Suited for the Senate: Memmott says he has right attire to run for Congress

Editor's note: This column was written before the news that the U.S. Senate is reinstating its "business casual" dress code. Given the change back, Jim Memmott is  no longer contemplating a Senate run.

One bit of good news. Were I to be elected U.S. senator, I wouldn’t have to go out and buy a lot of suits and ties.

No, the Senate’s unwritten “business casual” rules (dresses and suits for women; coats and ties for men) have been dropped at the command of the majority leader, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York.

"Senators are able to choose what they wear on the Senate floor," Schumer told Axios, the political news website. He added that he will continue to wear a suit.

Thus, if I were in the Senate, I could get by with a Bills sweatshirt or two, some chinos and a few pairs of Bermuda shorts for those sticky Washington summers.

If anything, this would be dressing down from how I dressed when I became a journalist in 1980.

When I arrived in 1980 at the Rochester Times-Union, the now-defunct afternoon newspaper, I quickly learned that while I was out there reporting, I was supposed to dress like the people I interviewed or wrote about.

Male school superintendents usually wore jackets and ties, as did town supervisors. Jack C. Hart, the Gates supervisor, was all coat-and-tie, as was Don Riley in Greece. They became my role model. However, if I were interviewing someone at a game, or someone stuck in snowbank, it was OK to ditch the tie.

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I generally wore a tie in the office, and, imitating the editors, I learned to roll up my sleeves to a halfway point between my wrists and elbows. I’m not sure why wearing your sleeves at half-mast was the way of the newsroom world, but I was eager to fit in, and so I rolled.

It’s been a while since I was a real reporter, but my friends at the Democrat & Chronicle tell me that the general fashion advice is still to mirror the people you’re writing about.

Tracy Schuhmacher covers food and drink for the Democrat and Chronicle.

“I dress pretty casual,” she says, “usually black pants, some sort of blouse and flat shoes. Sometimes I wear jeans. But the people I encounter on a day-to-day basis on the food beat generally dress pretty casually.”

Gary Craig, a veteran courts reporter, says that he still wears a tie to court, fitting in with the lawyers. Television reporters are more dapper than he, Gary says. No surprise, as they are seen by the general public.

The loosening of the dress codes for the Senate has sparked some huffing and puffing about the decline of western civilization.

I think western civilization will survive whether or not Sen. John Fetterman wears shorts on the Senate floor, but a popular culture case can be made for sticking with the suits and ties.

Good clothes make a new man in the best episode of the second season of “The Bear,” a drama about a Chicago restaurant on a comeback.

The slovenly Richie Jeremovich is sent to be trained at a high-end restaurant. After a week behind the scenes at a place where attention is given to every detail, he adopts a new look. Coat, tie, the works. “I wear suits now,” he says of his transformation from beach bum to authority figure.

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There’s also “Suits,” the legal drama/soap opera that originally ran from 2011 to 2019 and now is a chart-topper on Netflix.

The men reflect the show’s title and wear suits, power suits, at that. The women, from the head of the firm to the secretaries and paralegals (one of them played by Meghan Markle, soon-to-be royalty in real life), wear fitted suits or dresses, an Armani here, an Alexander McQueen there.

While their clothes are too expensive for most humans, the lawyers are basically following the rules of their game. They make me think that the Democrat’s head honcho, Mike Kilian, should outfit Gary Craig in a couple Tom Ford suits so he can look even more like a lawyer.

Not to worry, I don’t need to enhance my wardrobe. I’ve got the sweatshirt, the Bermuda shorts. I’m Senate worthy. Bring it on.

From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: dropped dress code has columnist thinking of running for U.S. Senate