The hidden talents of Pennsylvania lawmakers: a New Yorker writer, an MMA fighter, and alligator rescues

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The work of a Pennsylvania legislator may be defined by bureaucracy and procedure, but lawmaker lives can be a little more colorful in the off-hours.

While the hundreds of legislators in Harrisburg proudly tout their values and communities, they’re often less vocal about their personal hobbies and any extracurricular skills they may possess. Sometimes those hidden talents can be surprising.

The state House boasts an alligator rescuer (Tom Jones), a woodworker (Rick Krajewski), a trained soprano (Liz Hanbidge), a country singer (Shelby Labs), and a former public radio journalist (Elizabeth Fiedler), just to name a few.

In the state Senate, there’s former MMA fighter Marty Flynn. Following in the footsteps of his grandfathers, Flynn originally was a boxer, serving as sparring partner for Bernard Hopkins as the Philadelphia pugilist trained to fight Félix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya in the 2000s. Flynn later stepped into the octagon “for fun,” he told PA Local. His injuries included “around 40 stitches.”

Asked if politics share any ground with combat sports, he said, “Yes, you know that you have a fight on your hands, the only problem is that in politics it’s dark and there is more than one opponent, and they have knives.”

As for why he stopped fighting, Flynn, now 49, said the answer is simple: “Age.”

In the first installment of what we hope will be a recurring feature about the hidden talents of Pennsylvania lawmakers, PA Local is highlighting a recent conversation with state Sen. Nikil Saval, an accomplished scribe who’s written extensively in some of America’s most prestigious publications.

His piece on “James C. Scott and the Art of Resistance” appeared in the New Yorker in April. Saval has written for the magazine since 2016. The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

PA Local: When were you first published? What was the piece about?

Saval: The first piece I published was in n+1. I wrote a review of an avant-garde opera about German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin called Shadowtime, by composer Brian Ferneyhough and poet Charles Bernstein. This was in 2005. Shadowtime was premiered in Munich in May 2004, but it had its American premiere in July 2005 at the Lincoln Center Festival. I had just graduated from college and was still living in New York. Eventually I became a co-editor of n+1. When I first came to the Senate, I was serving on its board. Right now, I’m a contributing editor.

Salman Rushdie said “Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.” Do you agree?

This is a quote that I’ve thought about a lot. I’d say it’s mostly true but not entirely. The sentiment is common and captures something that is true about politics versus the work of artists — which is that politics (and politicians) often have to meet needs of great urgency and act on the exigencies of a particular moment, whereas writers can respond in ways that range more widely, and more deeply. Often freer.

Sometimes writing has met occasions and political moments more readily than the laws and statements of politicians, and sometimes politicians have done the same. There are writers and poets in politics. I think of the poet and theorist Aimé Césaire, who wrote the indelible political poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, a vehicle for his notes as he returned to Martinique and his reflections on colonialism. Also Léopold Senghor, a prominent Senegalese poet and theorist of Négritude who became the first president of Senegal.

So, there’s truth to Rushdie’s words but also plenty of counter examples.

Related, but: Do writers make good lawmakers and, if so, why?

There’s potentially an affinity between writing (and I would also add editing) and lawmaking, which is a professional need to be curious, to ask the right questions, and to be ready to learn quickly about new subjects about which one needs to develop real knowledge and confidence.

The New York Times reported that during your 2020 campaign (at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic), you were asked what word you would choose as a title for a memoir about the bid and you answered “Tired.” I want to ask that same question now that you’ve been in office a while. What would your answer be?

“Tired 2.” A few months after I came into office, my second child was born. My wife and I navigated the pandemic with two very young children, alongside our jobs and other family and community responsibilities, just as so many other households have done during the past few years. My older son is now getting ready to graduate from kindergarten, and my younger son is in pre-K. I am still very tired.

Who or what do you like to read the most?

My favorite novelist is Henry James, but I love to read everything. The best books I’ve read this year so far are Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, and Revolutionary Spring by Christopher Clark.

I also love reading magazines — in particular, the London Review of Books, Lux, n+1, and The Wire.

Is it tricky writing in-depth pieces like the one on James C. Scott while serving as an elected? How do you balance the two?

Yes! But I find that it’s important, from time-to-time, to step back from what is immediate and pressing and take a longer view, as James C. Scott did so well. The experience of immersing oneself in a great political thinker’s body of work — and through that work, the deep past and enormous transformation in political and social life that have occurred over millennia — helps put the work of everyday politics in necessary perspective.

—Spotlight PA’s Stephen Caruso contributed reporting to this article.