REPORTING FOR DUTY
IT’S STILL DARK IN WASHINGTON, D.C., WHEN REPRESENTATIVE JASON CROW GETS UP, PULLS ON HIS SNEAKERS, AND SLIPS OUT THE FRONT DOOR OF THE APARTMENT HE SHARES WITH CONGRESSMAN JOE NEGUSE.
Crow is used to getting up at dawn. As a kid, he woke early to stalk deer in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. In the Army, he didn’t have a choice. Now, as a freshman congressman, he gets up every morning by 6 a.m. of his own accord.
Staying fit is ingrained in the 40-year-old former Army Ranger; he’s been running since before he became a paratrooper nearly 20 years ago. He ran up hills and through longleaf pines with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. He ran from door to door, clearing houses in Samawah during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and he ran through eastern Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain on two subsequent deployments. On this morning he runs from his apartment to the foot of the Lincoln Memorial and back—a precise five miles. Crow knows this route well. Despite the frenetic pace of his inaugural year in office, he still makes time to run it a couple of days a week.
The first half-mile meanders past the iconic silhouette of the Capitol building to a bronze tribute to Ulysses S. Grant astride his war horse Cincinnati. From here, the route provides glimpses of at least half a dozen treasured cultural institutions before winding around the Washington Monument. It’s less than a mile from the 555-foot-tall obelisk to the Lincoln Memorial’s steps, but it’s a sobering path through sculpted testaments to America’s violent, complicated past. The fountains and granite pillars of the World War II Memorial preside over the reflecting pool’s eastern edge, while the Vietnam and Korean War memorials flank the western end, one commemorating those lost in a war we never won and the other remembering a war that technically never was.
Crow could opt for a less crowded and, arguably, prettier run—perhaps along the Potomac or Anacostia rivers—but he always chooses this same solemn five-miler. “It’s a reminder of the responsibility and the people who walked this path before me,” Crow says. “It’s a reminder of what I’m doing here.”
DAY ZERO
Conventional election night wisdom holds that candidates should surrender their cell phones to campaign staff once polls have closed and results start rolling in, so staff can take calls if the candidate is busy and to avoid potential emotional roller coasters from unofficial results. In Colorado, that’s typically around 7 p.m. But when you’re in one of the country’s top congressional races, a hotly contested seat that might hinge on a few thousand votes, the timeline is a bit more malleable.
In 2018, Colorado’s 6th Congressional District race was anticipated to be a later call. Incumbent Republican Mike Coffman had held the seat for a decade, but Crow was polling well. Although he wasn’t quite the political novice some folks had painted him (he’d served on boards and commissions for former Governor John Hickenlooper and Representative Ed Perlmutter and had volunteered on state Legislature campaigns), he also wasn’t as well known as the two Democrats
