Political Junkies Rise Early for C-SPAN Fix

It’s 4 a.m. in California and alarm clocks are blaring across the state as a special breed of early risers scrambles out of bed for a morning fix. Yes, it’s time for a bit of crack-of-dawn video democracy.

C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” show, a serious, early morning chat-fest that has hooked political junkies from coast to coast, begins at the more decent hour of 7 a.m. in the nation’s capital. As the host shuffles a stack of morning papers at the anchor desk, preparing for the first guest, darkness fades around the dome of the Capitol mere blocks away.

Back in the Golden State, however, it’s downright dark as the red light on the C-SPAN camera fires up. Midnight is just 4 hours old. Into living rooms up and down the coast, via the marvel of satellites, comes talk of select intelligence committees and continuing resolutions and any other insider jargon or policy arcana that guests or callers care to sling over their ham and eggs.

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Daniel Hanken does not drag himself out of bed at 4 a.m. to watch C-SPAN. He is already wide awake when the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network starts its broadcast day.

The 26-year-old Pasadena City College student tends to study until the wee hours of the morning. Then, just as the network comes on, Hanken sets aside his political science texts for a healthy dose of the real thing.

“You get the news straight from Washington,” said Hanken, who has never visited Washington but plans on touring C-SPAN’s studios if he ever does. “I was just watching the Senate committee on the CIA and drug connection. There’s no commercials to get in the way. There’s no commentary.”

It’s just raw politics.

“If C-SPAN went off the air it would cause the next American revolution,” said Hanken, speaking up for the network’s intensely devoted following. “You take away people’s whiskey and they get angry. You take away people’s C-SPAN and they get real mad.”

C-SPAN chatter is the background music to Patti Perlstein’s life.

“When I get home I just automatically put on C-SPAN,” said the 37-year-old Encino business consultant. “It’s always in the background. Even when I’m working at my computer it’s on. I find it fascinating.”

Perlstein videotapes C-SPAN’s early morning shows when she doesn’t get up early enough to watch them live. The public policy network allows her to monitor what she regards as the sometimes sinister motives of the Republican revolution. A liberal Democrat, Perlstein occasionally calls in to “Washington Journal” to voice her views and counter those of the typical C-SPAN devotee, whom surveys have described as a conservative white male who is up in his years.

Despite her viewing habits, Perlstein does not regard herself as an activist of any sort. She does not fire off notes to her congressman. She does not volunteer on political campaigns. She cannot name her City Council representative. “I don’t consider myself anything more than a couch potato,” she said.

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But C-SPAN’s gung-ho viewers are quite unlike traditional couch potatoes, who are more prone to take in sporting events, sitcoms and made-for-TV movies than the Senate’s consideration of the omnibus budget bill or a lengthy panel discussion on the future of Medicare.

C-SPAN’s most committed viewers are the sort who can rattle off the names of the chairman of the House Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee, the secretary of Energy and even the House sergeant at arms. And viewer surveys show that in this day of voter apathy, C-SPAN fanatics go to the polls in numbers far higher than the populace at large.

Take Olivia Henderson, a retiree from Mid-City Los Angeles who called into C-SPAN the other day--at 4:48 a.m. California time, no less--to comment on the news of the day.

“I started out voting when I was 18 and I haven’t missed it since then,” said the 59-year-old grandmother, a Missouri transplant who volunteered for House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt’s first congressional campaign two decades ago. “It’s the same with my kids. I told them to vote. I don’t care who they vote for. Just vote.”

Unlike the Washington talk shows that feature elite journalists ruminating among themselves, C-SPAN broadcasts unedited feeds from the legislative front and opens its phone lines to whoever can dial the fastest.

Despite the pesky time difference, Californians are well represented on the air--people such as Bill Saiers, a Walnut Creek brick mason who replays C-SPAN in his head while laying bricks; Becky Rinard, an out-of-work Ross Perot supporter from Colton who sneaks downstairs to watch the broadcast before her daughter and husband arise, and Terry McGee, a San Diego computer distributor who can’t leave home without it.

For them, a morning is not complete without a cup of hot coffee and a good healthy dose of C-SPAN.