Naming a post office is about the easiest thing Congress does. It costs nothing. It changes no law. It takes money from no one. These bills move under "suspension of the rules" — the fast track the House reserves for things nobody is supposed to fight about.
On March 1, 2016, the House took up one of them: a bill to put Maya Angelou's name on the post office at 200 Town Run Lane in Winston-Salem, North Carolina — the city she called home for more than 30 years, and where she is buried.
Somebody demanded a recorded vote anyway. It passed 371 to 9.
Andy Harris was one of the nine.
Who he voted against
Maya Angelou is one of the most decorated Americans of the last century. Before she died in 2014, she had been northern coordinator for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and she worked alongside Malcolm X. She was the Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. She collected more than 50 honorary degrees.
Two presidents pinned medals on her. Bill Clinton gave her the National Medal of Arts in 2000. Barack Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor this country hands out — in 2010.
She was also the first Black woman to have a screenplay produced. Her 1971 poetry collection was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. And in January 1993, at Clinton's invitation, she wrote and read the inaugural poem — "On the Pulse of Morning," a call for peace, racial and religious harmony, and social justice.
That is the résumé Harris looked at and decided did not deserve a post office.
His reason
Harris didn't hide why. He told the Baltimore Sun in March 2016:
Harris's parents were immigrants who fled communist Eastern Europe after World War II. That's a real family history, and nobody should tell him how to feel about it.
But look at what he actually did with it. He reached back more than half a century, past the medals and the movement work and the classroom and the inaugural poem, to find a reason to say no. Then he used it to vote against a civil rights icon on a bill that cost the federal government nothing.
Every Republican who actually represents North Carolina supported it
Here is the part that makes the vote impossible to explain away as principle.
The bill was written by Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat from Charlotte. And every other member of North Carolina's 13-person House delegation signed on as a cosponsor — all of them, on the very first day the bill was introduced.
Ten of those cosponsors were Republicans: Renee Ellmers, Walter Jones, Virginia Foxx, Mark Walker, David Rouzer, Richard Hudson, Robert Pittenger, Patrick McHenry, Mark Meadows and George Holding. Not one of them found a communism problem.
And these were not moderates. Mark Meadows chaired the hard-line House Freedom Caucus before quitting Congress in 2020 to run Donald Trump's White House as chief of staff. He put his name on the Maya Angelou bill on day one. Harris — who chairs that same Freedom Caucus today — voted against it.
The Republicans who lived with this decision — whose constituents drive past that post office — were unanimous. The congressman from Maryland's Eastern Shore, hundreds of miles away, was the one with the objection.
The Senate then passed the bill by unanimous consent. Not a single senator, of either party, asked for a recorded vote. President Obama signed it into law on June 13, 2016. It is now Public Law 114-174.
Nine House members out of 435 stood against it. Harris was one of them.
Alma Adams answered him
The congresswoman who wrote the bill put out a statement the same day:
"These nine Republicans chose to blatantly disrespect an extraordinary woman who worked to crush gender and racial barriers in our country. In true Maya Angelou fashion, I believe when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
This wasn't a one-time thing
Five years later, Harris did it again — with a different set of people to honor.
In March 2021, the House voted on awarding Congressional Gold Medals to the police officers who fought off the mob at the Capitol on January 6. Five people died in that attack. Two officers later died by suicide. The bill passed 413 to 12. Republicans backed it 194 to 12.
Harris voted no.
He wouldn't talk to reporters about it. His staff sent a short statement to a few outlets saying officers "should never be used as props for politically charged publicity stunts like this bill," then refused to even give Maryland Matters a copy of it. As of that evening, his own website made no mention of the vote at all.
Three months later the House brought back a nearly identical bill. It passed 406 to 21. Harris voted no a second time.
What it tells us
Post office bills and gold medals are the closest thing Congress has to a free vote. There is no fiscal cost, no policy trade-off, no constituent who gets hurt. All they measure is whether a member is willing to say, in public, that somebody deserves respect.
Andy Harris has now failed that test three times: once on a poet who spent her life on civil rights, and twice on the police officers who protected him.
And notice the contrast. Harris had a ready answer about Maya Angelou and communism — he gave it to a reporter the same day. Four years later, handed a resolution condemning QAnon, he became the only member of the House to vote "present" and never explained himself at all. He can be blunt when the target is a dead poet. He goes quiet when it might cost him something.
Marylanders in the 1st District deserve a representative who can manage the easy ones.
Sources
- House Roll Call 104 — H.R. 3735, Maya Angelou Memorial Post Office, passed 371-9 (Clerk of the House, March 1, 2016)
- Rep. Andy Harris votes against naming post office after Maya Angelou (Baltimore Sun, March 1, 2016)
- H.R. 3735 — sponsor, cosponsors and full legislative history (Congress.gov)
- Congresswoman Adams's statement on the nine Republicans who voted against her bill (March 1, 2016)
Photo: Maya Angelou reciting "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Clinton's inauguration, January 20, 1993. William J. Clinton Presidential Library, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
