Winning Back IL-13-- Meet George Gollin, Particle Physicist

Last year Republican career hack Rodney Davis edged Democrat Dave Gill 137,034 (47%) to 136,032 (36%) in one of the country's penultimate swing districts, IL-13 which stretches from Bloomington and Champaign in central Illinois to Decatur and Litchfield and down to the northern suburbs of St Louis. The PVI is exactly even and President Obama won the district in 2008 55-44% and was edged by a few hundred votes (49-49%) by Romney in 2012. Davis hasn't made much of an impression on anyone and recent polling shows that a good Democratic candidate would beat him-- if he can even survive a primary challenge from Tea Party candidate Erika Harold, Miss America 2003, who was endorsed last week by Herman Cain and raised $65,154 in Q4 to Davis' $285,581.

So that brings us to… a good Democratic candidate. Steve Israel ran out and recruited a garden variety, middle-of-the-road, mushy mystery meat Democrat, Ann Callis. She doesn't stand for much outside of crude identity politics. "She's a Democrat," which means next to nothing. "She's a problem solver"; again… means nothing. She's a woman. Yeah, so is Michele Bachmann. Fortunately though, there's another Democrat in the race, an actual progressive who does stand for something-- and who isn't following Steve Israel's advice to keep quiet about putting his cards on the table. George Gollin is the newest Blue America-endorsed candidate. We asked him to introduce himself in a guest post. After you read it, please consider giving him a hand so that voters in IL-13 have a reasonable choice between Rodney Davis and someone who isn't Rodney Davis-lite.

Why I Am Running for Office
by George Gollin

Our governance is badly broken, and it is only by challenging the injustices that flex and coil beneath civil society that we can address this. We are obliged to drive our country towards greater fairness and justice; if an opportunity arises, we must act.

I teach at the University of Illinois, do research in particle physics, and disrupt (as best as I can) the global trade in fraudulent academic degrees. I have spent all of my professional life attacking complicated problems-- in the classroom, in the laboratory, and in the darker regions of higher education-- but now believe that there is more I should be doing than just this. It was spam, and then dirty money, and then a phone call from a friend that brought this home to me. I am running, as a progressive Democrat, for the United States House of Representatives in the Illinois 13th Congressional District.

A dozen years ago spamming engines began pelting the University of Illinois with messages about “diplomas delivered within days.” After months of this I called the number in one of the ads, hoping to muster enough irritation to be rude to whoever answered.

I learned that I could buy a degree in anything I wanted-- including medicine-- and then discovered that the customers of degree mills held appointments at real universities, at engineering firms, and even at my own school’s College of Medicine. So I published a report about what I had found.

The owners of “St. Regis University,” who sold degrees out of Spokane but pretended to operate from Liberia, saw my report and threatened a lawsuit. Their supporters began threatening to kill my family and bombarding my daughter with obscene messages. Within a year I had convinced the authorities to investigate the St. Regis gang, and was assisting as an evidence analyst. A year after that, armed agents hit seven sites in three states, confiscating computers, documents, and the paraphernalia used to manufacture diplomas.

We learned that the St. Regis hoods were also dabbling in visa fraud; there was child pornography and rumors in the State Department concerning a human trafficking ring. There were indictments and prison terms, and I was elected to the board of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). CNN interviewed me twice.

Betty McCollum, a U.S. Congresswoman from Minnesota, saw one of the CNN stories and began developing legislation with Representatives Tim Bishop (NY-01) and Raul Grijalva (AZ-04). McCollum’s staff asked an Oregon official and me to help with the bill, which they filed towards the end of the 109th Congress. During the next Congress the bill was inserted into the House version of the massive Higher Education Act of 2008.

Congressional hearings in 1984 and 1985 had revealed that “upward of 10,000 or one in every 50 doctors now in hospitals and private practice have obtained fraudulent or highly questionable medical credentials” and that “there may be upwards of 500,000 or one in 200 working Americans who have sought, obtained and in many instances are employed on the basis of some form of fraudulent credential.” Bipartisan hearings in 2004 had returned to the problem, focusing on “Kennedy-Western University,” one of the largest degree mills in the United States. K-W had an office in Wyoming and was even selling to federal employees who were reimbursed-- at taxpayer expense-- for their purchased credentials. So there was congressional awareness of the problem.

Each time I’d go to Washington for a CHEA meeting, I’d spend time on Capitol Hill pitching the diploma mill legislation. It was a matter of good governance, not a left-right issue, and would cost almost nothing to enforce. I hoped it would badly disrupt the $100 million U.S. diploma mill industry. What’s not to like?

The Higher Education Act sailed through the House 354 – 58, with the diploma mill language largely intact. I began visiting Senate offices, particularly those of senators on the Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. But I was surprised when a gaggle of right-wing staffers told me, in effect, that they saw no proper federal role in suppressing the interstate sale of fake medical degrees.

Here’s the part with the dirty money. Between 1998 and 2006 the owner of Kennedy-Western had contributed $12,500 to the Republican Party of Wyoming and the National Republican Congressional Committee. In most of his donations he identified himself as a Kennedy-Western employee.

By the time the Higher Education Act’s joint resolution came out of conference, all that was left of the degree mill language was a scrambled definition of the term “diploma mill.” And a technical loophole in the text allowed a mill to inoculate itself against tripping the definition.

I was furious. We’re talking fake medical degrees, folks. Perhaps the staffers who took a fish knife to the bill had not understood that the term “free enterprise” does not admit criminal fraud into the universe of sanctioned economic activity. Perhaps they wanted to preserve the flow of campaign contributions from the diploma mill industry.

It is abundantly clear that we cannot trust a political system awash in special interest cash to act in the public interest. My colleagues and I tried to move a mildly drawn piece of law, which would not interfere with the activities of legally operating for-profit degree providers. We were trying to put criminals out of business! I learned from this that a professor advocating for policy in the public interest does not have the reach to protect good legislation after it is dropped into the Congressional sausage machine.

There is more. I’ve seen good scientific initiatives, with names like “International Linear Collider” and “accelerator-driven subcritical fission” killed by incompetence and a lack of imagination in the Executive Branch. And, of course, there are the perils that fill the pages of our daily newspapers: chronic unemployment, poverty, the pre-ACA difficulties in obtaining affordable medical care.

It is clear that we have a mess on our hands.

A long time ago, when I was an assistant professor, I tried to hire a fellow who was just finishing his PhD. He got a better offer someplace else, but we’ve been friends ever since. Last year he called and explained why he thought I should run for office. There aren’t enough scientists in Congress (there are three), technology and education are central to economic growth, and other things like that. I said I’d think about it.

Because of my diploma mill work, my family has come under frequent attack for years. Politics is said to have an ugly side, and the 2012 election in my district bore that out. After two restless weeks, I summoned the courage to ask my wife what she thought. Melanie is my best friend, the love of my life, and a woman of enormous accomplishment, and she said “well, I’m not making cookies for anyone, but you should do what you want.” I took that as permission.

There is an Arthurian slant to this. In a dream, the king came upon a land in which terrible serpents had burned and slain all the inhabitants. He drew Excalibur and engaged the monsters, and though grievously wounded, slew the dragons. Arthur awoke, greatly troubled.

So here it is: when circumstance puts a sword into your hands, you are obliged to slay the beast before you.

Before I had a campaign manager, or a politics director, or a finance director, or a graphics designer, or a strategy firm, or a web designer, or field directors, or volunteers-- in short, before I had surrounded myself with people who knew what they were doing-- I was invited to speak at a Champaign County Democrats fund raising dinner.

I had never given a political speech before, and thought that I should say it all straight, and lay out the issues that mattered to me, and what I planned to do about them. I was excited about the changes that were possible, and felt that the catastrophic refusal of Congress to govern opened tremendous opportunities for transformation. I was on fire with the possibilities for change.

I explained about the diploma mill mess and dirty money, then attacked Citizens United. I spoke about education, the cost of college, and declining public support for our universities. I talked about college completion, minority enrollments, and the need to deploy breakthroughs in pedagogy. I described advances in solar cell and battery technology, and how we should generate power by transmuting radioactive waste. In the very center of the speech, at the heart of the speech, at the place where I put the things that mattered the most, I talked about jobs, social justice, poverty, and the insistence of the Right that poor people were irresponsible. I discussed income inequality, and the Progressive Democratic Caucus budget. I talked about data driven public policy, healthcare, voting rights, women’s rights, and climate change. I told the audience I wanted to talk about a breakthrough in mass transit, but would save that for another venue. From time to time people applauded.

In April 2013 there was only one other potential candidate for the Democratic nomination, an attorney who owned four houses and did not actually live in IL-13. I ended my speech by saying that she “and I come from opposite ends of the district. If we run, I expect that next year we will have a friendly discussion about who would like to be the rock, and who would like to be the hard place. Then we will come at [the incumbent] Mr. Davis from the east, and from the west, and return him to private life.” And then I told my audience that “It is our birthright to dream boldly. Together, we can change everything.”

People cheered, and told me afterwards that I am a Progressive.

In an ideal world a political campaign would be about ideas, and policy, and strategies for accomplishing the things that need to be done. Candidates would stand before engaged audiences which asked tough questions, and never shy from a conversation with someone who was not a supporter. We would go to minority churches and union halls, speak to environmental groups and Chambers of Commerce.

We would learn as much as we could about economics and labor law, and about science, and technology, and education. We would learn about corn and beans, and the tremendous social value resident in our small towns and rural areas. We would learn about our district, and about the demographics of poverty and disadvantage. We would learn about (and how to side step) the legislative process, so we could make progress in times of gridlock. We would be engaged, and we would be fearless. And we would not hide our ignorance by refusing debates and fleeing from audiences asking questions. We would not glide through the countryside in the regal and distancing embrace of an armored bubble.

The nature of the job we are seeking is to represent the interests of the people-- all the people, not just those who are wealthy, or those with whom we are at ease-- to the federal government. And we can only do this by spending time in the presence of anyone who will have us, and wants to tell us their concerns. I know that we do not live in an ideal world. The past year has taught me something about politics, and about how important it is to do the politics well in order to have an opportunity to do policy. And we have all learned from the 2012 cycle that IL-13 isn’t your typical rural/small city district: it responds strongly to a clear progressive message that is carried forth by a candidate who travels widely and actually knows what he is talking about.

We all want that which is broken to be fixed, and that is why I am running for Congress.