We’re pleased to welcome contributor Cindy Lamb aboard. Cindy’s a longtime journalist and is well-known in Louisville. She had the opportunity to sit down with John Yarmuth on Saturday, July 12 for breakfast. Below you’ll find a portion of their conversation and the rest will soon be published on VilleVoiceEats.com. Don’t worry, it’s not too hard-hitting because we weren’t there to hammer John. But it’s perfect lunchtime reading. More of the interview is at The ‘Ville Voice and ‘Ville Voice Eats -Jake

It’s not everyone that gets to sit down and pass the salt with their Congressman. We’ve been raised to believe that if we wrote our leaders in Congress things could change. I never expected to have a late Saturday morning to load carbs with mine. A personal hero since I met him at LEO in 1995, Yarmuth brought to life key words that I find useful every day – alternative, grassroots and empowerment. His work is hard and his laugh is easy. He was my willing and gregarious guinea pig for the audition of ‘Gut Reaction’ when I brought it home to Louisville from L.A. over a decade ago. It ran in LEO for almost two years. How could I not invite John to be my first guest as I revive the dinner-view column?

Yarmuth is one of the most accessible and hands-on leaders the state has ever elected and I’m proud of him. His genuine manner and straightforward approach have impressed countless others far beyond the Commonwealth of Kentucky. As casual as he is passionate, informed and curious, Yarmuth is the kind of messenger that you don’t want to shoot.

We caught up with Yarmuth as he wears the carpet thin between the capitol and The Ville. On July 12, he was half-way through his second bid for the 3rd District Congressional seat. He seemed to be grateful for the seat he had on the breezy patio. While traffic on Market Street zoomed by in front of us, a time to be still and be nourished was welcomed.

Check out the Q&A after the jump…

Cindy Lamb: So your schedule is intense?

John Yarmuth: Oh, yeah.

CL: When do you have your private time?

JY: I don’t.

CL: Because you’re not a private person any more?

JY: Well, I thought I was. (Laughs) I used to go to lunch every day by myself, take a book and read. Usually the weekends have been full of events when I’m home so I don’t see a lot of private time.

Like today I went to an event in the Shelby Park neighborhood, after this I’ll be going to a ceremony at The Healing Place, then a house party meet and greet in the south end, then guest pitching at the Metro Dems Picnic softball game and I have a fundraiser myself tonight. It’s neighborhood festivals, church projects, schools, businesses, you name it.

Yesterday, I got back and went to Louis Coleman’s funeral, had a meeting with the mayor, made some phone calls and that was pretty much the whole day. I was at the funeral for three and a half hours. I got to there at 10:30 and stayed till 1:15.

CL: At the end of each visit home to Louisville, is there anything that sort of floats to the top of the list that you might need from us? How can we help you?

JY: Help me? I never look at it that way. Literally speaking there are two ways somebody can help a politician convince people to get out and vote for them, or give them money. So the money part of it we have an organized effort and the other parts just the way I try to do my job, which is doing 700 events in a year and a half…. if you do your job right and you’ve got all these people who know you and appreciate the fact you’re willing to listen to them, if you’re accessible, they’re going to work for you. That takes care of itself. Now, some people don’t do the job that way and some people live in districts that makes that difficult to do. Geoff Davis, whose district goes from Oldham Co to Ashland, six hours from one end to the other, he never has a real chance to get the personal relationships, it’s logistically impossible. He can’t meet enough people in his district but here, you can really touch people a lot of different times. It’s gratifying now that more and more people say I met you at such and such or I saw you there, so it’s not just that I’ve met them once, I’ve had multiple exposures to them.

CL: It’s always good to see you out and about. I caught up to grab a hug while you and volunteers marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade two yeas in a row. Then it’s spottings at Heine Bros or popping up on C-SPAN.

JY: I still believe and I’ve said this now for two and a half years, the vast majority of people only want to know that their representatives care about their lives and are willing to listen. They don’t worry about how they vote; they can’t take time to immerse themselves in all that. If they have a basic trust in you that you care about their lives. Most people just want to be connected to their government. We’ll see if that works in November.

If somebody’s met you, has shaken your hand and can look in your eye and you smile and them and you smile back, you know they’re going to support you. That’s impossible to do on the presidential level, the media, the spin, the polls, the play-acting… going to NASCAR and all that kind of thing. But here you can do it for real. Plus the ability to communicate very efficiently with free media in Louisville, a lot of shows, people can get comfortable with you.

CL: You were comfy as an editor

JY: I’m a pretty easygoing guy. To be honest, that’s the part of the job that I love the most. Now, you know I’m kind of a ham and the Washington stuff is exciting in a way—‘Hardball’ called the other day and wants me to come on, I mean that’s cool to do and I did FOX News last week, standing on the floor making speeches, but I know that’s kind of superficial and not a major part of the job. We did a Congress on Your Corner out in the south end recently, spending, two hours out at the Southwest Government Center. Afterwards, this man and his wife, both of them probably in their mid-70s who had been there the entire time, came up to me He said, “I’ve never felt closer to my government in my life.” That’s a pretty cool thing- to restore their confidence in the government and serve a purpose.

CL: I think that what Michelle Obama was trying to say earlier this year. I feel the same way.

JY: I went out and spoke at Bellarmine recently for the Governor’s Scholars program. Afterwards people came up and told me, ‘We really appreciate the fact that you answer the questions.’ They had gotten typical responses from others politicians.

CL: Are you in touch with the Obamas these days? Will Kentucky have a presence or end up on the back burner?

JY: I don’t think they’re going to spend a lot of resources in Kentucky but I don’t think they’ll ignore us either. I think the polls are going to change –dramatically. I think after the convention, every thing resets. It’s almost like, everything starts opening, the whole political year starts opening. Then the polls will be more meaningful and accurate and they’ll make decisions, and if they see they have a shot here.

One of the polls today has Barack up five points in Missouri. Now, he was going to contest Missouri anyway but Missouri has been going Republican for the last few elections and that’s a huge deal if he can run with that. We’re going to see a lot of that stuff pop up in the last few months of the election. Things like, ‘Oh, my god! He’s got a chance in Georgia!’ And he’ll have enough money to do it

CL: Do you feel a dream team coming on yet?

JY: We don’t know what the surrogate situation’s going to be. Whoever the vice presidential candidate’s going to be, we might get that. I was always a big Wes Clark fan but I think he probably eliminated himself with that recent spat–which I think was totally unfair. He said something that was undeniably true and not even offensive, but they were able to demonize him. Conventional wisdom in Washington seems to be that Joe Biden is the front-runner. I love Joe Biden. Just in terms of qualifications, I think he’d be the best choice.

CL: That was a powerful morning at the opening of the Obama headquarters. It was great to hear David Tandy and Ron Mazzoli speak. How did you come to the endorsement?

JY: I’m sure, as I said that day. He has the best chance of creating the broad kind of personal mandate that will allow him to govern and lead effectively…and as much as I appreciate Hillary’s talents, and she has enormous talents–the Clinton’s are very polarizing -and I always worried about her being able to lead effectively, being as polarizing as she is. I don’t think Barack is polarizing at all. I actually may have been responsible for putting that Regan comment into his head that he got in trouble for earlier in the year. I wrote that to the campaign, that I thought he had the best chance of developing that kind of personal mandate that Regan had, enabling him to be an effective president, even though I disagreed with everything he did. (Laughs) Most everything.

CL: What about other congressional races in Kentucky?

JY: Mitch is very competitive; he’s put himself into the position, because of his leadership role, of having to support the policies that are rejected by 80 % of the country. That’s not a good spot. So he’s tied to the Bush administration and when you’re the most unpopular president in history, that’s not a place where you want to be. Every poll now on the generic party preference for congress is showing Dems have a lead, which is bigger than they’ve ever measured.

CL: Will there be a book?

JY: I’m sure there will be eventually. One thing I’m going to try to do. I’d always wanted to have a book with t collection of my columns, which I’m probably not going to do the way I was originally planning to. I’m thinking about doing a very small book of all my parenting columns. I did a column for ten years every Father’s Day, I traced Aaron’s life. I did a story when he went to college, then his senior year, and his graduation speech. So probably fifteen to twenty columns I wrote about being a dad are there. We’ll see how that goes.

CL: And that was as good a time as any to ask about health care

JY: Before the recent spike in gas prices, the number one issue I heard from my constituents, a huge margin was held. I strongly support universal health care program. I think if Barack is elected and the Congress is controlled by Democrats, which I think is a given, we will have a Universal Health Care System within the next five years where everyone is covered I don’t know what it’s going to look like and I wouldn’t presume to know but the critical factors are, everyone needs to be covered, shouldn’t be employer based, employers are much to fluid now and to tie their coverage to a job is very destructive.

Although I suspect the first plan will involve that but it can’t be sustained.
Statistics are right now that if you’re graduating high school right now you’ll have eight to ten different employers by the time you’re 40. Under that scenario you can’t choose jobs based on coverage. You’re going to be making healthcare and education decisions on whether they have coverage or not.

Secondly, it has to protect everyone from financial ruin. So, there has to be catastrophic coverage. Beyond that, I’m not sure if I can tell you what the system should have in it.

Beyond that, I’m not sure that I can tell you what the system has in it but it has to protect people from financial ruin. The people that don’t want Universal Healthcare, that group is getting smaller and smaller. They tend to demonize it by saying ‘We don’t want the Canadian system. We don’t people to wait six months for health care. Well, people wait months and months now.

CL: People wait months and months to die

JY: People tend to throw these myths out about the Canadian system. The major point is we are the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t have a universal health care system. We spend twice as much per person than any other country in the world and we rank somewhere in the low 30s as to outcome. So we’re spending more while not getting our money’s worth and we’re not covering a lot people, so we can invent a system that does lot better. It’s going to be complicated because you’re talking about reshaping about 20 percent of the economy and that’s not going to be easy.

The business community now is moving toward that, they want it because they can’t afford to pay for employees. The medical community was dead set against it but now they’re for it. People are waiting for it. With that type of general consensus of where we need to go

I’m actually upset that Barack tried to put specifics out there. All it does is give them something to shoot at. It’s a huge problem but it’s also a huge opportunity.

(I’m not completely positive if John knows this or not but the more emphatic he gets during a conversation, the more he makes points by rapping his knuckles on the table top. I don’t notice so much, the ambience of TOAST is nothing less than loud but my digital recording device does. It’s fair to say Yarmuth pounded a few points home, moved a few sugar granules around the table, too.)

CL: Any thoughts of retiring?

JY: (Laughs) I don’t know, I doubt it. Hey, Byrd’s still doing it (Sen. Robert Byrd), a lot of people in their 80s are still doing it.

CL: It’s the new 70s. So, what is on the horizon?

JY: My intention is to serve as long as I think I can contribute and as long as voters will send me back. I certainly want to serve through the first administration of Barack Obama. I think that would be extremely exciting, I think we could get a lot done.