Monday Thoughts: Reaching Across the Aisle

By Sam Stone

We often talk about reaching across the aisle to find common ground. So why isn’t it happening? Is it even possible? This week on Breaking Battlegrounds,

Chris Fenton

, Hollywood producer and regular contributor to Fox News among many other outlets, told a story about how CNN won’t have him on because he appears on Fox. That got me thinking back to 2012, when I worked on Martha McSally’s first congressional run in Southern Arizona.

Political operatives in Tucson at that time had a tradition: every Tuesday night the local Democrat campaign types hosted an event at a downtown bar called Drinking Liberally. Everyone was invited. We’d all show up, get drunk arguing politics, and wake up with a hangover the next morning to go back to battle. It was a blast. So shortly after Martha showed up to run for Congress in the special election to replace Gabriel Giffords, I took her to Drinking Liberally. I wouldn’t have walked most candidates in there, but in 2012 Martha McSally was special. I’ve worked with a lot of candidates, including Kari Lake who could charm the pants off almost anyone, but back then Martha was an absolute magnet. A down-to-earth, tough-as-nails fighter pilot who strutted around Southern Arizona in hiking boots, jeans, and rolled up sleeves. She was a huge hit at Drinking Liberally despite the crowd. Several Democrat campaign operatives told me they didn’t want to work against her after that night.

The next morning I woke up to a series of frantic calls starting at 5:30. One of the local conservative radio hosts had seen a photo of Martha at the event (this was the early days of Facebook campaigning) posted by one of the Dems and was going BALLISTIC on her on air. He had callers fired up dialing in to trash her. The other Republican campaigns in that primary organized to trash her for attending. Martha’s supporters were devastated.

By what? McSally didn’t compromise her values or positions over a glass of beer. She was, in fact, doing exactly what it takes to win a campaign in a swing district: making a case to people who normally wouldn’t vote for her. That’s the moment I realized everything had changed. We’d stopped talking to each other. Both sides. Not because those of us working in policy, campaigns, or running for election refused to do so, but because our voters refuse to let us.

On Breaking Battlegrounds we always strive to give our guests room to fully air their opinions. Sure, Chuck and I have our own, and we’re not apologetic about our conservative values, but from day one on we’ve focused on making the Battleground an open space for ideas of every type. We routinely invite reporters from the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and other left-leaning outlets to join us. Those invitations are routinely nixed by management, even when the reporters are eager to join us.

The crazy part is while we lament the lost opportunities for open discourse, I can’t really blame the people making those calls. I never took a candidate back to Drinking Liberally. Never attended again myself. But if we’re never allowed to talk to each other, how does anyone think our current national divisions ever end?

Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Sam Stone only and not his co-host Chuck Warren or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.