Pennsylvania Rep. Brandon Markosek (D), who has a stutter, is using his position as an elected official to advocate for other people with speech impediments.
The following is an excerpt from our interview about his bill that would mandate insurance coverage for speech therapy for children who stutter. The House passed it, and it is awaiting action in the Senate.
The following transcript was edited for length and clarity.
Pluribus News: Can you tell me a bit about your personal relationship to this bill? Is it true that you’re one of the only state lawmakers in the country who has a stutter?
Brandon Markosek: One of a small handful. Yeah, there’s a few of us. I didn’t talk until I was three. I developed a horrific stutter once I did begin to talk. My parents took me to Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital here in Pittsburgh, where I saw a speech therapist. I stuttered horrifically throughout my childhood. I didn’t put my hand up in a classroom until I was in college. I was bullied, teased, you name it. I went through it. My stutter has progressed to where, today, some days are good, some days are bad, but I still stutter daily.
The last couple of months and years, I’ve been a lot more vocal about having a speech impediment. I didn’t feel comfortable talking in public, and now my job, being a politician, I have to talk. So the more I talk about stuttering, the more comfortable I am about it, and the greater impact I’ve noticed that I have on people.
When I talk in public, I do stutter. You know, someone comes up to me afterwards and says, ‘Hey, you know my son stutters,’ or, ‘Hey, my mom stutters.’ And it makes me feel good knowing that I can make an impact on someone else’s life, and if a kid can see me being a politician that can give them the confidence to go on, to do things that they might not think they could.
You know, 20 years ago, I would never have thought I’d be a politician. I would have thought I would have been a job somewhere, sitting in a cubicle, just crunching numbers, not not having to talk to anybody. But I took it upon myself to break out of my shell, and be more confident in myself. And if I stutter, that’s just who I am. For a long time, I had a hard time accepting that, but now, now I do, and I fully embrace it, and it’s just who I am.
PN: I was watching your comments on the House floor shortly before the vote, and you mentioned at the outset that you have a stutter, and you asked for your colleagues to bear with you. I was wondering how much you have talked about your own personal experience with your stutter before that point, and how much your colleagues knew about it before.
Markosek: On the House floor there are certain protocols you have to follow when you speak, so you have to stick to the topic. So not every time I talk, I can just blatantly come out and say I talk with a stutter. But at that moment, I thought it was right. Even when I’m back home or giving a speech in Harrisburg, I always like to preface that I talk with a stutter, so if someone does hear it, they don’t think I’m sick or unintelligent. It makes me more comfortable, but it also makes the audience more comfortable. So if I do get stuck or if my stutter does flare up, people aren’t caught off guard.
It’s something I used to not do. When I first got elected six years ago, I gave a speech. I got home, my cell phone was going off, and it was somebody I know, so I answered it, and they said, ‘Brandon, are you sick?’ And I said, ‘No, why?’ And they said, ‘Well, I was watching your speech on TV, and you couldn’t talk. I thought you were sick, so I wanted to call to make sure you were okay.’ So from that moment on, I knew I had to address my problem because I didn’t want people thinking I was sick.
PN: How extensively had you spoken before your colleagues in the legislature about your experience stuttering as a child?
Markosek: Not a lot. The members of our caucus know about my stutter. The members of the other caucus, some do. We’ve also had some turnover in the House recently in terms of people retiring, and so we’ve had some newer members join. So not not everyone in that room knew I stuttered. So that’s why that day, I thought it was really important for me to say that I stuttered just so no one was caught off guard if I did stutter.
I’d say the vast majority of my colleagues know. But very rarely do I go into the whole story of my stutter in terms of, you know, the bullying and how bad it was. [Even now] blockages happen. Some days are good, some days are bad, and there’s really no rhyme or reason. Just sometimes it just flicks on and I can’t get a word out, and 30 seconds later, I’m still trying to get that word out, and it can be hard, and people are quick to judge sometimes, which I don’t blame them for. Because you don’t hear stutters too often when you’re in public. So when you do, people are caught off guard. Sometimes they chuckle or laugh, but I don’t blame them. It’s just because that person just doesn’t know.