Excellent! Especially good to call the home offices..........up close and personal, as it were. :)
Years ago the Majority leader in the Senate was very powerful. The most powerful Majority leader in history was LBJ. Lyndon Baines Johnson had the Senate rules behind him and he used them like an AK47.
After LBJ left the Senate to become JFK's VP, the senators changed the rules to take a lot of the power away from Majority leaders.
But even back then the power of Majority leaders was not absolute. I interviews LBJ in the fall of 1960 when he was running vor V.P. I introduced him at a public appearance and got to ride in the limo, and talk to him before his speech. He told me that he could get Democratic and often even Republican senators to vote his way. Except Senators would turn on him in a heart beat if they heard from a lot of the voters from back home.
He told me of cases where powerful southern senators in one party states would not vote with the rest of the Democratic Party. If they people back home were against it so was the Senator. How did Senators know the people back home were against something? They used the phone calls and mail they recieved as a guide. When the phones would not stop ringing and the mail came in bushel baskets, LBJ said senators would tell him they would like to vote with him.. but the voters back home had spoken and they dared not disobey the people. Senators were afraid of those who can replace them with someone else.
Former Ohio governor Jim Rhodes once told me that all politicians are adicted to fame and power. And the only people who can take that power away are the voters.