CIVILITY
explained the problem. “We had screwed something up,” he said. “And I didn’t know Joyce, but I knew that we needed to take responsibility and fix what we had done.”
Decades later, U.S. Reps. Joyce Beatty and Steve Stivers look back on that meeting — her fuming in his office, him ready to make it right — and view it as the beginning of a beautiful friendship, one they wouldn’t mind the rest of the nation learning from.
Beatty, D–Jefferson Township, and Stivers, R–Upper Arlington, have launched the Congressional Civility Caucus, a group that seems to be motivated by former House Speaker John Boehner’s oft-repeated line that you can disagree without being disagreeable.
They do so at a time that is, by most accounts, fraught with Democrats and Republicans disagreeing over issues once thought to be universally agreed upon. Meanwhile, President Trump fires up the base by handing out derogatory nicknames on Twitter, and politicians on both sides are quick to vilify the other.
He’s a 52–year–old father of two young children, a stalwart Republican, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
She is a 67–year–old African–American grandmother, the kind of diehard Democrat who often shows up at events to support her Democratic colleagues.
He says he’s in Congress to get results, not to fight; she says she’s in Congress to be a voice of the voiceless. They are more likely to vote on opposite sides of an issue than not.
They’re an odd couple, but it works. Both serve on the House Financial Services Committee, where they regularly pair up on legislation on everything from financial literacy to issues that benefit the region’s banking industry. They crack each other up, him bursting into raucous laughter when she launches one of the wry one–liners she’s been known to rattle off.
Right now, however, one of the main things they have in common is a desire to end the vitriol.
“This is a tumultuous time in our history," Stivers said. "It’s natural to have tensions, and it’s natural to have disagreements. We don’t want people to avoid those disagreements. We want people to understand there is a better way, where we can all work together.”
“Steve’s not asking me to change, I’m not asking him to change, but there are some things happening that I believe neither one of us like, and instead of just harping on it, we want to do something about it,” Beatty said.
The two got the idea of the civility caucus in December, after both worked on a video for something called “The Civility Project,” which featured Republicans and Democrats talking about why it’s important to work civilly.
They thought about how civility has worked in central Ohio — Reps. Stivers, Beatty and Pat Tiberi, who resigned earlier this month, had forged a friendship despite political disagreements, working together on issues they felt were important to the region.
“We talked about it at home a lot,” Stivers said. “And we decided we should try to figure out how to take that national.”
They’re hoping to recruit people in nearly every major market — Democratic and Republican lawmakers — to send a message of working together.
They've recruited eight other ideologically opposite allies for the caucus: Michigan Reps. Fred Upton, a Republican, and Debbie Dingell, a Democrat; New Jersey Reps. Tom MacArthur, a Republican, and Donald Norcross, a Democrat; Ohio Reps. Dave Joyce, a Republican from Russell Township, and Marcia Fudge, a Democrat from Cleveland; and Reps. Steve Knight, R–Calif., and Stephanie Murphy, D–Fla.
"I think this is a path forward that can really help,” said Stivers.
Stivers said he has no intention of calling out those who he feels violate rules of civility; if he does so, it’ll be outside the caucus. “It's not about shaming anybody,” he said.
Beatty, meanwhile, is less hesitant to hold her tongue. “There may be times as the underdog that I will want to talk about people who are unhinged and undisciplined and making appalling statements that are counter to civility and what I stand for,” she said.
But they agree on one thing: Disagreements don’t need to lead to insults.
“We’re not asking anyone to change who they are,” Stivers said. “We’re asking folks to treat people well.”