Talking to ‘Joe the Plumber’

“His presence isn’t what I expected it to be. He’s not big. He’s thin, like a waif. Maybe a hair taller than me. And his handshake — like this ...”

He reached and shook my hand, lightly and quickly, as if he suspected I had cooties.

“He got this look in his eyes,” Wurzelbacher recalled. “I could tell I had thrown him off.”

By J.D. MULLANE Staff Writer

What struck Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher most about Barack Obama was how ordinary he seemed.

“His presence isn’t what I expected it to be. He’s not big. He’s thin, like a waif. Maybe a hair taller than me. And his handshake — like this ...”

He reached and shook my hand, lightly and quickly, as if he suspected I had cooties.

Wurzelbacher had read and seen on TV the tens of thousands who attend Obama’s campaign rallies to experience the captivating oratory of the Democratic presidential candidate.

“I was kind of disappointed. I guess I expected something more,” Wurzelbacher said as he stood outside Geno’s in South Philadelphia. He had traveled from Ohio to appear on Dom Giordano’s talk radio program on WPHT.

“Look, I wasn’t expecting any of this,” he said as fans sought autographs and posed for pictures with him.

“You’re my kinda guy,” said a beaming Joey Vento, who owns Geno’s.

Smiling strangers introduced themselves as “Paul the Machinist” and “Bob the Electrician.”

He’s a political phenom. He campaigns with John McCain, and is writing a book. (Working title: Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream.)

Three weeks ago, his plain-spoken encounter with Sen. Obama made national news and rattled the senator’s campaign coast-to-coast.

Ohio state authorities surreptitiously investigated Wurzelbacher for taxes, child welfare and crime.

How it came to this was happenstance, he said.

On Oct. 12, Obama’s campaign, battling McCain in Ohio, scheduled a door-knocking appearance in Wurzelbacher’s town of Holland, a Toledo suburb. Shrewsbury Street was chosen because it is heavily Democratic and has a large concentration of union workers.

Wurzelbacher was tossing a football with his son, 13, when Obama, crowd following, swept down the street.

“I thought, ‘You know, I always wanted to get one of these politicians in front of me and ask them a question and make them actually answer the darn question.’ So I asked him a question and well, I guess he didn’t answer it quite right.”

The question was about taxes. Wurzelbacher told Obama he wants to purchase a plumbing business, which has receipts of about $280,000 a year.

“Your new tax plan is gonna tax me more, isn’t it?” Wurzelbacher asked.

“He got this look in his eyes,” Wurzelbacher recalled. “I could tell I had thrown him off.”

Cameras recorded Obama offering a loquacious but qualified “Yes.” Obama said the tax money should be given to lower-income earners, adding, “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Spread the wealth? As in income redistribution?

Obama has said that’s not what he meant. But ever since, McCain has called him a socialist. Then reporters called, and Wurzelbacher was invited on TV and radio programs.

“I don’t know if I’m considered a threat to the Obama campaign or not,” he said. “But I have a platform and I’m not afraid of using it. I’m not telling people how to vote, but I am telling them to go out and find the facts. Maybe that’s it.”

The Wurzelbacher family has always made it a point to be wellinformed, to read widely, to listen carefully, and to not be controlled by emotional arguments. One of the first books Joe Wurzelbacher read — at his father’s insistence — was a dictionary, so he could know the range and nuance of the English language.

Even with fame and a book deal, he turned down big money to go with a small publishing company in Austin, Texas, thrilling owner and publisher Tom Tabback.

“I told him I’m thinking about a book on American values, but it has to be what you want it to be,” Tabback said.

“It’s really something that someone with his celebrity would pass up New York money to give me, a small businessman, an opportunity,” Tabback said, as Joe the Plumber slipped outside for a smoke, and to sign autographs and pose for pictures with his South Philly fans.

Mullane’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. He blogs at phillyBurbs.com.

November 2, 2008 8:07 AM

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