Gardner’s Ouster Makes Grassroots’ Task More Urgent

By Jim Mathews / President & CEO

So the “purge” has now come for Amtrak. After 16 years at the railroad spanning roles from intern to Chief Operating Officer before ascending to the top seat, Stephen Gardner abruptly resigned as Amtrak’s CEO, a move widely reported to have been orchestrated by the White House.

Writes Bill Stephens at Trains magazine: “Nothing good will come from Wednesday’s dismissal of Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner, who was pushed out as part of the White House’s purge of officials who are not deemed loyal to President Donald Trump.”

Railway Age Capitol Hill Contributing Editor Frank Wilner was even more blunt: “Few Amtrak presidents in the passenger railroad’s more than half-century of existence match Gardner’s devotion to the brand and its employees. Self-described as a political liberal—he previously held senior Democratic Senate staff positions—Gardner becomes another casualty of an Administration whose biases are so undisguised and repulsive that a French member of the European Parliament called for the United States to return the Statue of Liberty to France.”

In theory at least, Gardner’s removal was up to the Amtrak Board, whose members are nominated by the President and confirmed to serve with the advice and consent of the Senate. By all accounts, however, Gardner’s removal did not come from the Board but instead from the Administration.

Sidelining Amtrak’s Board is a bad sign, in my view. And in his piece for Trains, Stephens predicts that “Congress won’t ride to the rescue as Trump and Musk take aim at passenger rail.”

There was a time, very recently, when I would have disputed Stephens’ assessment. Shortly after the election, the professional staff and I briefed Association Board members, Council members, and many grassroots advocates on what we thought was the state of play.

We reasoned that the razor-thin majorities in Congress – down to a single seat in the House at least until special elections are complete this Spring, and seven shy of the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture in the Senate – would force legislators in both chambers to negotiate more. We also pointed out that it was seven House Republicans last year who locked arms to stop the disastrous “Kill Amtrak” appropriation bill, and that in 2017 it was Senate Republicans who halted the first Trump Administration’s assault on long-distance service.

But as Stephens notes, on nearly every issue other than trains, members of Congress have appeared willing or even eager to cede their responsibility as a co-equal branch of government – a flaccid stance that bodes poorly for our issues.

“If Republicans in Congress are afraid to stand up to Trump’s plans to cut 83,000 Veterans Affairs jobs – a move that will only hurt medical care for veterans – they’re certainly not going to be willing to take a bullet for Amtrak,” Stephens says.

Indeed.

I’ve had legislators at all levels tell me over the years that sometimes they need “top cover” from their constituents to do the right thing. Like the veterans demanding action from their elected representatives to take action on VA hospitals, all of us who care about passenger rail need to make sure that Congress knows the value passenger rail brings where we live and how we need more of it, not less.

And that makes getting your voice into congressional offices that much more important. Many of our grassroots advocates will start arriving this weekend in Washington, DC, for our annual visit to Capitol Hill. This year, with so much at stake, we’re doing this in four separate waves across a two-week period, blanketing Congress with constituents to explain why Amtrak service is a good investment of public dollars, how much value it brings to the communities where they live, work, or study, and why continued expansion, growth, and improvement means so much to their towns.

All of us who care about passenger rail need to deliver that message forcefully to our members of Congress, whether in person during the next two weeks or even by calling, writing, or visiting your legislator’s or Senator’s local district office. But this time the message needs to be more than just why we need passenger rail where we live. It must focus on the fact that all of us, as voters, rely on them to act on our behalf. They represent us. Their votes matter. And polling consistently shows that passenger rail enjoys support in both Republican districts and Democratic ones. We need to be more persistent, more focused, and speak with more conviction than ever before.

Meanwhile, at one of the most pivotal moments in its history, Amtrak will have to get by without a designated leader. That’s a tough situation for any large organization, but with the additional layer of political scrutiny it’s that much worse for the staff at Amtrak. This may even be more acute for the new blood already brought into Amtrak with the assignment to attack Amtrak’s well-known mechanical and operational challenges. Many are confused, and many more are now demoralized. I know, because I’ve already talked to about three dozen of them since yesterday.

At Railway Age, Frank Wilner pointed to Gardner’s “devotion” to Amtrak’s mission, and brand, and people. When news outlets called me Thursday for comment, I had much the same thought, telling them that “In every interaction I’ve had with Stephen – and there were many – there was never any doubt that he loved trains, loved passenger rail, and loved Amtrak.”

The event that made me think about that as my response to reporters was this: our ride together, with many other stakeholders and elected officials, on the inaugural run last year of the new Borealis from St. Paul to Chicago.

We were pulling into one of the many stations where the platform was crowded to capacity with local elected officials waiting to welcome the long-awaited service to their community, service which hundreds of grassroots advocates and organizations had spent decades coaxing into existence. Service which has, since its launch, blown the doors off any projections or expectations, with ridership soaring past initial estimates. Service which is vitally needed to support small businesses all along the route, and which has already given places like Red Wing, Minn., or Tomah, Wisc., a badly needed shot in the arm.

As we rounded a bend and crossed the Mississippi River, Gardner led the way into the vestibule. Gardner, a guy who started a high school punk band named Chessie in honor of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, and who moved to Maine after college to work as a conductor on the Maine Central Railroad, opened the upper portion of the door to peer out at the crowd on the platform waiting to celebrate. The expression on his face, which I’m sure he didn’t realize that I noticed, was pure joy, of the sort you can’t fake.

For all of our sakes, let’s hope against hope that whoever sits in that seat next believes in the mission of a nationwide network of passenger-rail service.