Back when I was coming up in this city, if a man had a job, he did the job. You didn’t leave the job in the middle of the job to go try to get a different job. You especially didn’t leave a job that people had voted you into — a job that people had driven to a gymnasium and stood in line on a Tuesday to give you — so you could spend eighteen months driving around Iowa shaking hands and telling strangers you’re a fighter for the people of Illinois. The people of Illinois are right here. They need you. Iowa is a different state.

But here we are. Three Illinois congressmen — three sitting members of the United States House of Representatives, a body that is already, in my considered opinion, about twelve people short of functional — have simultaneously abandoned their seats in Washington to chase the open Senate position left by Dick Durbin, who had the decency to actually finish his term before leaving. Dick Durbin served 22 years in the Senate. You know how many terms that is? A lot of terms. He did the work. Now three of his House colleagues are leaving mid-mandate like a contractor who ghosts you after the demo job, and I’m supposed to be impressed by their ambition.

I’m not going to name names because frankly I think giving them more publicity is exactly what they want, and I am sixty-three years old and I have made it this far without doing things I don’t want to do. What I will tell you is that their districts — three separate districts, spread across the state, each containing actual human beings with actual problems — now have the pleasure of being represented by people who are not there. Their offices are still open. Their staffers are still answering phones. But the elected member is in Peoria having his photo taken with a corn dog, which is not a legislative act the last time I checked.

I called my own congressman’s office this week just to see what would happen. I asked a very simple question: who is currently representing this district while your boss is out on the road campaigning? The staffer — and I want to be clear, this was a perfectly nice young person who did not deserve to be in this situation — explained that the congressman was “actively representing the district’s interests through his ongoing presence in the race.” I asked what that meant for, say, the potholes on the Eisenhower. She said she could connect me with the infrastructure team. I asked if the infrastructure team was running for Senate. She said she’d call me back. She has not called me back.

The thing that really burns me is that this is considered normal. The Tribune ran a piece about the race that described the three departing representatives as “formidable,” which is a word that means impressive but that newspapers now use to mean “familiar.” Nobody asked whether their districts were being adequately served. Nobody ran that story. The story was about polling numbers and donor lists and which one of them had the stronger name recognition in the collar counties, as if the collar counties were the only part of Illinois where people have opinions. I have been to the collar counties. I have opinions too.

Meanwhile, the race to replace these fellows in the House — three special elections, eventually, whenever the timing works out — will cost the state an estimated combined $9 million to administer. This is money Illinois does not have in a way that would make a grown adult cry if they looked at the budget for more than four minutes, which I have done. So we will spend $9 million holding additional elections to replace the people who left to hold elections for a different office. This is the civic equivalent of leaving the water running while you go complain to your neighbor that your water bill is too high.

I should note, for the record, that I don’t have a specific objection to any one of these three men. They may all be perfectly capable public servants who, under other circumstances, I might find it in myself to vote for. My objection is to the system, or rather to the comfortable agreement everyone in the system has made that this is just how it works — that a congressional seat is merely a stepping stone, a thing you hold until something shinier comes along, and that the constituents who sent you there will understand because they’re reasonable people and politics is politics. We are reasonable people. But I would like to be consulted before being abandoned for a more lucrative opportunity. That seems like a reasonable ask.

The primary is March 17. I will be voting. I will note for any candidate who is reading this that I have exactly two criteria: do the job you say you’re running for, and do it for the full term. These are not complicated standards. They are the same standards I applied when I hired a plumber in 1997, and that plumber, whatever his flaws, never left in the middle to run for alderman. His name was Gary. He was a professional.