Dem
49
GOP
51
We had a brief item last week about Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, and how there might once again be problems with the delivery of vote-by-mail absentee ballots this year. Then we got many questions, one of which we selected for Saturday, about how DeJoy is still on the job, and hasn't been canned by the Democrats. We answered, in brief, that the USPS is a quasi-private company, and so the Democrats don't exactly have the power to can DeJoy at will. We also speculated that maybe the USPS Board of Governors believes DeJoy is not the problem. That prompted reader M.B. in Granby, MA, to send us this piece from Time, which gives a fuller story.
According to Time, the fact that DeJoy is a Trump supporter and a target of, in particular, progressive ire, gives him a certain credibility with many Republican members of Congress. At the same time, he's actually more interested in the task at hand than he is in advancing his own personal agenda. And so, in something that will come as a surprise to many readers, he's become close working partners with... Chuck Schumer.
There are three accomplishments that the article highlights. First, DeJoy lobbied aggressively for the Postal Service Reform Act, which got the votes of all Democrats, as well as 120 Republicans in the House and 29 in the Senate. The Democratic-written legislation does much to transform the USPS, including fund the construction of new, more central processing centers; convert 100,000 part-time workers to full time; establish six-day mail service and stable health coverage for the 650,000 employees of the USPS; and facilitate partnerships with local merchants so they can compete with Amazon.
Second, even though it drove many conservatives nuts, DeJoy personally oversaw the logistics of delivering 500 million government-supplied COVID tests during the pandemic. And third, he worked with Schumer and Senate Democrats to implement a plan by which the USPS' entire fleet will be converted to electric in 4 years.
The article also has a lengthy discussion of what happened in 2020, arguing that it was the result of inexperience, not partisanship. In short, mail was often late because USPS delivery staff would wait for their trucks to be full, rather than departing on time. Coming from private industry, DeJoy ordered that all trucks stick with the proper schedule, full or not. This meant that mail that was loaded in time was delivered in time, but that much mail went undelivered until the next day, creating a backlog. Eventually, he acknowledged his error, rolled back the policy and, according to Time, "embraced a union idea to expedite mail ballot delivery and set up a panel to oversee election mail." As a result, election mail did ultimately get delivered in a timely manner.
Yes, the piece is very friendly to DeJoy. But the reporter, Eric Cortellessa, is no partisan hack, and he's got the evidence to back his assertions. Assuming that Cortellessa has the right of it, well, it's not so hard to understand why the Democrats are not at all eager to show DeJoy the door. They certainly aren't going to find someone else who is willing to work with the blue team, but still has the ears of much of the red team. (Z)