at family gatherings," he writes.

Flake wrote his take on conservatism while in the throes of his own political and personal crisis, spurred in part by Trump'southward surprise ballot. In spring 2017, Flake escaped injury when a would-be assassinator shot upwards a batting practise of GOP congressmen preparing for the annual Congressional Baseball game. His 85-year-onetime father died that June. And his public stands confronting Trump's comport, but support for about of the administration's policies, had alienated Fleck from his Republican and Democratic colleagues.

He knew he'd confront a primary challenger and his polling numbers didn't wait good. Just just as critical to his decision not to seek reelection was the thought of standing on a stage next to Trump and feigning understanding with a rowdy oversupply chanting the latest Trump taunt on Twitter.

"I couldn't do it. No way," he says.

Former Sen. Jeff Flake talks near what he is doing a year afterward he stepped down from the Senate and how he plans to remain a phonation for conservatism during an interview in Provo, Utah, on Wednesday, July 31, 2019.

Steve Griffin

Since leaving office, Flake has continued voicing his views on the speaking circuit, as a contributor for CBS News and lecturing on college campuses. In September, Scrap and his wife will movement to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he will serve a 10-week stint as a resident beau at Harvard's Kennedy School Institute of Politics. He will hold weekly group discussions on his passion: "bipartisanship in a partisan era and … the fate of the conservative movement and where it'south going in the Trump era."

In some of his speeches posted on his website, Flake talks nigh growing upward on the F-Bar Ranch in the high desert boondocks of Snowflake. He tells of riding his horse to a high signal to survey the land for damage or lost cattle then dispatching the cowboys (some of them migrant workers from Mexico) to brand repairs and round upward the strays.

The scene serves as a metaphor for the audience to assess their social and political environs and get involved to mitigate the impairment. Information technology also reflects Flake's approach to life whether serving in Congress, playing survivor on a deserted island (his latest survivor stint in the Republic of the marshall islands was in June with a grouping of executives from the Utah tech firm Podium) or contemplating his next steps after the Senate.

A few days before leaving for a European vacation, Fleck sat down with the Deseret News to talk over his survey of the country of American politics.

The questions and answers take been edited for clarity and length.

Deseret News: In your book, you write about the Republican Political party losing its way and ditching conservative principles in the 2022 election. How exercise yous assess the future of the GOP if Trump is reelected?

Jeff Fleck: I don't call up the president will be reelected. Many of the states thought, I certainly did, that he wouldn't be elected the first time. So it could happen. But if it does, I remember that spells doom long-term for the Republican Party. Probably the best corollary is California and what happened in that location in the 1990s, when the Republican Political party and Gov. Pete Wilson latched on to Prop 187, which was a measure to deter or to stop benefits to illegal aliens. It did rally the Republican base and gave Pete Wilson a 2d term. Merely over time, it turned off Hispanics to the Republican Party in California, and suburban women. Then, since the mid-90s, only Arnold Schwarzenegger has been elected as Republican governor in California. And so he switched to be contained. It will probably be a generation earlier any Republican in California is elected statewide. And then you may win a battle, but yous lose the war. You can drill down on the base, and information technology may work in an election here or there, but at some point yous run out of aroused people.

DN: How do y'all experience about your affiliation with the GOP?

JF: I recollect nosotros all know friends, extended family unit members or family members who simply tin't exercise this anymore. I think that millennials have been walking away from the Republican Party for a while, along with some suburban women. At present they're in a dead sprint. If y'all wait at the last midterms, you volition see that suburban women, the then-called soccer moms, those that came out and gave Republicans majorities in the Reagan era and after that, they look at the president and say that'due south not my party and usually become contained.

DN: Will you go out the party?

JF: No. At some point, you lot ever brand the calculation if we see something irredeemable. I don't think information technology is. I do remember that nosotros tin become ourselves again. Information technology's going to be a lot easier to do after one term than 2.

DN: Recently you lot've also expressed concerns the political pendulum may have swung so far in one management it may not return to what was "normal." What has happened that causes those concerns?

I never have and never will call the president a racist.

JF: When yous alter the political culture, like the president is doing, I'1000 not certain nosotros have tested that as much. You don't know how elastic it is, and if it will snap back. I think it was February, when (Democratic) Rep. Rashida Tlaib from Michigan said in a campaign speech, "we need to impeach the" and used a vulgar term. I tweeted out, "Just considering the president uses rough linguistic communication, shouldn't give the rest of united states of america license to do so. Nosotros ought to be improve than this." Within two days, there were 30,000 comments, not likes or dislikes, but comments on my tweet (and) the overwhelming sentiment was, "if the president speaks this manner, and then so must we." That's Trumpism. And I worry that information technology's going to infect politics completely and yous modify the civilization.

DN: The president'south recent attacks confronting House members who are people of colour take been characterized every bit a deliberate try to energize his base. Why is it hard for Republicans to phone call those attacks racism?

JF: I understand the reluctance to throw terms like that around. I never have and never will telephone call the president a racist. But to endeavor to deny that that was a racist statement, "Go back where you came from?" If yous're in Arizona and you lot talked to whatever of your Hispanic friends, they've all heard that again and again their whole lives, even if they're sixth, seventh, eighth generation Arizonans. That'due south an awful statement to brand. And at that place's no other way to characterize it. Merely that doesn't give me or anybody license to say, "Well, because of that statement, the president is a racist." I retrieve you go too far. And I recollect most news organizations and others tried to depict a stardom. I've said in my book and from the Senate floor, you can't look Republicans to respond to every one of the president's outrageous tweets, it would take all of your time and endeavor and you go and then tired of getting mobbed by reporters who want to know your response. Only there are times when the president goes and so far that you accept to speak out. And I thought that that was ane of those. And if Republicans don't, then information technology merely becomes normalized.

DN: What did the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings reveal to Americans almost the state of politics in Washington?

JF: It was long before Kavanaugh came along that the confirmation process became equally polarizing and as difficult equally it is. But I don't think anybody from either party acquitted themselves very well in the Kavanaugh affair. I call up the way the Democrats came forward with (the allegations of sexual assault) was done in a way not to necessarily find the truth, but to disqualify the nominee. By the aforementioned token, on the Republican side, I thought all along that the reasons that our leadership gave that we couldn't have an FBI investigation were specious, information technology simply didn't make sense.

DN: What was your state of mind when you were confronted in the elevator past the sexual assault survivors?

JF: I was very unsettled. I just indicated that I would vote to accelerate (Kavanaugh's) nomination. Just I still didn't feel good about non having done the FBI investigation. Some Republicans and conservatives dismissed (the women who confronted me) equally activists paying for this. I've never felt that way because what I was hearing from them I'd been hearing from friends and extended family members. These allegations (of sexual assault) struck a chord with a lot of women in particular, and rightly and then, because I think we all recognize one thing this #MeToo era has done is to make u.s.a. all realize that nosotros oasis't taken allegations like this seriously plenty. Information technology did have an affect on me. It wasn't the only thing. But information technology helped me decide to say that I wouldn't advance the nomination until we had an FBI investigation. I idea if he is going to be on the courtroom, the country needs to feel better about the process. And having an FBI investigation, I think, made the country feel ameliorate. We can't brand FBI investigations public. Merely I do wish the country could accept read that study. It was significant. Information technology was substantive. I call up more than would feel better about where nosotros landed had they been able to read that report.

DN: In the cease, Republicans were upset at you because the investigation just delayed the inevitable and Democrats were critical because you voted to confirm Kavanaugh. Is in that location something that people didn't sympathize that made your push for an investigation worth it?

JF: At that place is a picture that was i of Time's photos of the year when my colleagues were all leaning over me and it was titled, "The Man in the Middle." I very much felt like that photo for my terminal 2 years. To the partisans in your party, if yous're not happy with the president'south behavior, or his policies, then you're an backslider. Just on the left, you'll never go as far as they want to go. And that's the trouble today. There is very little currency for deliberation. All of the political incentives right now say, when a big issue comes up like the debt or deficit or immigration or climatic change or Kavanaugh, blitz to your corner, land where you are, and don't deviate, don't indicate for a moment that you might exist persuadable — that the hearing you might be holding might inform your vote, or that the investigation might somehow influence where you are, considering as soon as yous do, then you're striking from all sides.

DN: Did yous ever run to your political tribe when a tough vote came up?

JF: Yes, on occasion. I mention one in my volume on voting against TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program to stabilize the nation's financial system in 2008). And there were other times that I hoped yes, and voted no. Yous find safe in numbers and think somebody else volition carry my water. I've certainly been guilty of that.

What I would like is for the Republican Party to nominate someone else. That doesn't seem like that'south going to happen.

DN: Yous accept a long personal history with immigration, from working with migrants on your family ranch to interest in bipartisan attempts for immigration reform. What do you lot make of the situation today at the border?

JF: In many ways this is a dissimilar event than what we had in the past. (Working on the ranch) it was an open border where largely males who would come up to work and then return (to their land). But as border infrastructure was built up that made it tougher and more expensive to come, families started to come because they only wanted to cantankerous the border once. Only what I learned from that is the vast bulk of those coming beyond just want a amend life and brand a contribution when they get hither. I've always tried to keep that mind, when writing legislation to makes sure at that place is a path to citizenship. I have been very disquisitional of how the administration has dealt with this issue, kind of a bumper sticker manner of "build a wall," as if that solves it, and try to rile people upwards this way. Information technology is a very complicated and complex consequence and nosotros're further away now than we've been in a long time to solving information technology.

DN: You mentioned you were watching the Democratic presidential debates on tv set. President Trump is near likely the Republican nominee. Is there anyone in the Democratic field you would vote for?

JF: I'm more bourgeois than any of the Democrats running for part. What I would like is for the Republican Party to nominate someone else. That doesn't seem similar that'southward going to happen. And you can always vote for a third-party candidate, which I did concluding time, and I'm non ruling that out. I don't call back nosotros're in that location yet, when independents will win nationwide. And so, I would like to vote for a responsible Democrat. I've worked closely with Michael Bennet. He'southward a thoughtful, good man. Amy Klobuchar, I worked with her on a number of issues. Cory Booker has downplayed a lot of his bipartisanship. And Joe Biden. It's been nice to hear him say, "I can work with the other side." That'due south not what main voters want to hear. But information technology's what the country needs to hear because it's true. I wish we had a Republican candidate who would say the aforementioned.

DN: Y'all've made it articulate that you lot are non interested in running for the Republican nomination. But is another run for political role in your hereafter?

JF: I've not ruled that out. Just like I said, I want to permit the fever cool. I'k not rushing into anything. And if I never ran for office again, 18 years in Congress is a expert run.

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Source: https://www.deseret.com/2019/8/13/20802300/jeff-flake-republican-arizona-president-donald-trump-2020-election-mormon-lds

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