Second thoughts on Main St. as Wall St. woes hit home

BOULDER, Colo. — Molly Winter, a longtime supporter of Mark Udall, the Democratic congressman for this liberal-leaning city nestled up against the Rocky Mountains, got up Tuesday, looked at the shambles of her 401(k) retirement plan, and dashed off an e-mail message to Udall. It was laced, she said, with some very pointed questions.

"I asked him what his plan is now to reinstate the value in my 401(k)," said Winter, 58, who works for the city and identified herself as a Democrat.

In interviews across the country, in the districts of six members of Congress — three Republicans and three Democrats, three who voted for the bailout and three, including Udall, who voted against it — voters and members of Congress alike said they were grappling Tuesday with a cold, harsh, newfound reality.

What had been perhaps been a philosophical or ideological debate — about the role of government in the financial markets or the wisdom of sending billion-dollar checks to Wall Street, or the political calculus of voting "yes" or "no" for a plan that most people assumed would pass anyway — had become, in the course of one day, suddenly and frighteningly concrete.

"Reality is here," said Winter, who said she still planned to vote for Udall, who is running for the Senate.

Some congressional offices reported a shift in tone and tenor. Strong opposition to the plan in predominantly Democratic districts like Udall's and strongly Republican ones like Rep. Steven LaTourette's near Cleveland, Ohio, melted into an anxious babble, with lots of support for the idea of doing something — anything — that would end the crisis.

"Before yesterday, they were about 200-to-1 against the bailout," said LaTourette, who voted against the package. "Now I'd say it's balanced 50/50 between those who favor a bailout and those who oppose it. I know people who are taking out cash from their savings accounts and literally hiding it under their mattresses."

Still, some people here in Colorado and in the other districts said they were standing pat. They had hated the bailout plan before — some for conservative reasons, some for liberal ones — and were thoroughly glad it was dead. Something better would arise from the ashes, they predicted.

"The thing is that I don't think I got a call from her office to ask our opinion — they didn't call to say, 'Do you want to fill out a survey or what do you think about this?' " said Verona Burks, 56, of Los Angeles, referring to her congresswoman, Maxine Waters, a Democrat who voted for the bailout package. "When they want your vote, they call and keep calling."

Burks, a Democrat who lost a retailing job after 22 years when the company went bankrupt in 2004, now works as an administrative assistant in a restaurant in Inglewood, said Waters and the rest of Congress need to get back to work, and fast.

"I'm of the opinion today, after hearing everything, that she — they — need to go back to the table and figure out a solution that thinks of taxpayers first," Burks said.

Some voters said they sympathized with their elected representatives, facing situations that were unpalatable on either side.

"It's hard to know whether Congressman Lewis was right or not," said Larry Phillips, 28, management consultant in Atlanta who identified himself as a Democrat, referring to his representative, John Lewis, a Democrat who voted against the bailout. "There doesn't seem to be any easy solution," Phillips added. "If he supports the bailout, people will say he's helping Wall Street companies. If he doesn't, they'll say he made the economy even worse."

The pressure was clearly flowing both ways.

"I checked online to see if Kirk voted in favor of the bailout," said John McLaughlin, 52, a consultant from Arlington Heights, Ill, who said he applauded Rep. Mark Kirk's decision — as one of just 65 Republicans in the House — to support the bailout.

"I was going to send him an angry e-mail if he voted 'no,' " added McLaughlin, who has a "Kirk for U.S. Congress" sign on his front lawn. "I don't like the bailout, but unfortunately, we have no other choice."

Indeed, some members of Congress actually seemed to have found a winning position through political fallout after the vote, even as the markets reeled on Monday and the public perception of Congress, many people said, sank another notch.

Rep. Jon Porter, a Republican from Las Vegas who voted for the package, said calls and e-mails had been heavily against the bailout but he voted for it because of the economy's dire circumstances.

That surprised and impressed Julianna Hendrickson, 34, of Henderson, who said it showed an independence in Porter that she had never seen before.

"I will admit I am thinking again about voting for him because of this, and he never did much for me before," said Hendrickson, a Democrat and mother of five whose bank recently reassessed her home and yanked her equity line of credit because of its dwindled value.

A spokesman for Porter said calls and e-mails running strongly against the bailout before Monday's vote had shifted since then to support it.

Some people said the intense level of public input on the bailout plan, in pressuring members of Congress to vote one way or another, was an expression of democracy at its worst.

"I think that the mob shot it down," said Phil Schmidt, 44, an aerospace engineer from Longmont, Colo., in Udall's district.

Udall, who said on the television program "Meet the Press" on Sunday that his mail was divided between "people who say 'no' and people who say 'hell, no,' " said in an interview on Tuesday that he was "moderately surprised" when the bailout package failed. But he said he had known all along that more work needed to be done.

"I'm really not understanding all that's involved in this bailout and why this is such a problem all of a sudden," said Edna Ivery, 63, who is retired from a bank and lives with her husband, Jerry, in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, in LaTourette's district. "I worked in the central office of a bank for 35 years, and things were good — the bank was solid. How did the banks fail so bad, so quickly?" Ivery said.