NMP National Mortgage Professional February 2021

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

A Political Appraisal

As reactionary politics continues to spike the nation’s consciousness, I take solace in an incident that happened in the summer of 2019 at a leading mortgage conference.

It was the big Originator Connect tradeshow in Las Vegas, our organization’s flagship event. And with eyes on the upcoming presidential election, we had booked as a keynote speaker Donna Brazile.

Ms. Brazile is a political force – for Democrats. She was the first woman to chair a national presidential candidate’s campaign. She is a stalwart of Democrat power brokers. A former chair of the Democratic National Committee, she can also be seen regularly on Fox News – as the counterpoint to Fox’s unflinching conservative coverage.

She is also a dynamic and engaging speaker, a don’t-hold-anything-back orator with a smooth, Louisiana accent that hugs an audience. She was there to talk about the coming election. And since a convention of mortgage originators was new to her, and she had arrived at the conference early, she decided to just join the crowds in the exhibit hall, to walk around and take in the chatter. Then she decided to sit at a table to grab a bite.

And that’s when she met John Tedesco.

TABLE TALK

John is a man of big personality. He’s one of the execs at Appraisal Nation, and his Carolinas drawl is every bit as beguiling as Ms. Brazile’s Cajun inflections. He’s also a man who speaks his mind clearly and stands strongly for his beliefs, which are decidedly conservative. John’s positions are easy to see: he posts them all on his Facebook page.

And so, here we were: A conservative spitfire and a liberal lioness. John didn’t simply introduce himself, he thought this would be a great opportunity to ignite conversation.

Given today’s frenetic antagonism between liberals and conservatives, it would be easyto assume what happened next was going to end in a verbal fracas, at the least.

Instead, John came to me later in the conference to tell me how impressed he was with Ms. Brazile, how much he enjoyed their political banter. He didn’t think he’d moved her to applaud his conservative bent, but she was respectful. And he was too, realizing that she was more moderate than he had given her credit for, more pragmatic. He wasn’t swayed to her ideas, but he was glad of the conversation they had.

Polite, respectful, not pushy, not incendiary – a conversation by two smart people, hashing out ideas and beliefs. And each walking away with regard for the other.

Perhaps, instead of going to political rallies, more people ought to just go to mortgage conferences. Because that, it seems, is where we’ll find the truly patriotic foundations of what makes this a great country, and always will.

VINCENT M. VALVO Publisher, Editor & CEO