WASHINGTON — In four months, Senator William “Mo” Cowan has traveled with a congressional delegation to the Middle East, flown aboard Air Force One, and repeatedly visited the White House, where his wife, to her great delight, had her picture taken with Justin Timberlake.
But the Massachusetts Democrat acknowledges his life will soon be far less exciting, as he concludes his stint as a temporary US senator, last in seniority, leaving with little more than an asterisk on the congressional record....
The greatest reward could be his future earning potential. His status as a former senator might prove lucrative should he seek posts on corporate boards or management teams.
Cowan, who said again last week that he does not plan to seek elected office, will leave the Senate at age 44, his professional prime, with a contact list full of senators he now knows on a first-name basis and all the privileges that come with having served in the institution....
A partner at Mintz Levin, the Boston-based politically connected law firm, before joining the Patrick administration in 2009, Cowan said he has not decided what he will do, but he did not rule out becoming a lobbyist and said the profession has gotten an undeserved bad rap....
He wasn't down there long at all and he has already been infected by the place.
Although Cowan has had no time to make a legislative mark, he quickly became popular among his colleagues. Cowan acknowledged a frustration with the gridlock that characterizes Washington, but refused to blame individual senators, who he says are surprisingly friendly across party lines.
“The presumption is if there’s so much gridlock, people don’t like each other. People don’t engage each other,” he said. But “I have been warmly welcomed here and I see how well senators interact with each other, old and new.”
Instead, he blames the “pervasive, pernicious influence of money,” unleashed by the US Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that paved the way for outside groups to collect unlimited contributions. Senators who might otherwise be inclined to seek compromise are forced to extreme positions out of fear that a political group will spend money to try to defeat them, he said.
“It feeds a culture of extremism on the political landscape, left and right,” he said....
Cowan is rarely sought by the media. And when he is, he avoids controversy.
Tuesdays at the Capitol are normally a feeding frenzy for reporters, when senators from both parties hold court outside their weekly policy lunches. Last week, Senator Lindsey Graham, the voluble South Carolina Republican, was surrounded by two dozen reporters, as he offered opinions on, among other things, terrorist threats, sexual assaults in the military, immigration, and the national debt.
Cowan was nearly anonymous in a corridor nearby, offering little information when a wire service reporter asked him to explain whether the farm bill is in trouble. (Cowan, inexplicably, was placed on the agricultural committee alongside senators from the heartland, a rare spot for someone from Massachusetts.)
Related: Senate moves forward on $100 billion farm bill
Also see: Congress Cuts Food Stamps
You call that forward?
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On the same afternoon, Cowan sat through half of a two-hour hearing on the wireless spectrum, part of his duty as a member of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet. Cowan had to leave before his turn to ask a question.
To go where?
Unlike his colleagues, Cowan has no need to hold fund-raisers or solicit campaign donations by phone to support his reelection. Much of his work is ceremonial. He began Tuesday by leading the official Senate prayer, another rare feat. The Senate chaplain was delayed in traffic, and majority leader Harry Reid asked Cowan to do the honor.
Reid complimented Cowan from the floor of the Senate, calling him “one of the nicest and [most] competent people I worked with here in Congress.”
That doesn't reflect well on others, does it?
Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, agreed....
He will be lobbying your office in two years.
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Also see: Meet the Next Senator From Massachusetts
Nor for much longer.
