Bucshon changed his mind, while chaos at Capitol ensued, Young prepared for confrontation

Thomas B. Langhorne Kaitlin Lange
Evansville Courier & Press

EVANSVILLE, Ind. —  Alone in his office with a bookkeeper who doesn't even work for him, 8th District Congressman Larry Bucshon sprung into action when all hell broke loose in the Capitol Wednesday.

Indiana Sen. Todd Young was much closer. As he watched things unravel, he said, he was prepared to respond if needed.

Back in his office, Bucshon locked the doors — and changed his mind.

"The doorknobs were locked, but I personally went around and locked the deadbolts on the two doors," Bucshon said Thursday. "I’m like, ‘Oh crap.'"

Bucshon, an Evansville-based Republican serving his sixth two-year term in Congress, spent the next several hours holed up in his office. He talked to his wife, Kathryn, and texted with staff, friends and his three adult children, assuring everyone he was OK. In another part of the office, a male part-time employee he shares with seven other House members kept working.

More:Evansville native watched Capitol violence unfold, pleads for calm

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Bucshon was far from the action Wednesday. But from those hours in his office emerged a change of heart: He would vote to accept the presidential election results in Arizona and in Pennsylvania, the only other state challenged by lawmakers.

U.S. Representative Larry Bucshon address the crowd at the Evansville Country Club Tuesday night, Nov. 3, 2020. Vanderburgh County Republicans gathered at the spot for their election watch party. Bucshon was the only Republican running against an opponent to be projected a winner.

The veteran congressman was dismayed by President Donald Trump's criticism of Vice President Mike Pence — a former Indiana governor and a friend of Bucshon's from their days in Congress together.

"I was going to vote for the objections so that we could continue to have a dialogue — but after the events of yesterday, the actions of the president and his harsh criticism of (Pence), I didn’t see the utility in voting for them," Bucshon said.

"The goal of bringing election issues in these states to a national discussion was accomplished prior to those votes. We’re a nation of laws. It’s a peaceful transition of power. It’s not going to change the outcome."

'We were prepared for them to come and confront us'

Seated in the U.S. Senate chamber, Young was at first unaware of the rioters’ attempts to get into the building. He became aware when the Senate Sergeant of Arms approached Pence and told him to move to a secure location.

Everyone else in the Senate was instructed to stay seated away from the doors. Young, a former Marine, immediately started looking around to see if the Senate chamber had been breached. 

“We started to hear people just, you know, hundreds of feet away from the United States Senate chamber brawling with our patriotic and brave Capitol Police officers,” Young told IndyStar in an exclusive interview.

“We were prepared, I think each of us, for these individuals — who were obviously violent and intending to disrupt our proceedings and probably looking to do harm to senators and others — we were prepared for them to come and confront us.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McMcConnell of Ky., listens as Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. (Tom Williams/Pool via AP)

A number of minutes later Senators were directed to leave the chamber too and to move to a secure location. While walking, Young said he could see riot police officers pushing back against people who had penetrated the building and were fighting their way through the police line in one of the halls. 

There aren't enough police officers, Young thought to himself. 

“I was coming up with, to put it delicately, contingency plans about how I was going to deal with any of these miscreants whom I might confront," he said.

Bucshon was physically isolated from the chaos

In his office south and west of the Capitol, Bucshon had gotten his own first inkling of trouble from his cell phone. It lit up with an emergency alert from U.S. Capitol police. That was accompanied by a warning to stay in place on the public address system in the Rayburn House Office Building, where Bucshon maintains a third-floor office.

The 2.4 million-square-foot Rayburn building is considered prime office space in Congress. It's the newest House office building – and the only one with a connecting underground train to the Capitol.

More:Bucshon falls squarely in the middle of Congress | Secrets of the Hill

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But it is farther west from the Capitol than the other two House buildings. Rayburn afforded Bucshon greater distance from the violence — and greater isolation. His windows don’t face the Capitol complex, so he didn't see any of the chaos that ensued when protesters broke through police lines at the Capitol.

Bucshon also heard nothing, he said, except a small "boom" in the distance from a suspicious package being disabled somewhere on the Capitol campus.

But he did feel something —  anger.

Trump and his most fervent supporters had held out hope Pence might use his unique role as President of the Senate to reject the results of the election.

More:Hoosiers' role in a historic day at the U.S. Capitol

That didn't happen.

Pence defied Trump, citing he had no constitutional authority to change votes. 

Trump quickly criticized his No. 2.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution," Trump tweeted.

That left a sour taste in Bucshon's mouth. He cited Trump's remarks earlier Wednesday to a crowd of supporters at the National Mall.

"We’re going to the Capitol,” Trump said then. “We’re going to try and give our Republicans … the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

On Facebook Thursday, Bucshon let fly.

"I cannot condone this dangerous rhetoric by the President. Words have meaning and many of the President’s supporters took him literally, resulting in the attempted insurrection," he wrote.

"In the United States, we do not solve our political differences with violence. In addition, politicians don’t attempt to hold on to power by resorting to insurrection."

Sen. Young found inspiration despite the chaos

Todd Young might have been girded for action if it came to that, but that doesn't mean he wasn't sharing in the anxiety his colleagues felt. Even in that anxiety, he found inspiration.

What stuck out to Young most was the show of patriotism from those who work in the Capitol. While he was moving to a secure location, Young walked beside two members of the Senate parliamentarian's staff who were carrying wooden boxes that contained the Electoral College ballots from each state.

“In this instance, you had some patriotic, conscientious Americans who decided to pick up these incredibly heavy boxes, so it slows them down from what could have been life-threatening danger, and remove them from the Senate chamber,” Young said. "(They) lugged them, a very long distance, so that a mob would not disrupt the peaceful transition of power. It was inspiring.”

Young compared it to the War of 1812 when Dolley Madison, the wife of President James Madison, saved George Washington's portrait when evacuating the White House. 

Young thought back to the moment that morning when he told a group of constituents unhappy with his decision to confirm the Electoral College results that "the law matters." At that moment, he never would have guessed that the protest around the Capitol would turn violent.

In fact, he never would have guessed something like this would happen in his lifetime.

“It was anxiety-inducing, it was saddening,” he said. “It was tragic to watch this play out. And it was a bit surreal to think that, in the United States of America, we would have people storming the United States Capitol immediately following a peaceful rally on the Mall of the United States Capitol, with its storied history of peaceful assembly.”

'It’s not about any one person, including the president'

Larry Bucshon, whose congressional district includes Vanderburgh, Warrick, Gibson and Posey counties, has supported Trump strongly since the president took office in 2017. It wasn't surprising, considering Trump won the 8th District by more than 30 percentage points in the 2016 election.

But Bucshon routinely wins re-election to his 19-county seat by huge margins. He won his sixth term in November with 67 percent of the vote. He has his own base of support and significant political assets.

The former heart surgeon is fortified by all the advantages of incumbency — taxpayer-funded letters and glossy mailers that tout his accomplishments, campaign money from large political action committees and the power to help constituents by sorting out their problems with government agencies.

It was never love at first sight between Bucshon and Trump, at any rate.

The 8th District congressman was not a strong supporter of Trump's during the GOP's presidential nominating process in 2016. Bucshon backed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, saying only that he would vote for Trump in the fall election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. His reason: Trump is a Republican, like him.

On Thursday, Bucshon stressed that he prizes other things over Trump's political fortunes.

"At the end of the day, it’s about the Constitution. It’s about the country. It’s not about any one person, including the president," he said. "It's about what we did yesterday, which was exercising the will of the American people and their votes."

Young puts the finger on Trump

Young struck a smilar tone, saying the biggest catalyst for Wednesday's violence was “a failure for many of our leaders to be truthful to the American people about what precisely has happened in our elections in recent months.”

The Indiana senator praised Attorney General William Barr for clarifying that the U.S. Justice Department had not found evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the vote.

But did Trump have any role in encouraging some of the violence?

“Of course,” Young said. “He’s president of the United States.”

Young said that whether or not to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office wasn’t up to those in Congress, nor would he weigh in on it due to the separation of powers.

“I won't be offering an opinion about that,” Young said, “other than to affirm my confidence in the vice president of the United States and the patriotism of other cabinet members who I believe will continue to conscientiously and legally carry out their duties until Jan. 20, when they leave office.”

Bucshon found a tiny ray of serenity

Wednesday's upheaval ended, for Bucshon at least, with a small moment of serenity. Maybe the last one he'll see for a while.

Having cast his last vote shortly before 3 a.m., he ambled down to his underground parking space in Rayburn and climbed into his car for the short ride home. When they are in Washington, he and his wife live with their teenaged daughter in a small townhouse in Northwest D.C.

Alone with his thoughts, Bucshon marveled at the relative solitude of the early morning.

"I drove right down past the Washington Monument, down past the mall, and it was like nothing had ever happened," he said.