About Dan Bolling

Dan Bolling, now retired from a career in Biotech, still cherishes his Midwestern origins, in Richmond, Indiana. Growing up, the Mayor and Congressman were near neighbors. Future President John F. Kennedy campaigned across the street from Dan’s home in 1960. Dan’s grandfather served as the first Chairman of the TVA.

As Albert Schweitzer said, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” The examples around him shaped Dan’s life-long interest in politics and public service.

Over the years, on visits home to Indiana, Dan had many conversations with civic leaders, both in local politics and local government. On more occasions than one, Dan can remember, his interlocuters – including County Party Chairs of the two major Parties – volunteered that “I don’t vote for the party. I vote for the person.”

Learning that even top Party officials in his home state, crossed party lines to vote for the best candidate, regardless of party, inspired Dan to believe a path exists for our politics to become less tribal and divisive, and to hew more closely to the Founders’ first priority as recorded in the Constitution, the achievement of “a more perfect union.”

The good people of Eastern Indiana are first among equals in inspiring Dan’s founding of Non-Partisan Congress, which seeks to keep official partisan politics out of the US Capitol in accordance with Federal law Title 5 US Code § 7324, which prohibits Federal Employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on duty. So that our elected leaders are free to work only for their constituents, and not for a political party.

Dan lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Harriet Sanford.

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How George Norris Inspired Dan Bolling to Found Non-Partisan Congress

George Norris is the inspiration for Non-Partisan Congress. Through Dan’s grandfather, Arthur Morgan, Founding Chairman of the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) Dan has a family connection to Senator Norris.

Who was George Norris?

Here is Kansas Senator Robert Dole’s introduction to George Norris:

“At the end of its 1955 session, the Senate had created a special committee to select five outstanding former Senators. … Senator John F. Kennedy … assembled an advisory panel of 150 scholarly and journalistic specialists on the Senate and its history. …They were to pick individuals ‘distinguished for acts of statesmanship transcending party’ … to encompass ‘leadership in national thought and constitutional interpretation, as well as in legislation.’ …The advisory panel gave its largest number of votes to George Norris.”
-Senator Robert “Bob” Dole

Dan’s grandfather Arthur Morgan, Chairman of the TVA, worked closely with Senator Norris on rural electrification in the 1930s. Norris and his various and transformative civic contributions were the subject a chapter in JFK’s Profiles in Courage, and of numerous conversations between Grandfather Arthur and grandson Dan.

Alfred Lief, Norris’s biographer, described the relationship between Norris, and Arthur Morgan, quoting Norris: “I learned to love the man [Morgan]….some of his ideas…were perhaps too advanced for me…but I never doubted his sincerity or his candor. I thought we were the best of friends.”

The admiration was mutual. Arthur Morgan honored and recognized Norris by naming the TVA’s first projects after the Senator: Norris Dam, Norris Lake (where Dan vacationed as a boy) just outside the new town of Norris, Tennessee, where Dan’s parents, Landrum and Frances married.

The Senator who created America’s first non-partisan legislature, who was voted “most outstanding Senator” by 150 Senate historians passed away in 1944. Seven decades later, in 2014, POLITICO published a piece by Kevin Smith, Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, about George Norris and the non-partisan Nebraska legislature. Not only did Smith’s mention of Norris catch Dan’s attention. Dan is a “Congress-junkie” and was hooked by Kevin Smith’s subtitle, “What Nebraska’s weird 80-year experiment could teach Congress.”

Norris, when he wasn’t busy creating the TVA, rural electrification, authoring the 20th Amendment to the US Constitution, strengthening worker rights – Norris also is credited with creating the non-partisan Nebraska legislature.

Here’s a quick introduction from US Senator Deb Fischer, a former Nebraska state senator, now serving in the US Senate, on how Nebraska’s non-partisan legislature works:

“Nebraska can mentor the Senate through the trying times we are facing right now. [W]e are nonpartisan. We do not caucus. We do not have majority or minority leaders because we are nonpartisan.

In the State of Nebraska, if you want to be part of leadership, you stand on the first day of a legislative session, and you have to nominate yourself and run for that position. So you would nominate yourself for speaker and then we do a secret ballot.

Then we go through the committees … even though officially there is a majority of Republicans … [eight of the committee chairs elected by secret ballot of their peers] --were Democrats because you are rewarded for the hard work you do, for your integrity, for your honesty, for being willing to listen to all sides …to work with each other to try and build those coalitions… because we do work together.

The coalitions change depending on the issue. You can find allies all across the spectrum--from more liberal members to more conservative members. If you have a good idea that is going to benefit the people of the State, your peers are willing to come forward and work with you.”

In honor of George Norris, and inspired also by Kevin Smith, Non-Partisan Congress’s mission is to “Make Washington More Like Lincoln”. (Lincoln, Nebraska is home to the non-partisan Nebraska legislature).

Current Members of Congress: Surely you can see numerous advantages in “Making Washington More Like Lincoln.”

A Non-Partisan Congress. It’s The Law. Title 5 U.S. Code § 7324 (The Hatch Act)

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About Dan Bolling