The Candidate (2 page)

There was no doubt Mike believed what he said. He was no shallow campaign staffer, in it for the money, hopping from one campaign to another. In fact, at 29 years old, this was his first political campaign; he had abandoned his job in Florida, working with unskilled immigrants in the state’s agricultural industries, to join Hodges’ cause.

“I’d never seen anyone like him,” Mike explained to his audience in the backseat. “He made me believe. For the first time in my life, I found a politician who actually meant what he said. So I left Florida. I figured, why help a few people struggling to get by, when I can help change the whole system?”

He meant it too. Mike first saw Hodges speak at a fundraiser in Orlando, just a few miles from the orange plantations in which thousands of laborers existed in almost slave-like conditions. Mike only went because he thought he might make some useful contacts in his latest effort to improve worker conditions. It was the end of a long day and he was lounging exhaustedly at the back of the room when Hodges began to speak. It was electrifying.

Hodges shocked the audience of local bigwig party donors, speaking off-the-cuff and lambasting them for standing by while their country split apart at the seams, with the rich growing richer and the poorer sinking into the mire. Mike doubted whether Hodges raised much money that night, but the candidate gained one fervent new convert. He signed up the next morning. A week later he left Florida for Iowa.

“But can he really win Iowa, Mr. Sweeney?” one of the students asked.

Mike turned back to look at the kid. He flashed him his most confident grin. “Not only can he win, but he will win,” he said.

The two students looked at each other and smiled. Mike turned back to face the road, feeling mildly guilty for lying. The fact was, Hodges’ campaign was always an outside bet. The General-turned-Senator had a loyal following, but he was new to politics; he hadn’t even served a full term in the Senate yet. Established party leaders, including seven others also running for president, turned their back on him as soon as he announced his candidacy. Now, after three months of hard slog, Hodges had barely made a blip in the polls. The vastly experienced frontrunner, Virginia Governor Harriet Stanton, was still far ahead and even her nearest rivals did not include Hodges. As press coverage of the race heated up, the Hodges campaign was an afterthought to the bigger, richer campaigns, a footnote and not much more. But Mike still believed. He would never give up.

Mike glanced at his watch. It was 7:00 pm. Maybe the latest batch of polls would show some good news.

“Let’s switch on the radio, see if we can catch the headlines. Senator Hodges was out in Mount Pleasant today. That should have made a story,” he said to the students trapped in the backseat.

Mike reached over to turn on the car radio, and what he heard next nearly sent the car spinning into a ditch.

“
Senator Jack Hodges survived an apparent assassination attempt today
…” the radio announcer said.

Mike slammed on the brakes. The car jolted and swerved violently and one of the students yelled out. Mike struggled with the wheel, turning it into the skid, preventing the car from veering out of control. It juddered to a halt on the cold shoulder, just as an enormous 18-wheeler swept by, its horns blaring. The wind from its back draft shook the car like a leaf. Mike ignored it and turned up the radio.

“…
Hodges was unharmed in the incident in which a shot was fired at the presidential candidate. His assailant has been arrested but not identified. Police sources say the would-be assassin was a woman and possibly homeless or mentally ill.
”

Mike looked back at the two students. They were pale-faced and scared. Whether from the news or the near crash, he could not tell.

“Jesus Christ,” he said to himself. Then, without another word, he slammed his foot down on the accelerator, flinging the car down the highway again. Behind him, in the backseat, the students held each other’s hands.

* * *

DENISE “DEE” Babineaux stood in the dingy, dirty surroundings of Hodges’ Des Moines campaign headquarters and surveyed the mess around her. The room was a pigsty at the best of times and these were far from the best of times. Piles of pizza boxes teetered like ailing skyscrapers encrusted with rust-like sauce stains. Posters and pamphlets were strewn across desks and half-full coffee cups lay everywhere. People buffeted around the room like ships caught helpless in a storm, shouting and running around in chaos. Above them all a large flat-screen TV was tuned to a cable news channel. The news anchors repeated the few known facts about the attempted assassination on Senator Hodges. Dee shook her head. The people in this room just did not get it, she thought as she listened to the volunteers talk about their shock and anger over the botched assassination. They did not understand what she did. This was fantastic. For the first time ever, the faltering Hodges campaign was big news.

“All right, everyone!” she shouted as the top of the hour approached and the cable news shows prepared to reboot themselves. “Let’s cut the crap, stop running around like headless chickens and do some goddamn work.”

Dee’s accent was pure Louisiana Cajun, lilting and twanging, carrying a feeling of warmth and sunshine even when it conveyed the harshest of words. The room quieted instantly because everyone was in awe of Denise Babineaux. Not only was she Hodges’ campaign manager, she was a political legend. Hard-drinking, hard-talking and with a line of insults that could cut like a razor, she was that rarest of creatures at the top of the political food chain: a woman. Not only that, but she was gay. Openly out and proud to anyone who asked. Though few cared to. She was simply “Dee”; a force of nature that defied anyone’s label but her own.

She had been in the campaign game for more than 30 years now, fighting twice as hard as any man she ever met and never once giving ground. She was terrifying, inspiring and seen as a rogue operator. Too much so, it was rumored, to get the top job on Harriet Stanton’s campaign. So instead of settling for a junior position with Stanton, she picked out Hodges and became his campaign manager, placing an outside bet that he could upset the race. Or, as she often admitted after a few drinks: “It is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

Dee dug out the remote control for the TV from under a pile of discarded napkins that were coated with some unknown fast food condiment. She dangled the remote between two fingers, keeping the sticky plastic away from her body, and winced theatrically.

“Ya’ll are disgusting,” she said. “Your mamas should be ashamed to have raised you.”

Then she pointed the remote at the TV and turned up the sound. The assassination attempt was the top story, as it had been for the last two hours. But now the news anchor promised fresh footage of the incident. Dee was eager to see it. She sensed, deep down, that this could change everything. That this one single moment would give them new life.

The TV showed the new video clip; shot blurrily from someone’s cell phone camera. The footage was chaotic, confused, and it veered from side to side. For a moment Hodges could be seen, standing and speaking on the stage, then Christine was screaming, then the film collapsed into a mess of frames and shots of people’s feet as a loud bang rang out and chairs were pushed over. Then the TV switched to a series of new still photographs, taken by the lone wire photographer assigned the usually dull task of following Hodges around. That was when she saw it.

It was a single frame freezing a moment in time. But it was a work of art. Hodges stood dead center and behind him, his wife Christine crouched down as the Senator held her back with one arm. His other hand was thrust out ahead of him, and he stared back in the direction where the shot came from. His face looked set in stone, determined and unafraid. Dee realized what he was doing: protecting his wife, putting his own body in between the shooter and Christine. Using TIVO, Dee paused the TV and rewound. She froze the shot and stared at it, feeling alone in the crowded room, suddenly full of the knowledge of where this could go. She savored the feeling like a prayer, thankful beyond measure. Then she went to work.

“This is it!” she yelled. “I want this picture everywhere. I want you to blog it. I want it on Facebook and Twitter. I want you to email it to your friends, your families, even your goddamn enemies. I want it on posters and pamphlets. I want it on front pages. Christ, I even want it on the radio. If they can’t see it, they can at least talk about it. By the time America wakes up tomorrow morning and pours itself a coffee, I want it to have seen this picture.”

The people in the room looked at her. Dee smiled broadly. She knew it made some of them afraid. She saw the looks in their eyes: they had no idea what this crazy old dyke was going to tell them next, she thought. But she could not contain herself. She was in complete control, just the way she liked it. She saw the future and it was bright.

“Boys and girls,” she said slowly, as if talking to a class of school children. “This sorry ass campaign is finally going places. Prepare yourselves for the big time. Your candidate is a fucking American HERO.”

* * *

DEE GRABBED Mike as soon as he walked into the headquarters, quickly dispatching his two student volunteers to start blogging about the day’s events.

“Come with me, buddy,” she said. “We’ve got things to discuss.”

Mike ignored the jealous glances from other staffers as they walked outside, and headed toward Walnut Street in downtown Des Moines. He thought back to when they first met at a crowded bar on only his second night on the campaign. He and Dee had hit it off immediately. He was one of the few people who dared to stand up to her and she appeared to appreciate that. He was older than lots of the other staffers and as a result he had real life experience. He also didn’t scare easily. Down in Florida, among the immigrant shantytowns, he saw just how awful life could be. He was intimately familiar with stories of children working 16 hour days for a few dollars; of abuse and makeshift camps in which workers were locked overnight. Of the beatings and abuse that were commonplace. It took a lot to make Mike afraid and one of Dee’s rants was never going to do it. Instead, he felt an immense respect for her. She was an outsider in political campaigning, for her gender and for her embrace of her sexuality. But also, in Mike’s mind, because she grew up poor. Yet she took on the political world of privilege and bulldozed her way in. Now she was the mistress of her domain, perfectly at home, juggling a thousand tasks with the speed of a dervish and the grace of a ballet dancer. Mike knew she could teach him a lot about how to thrive in this bewildering world.

“Look at this,” she said, holding up her Blackberry which was pinging at regular intervals as new messages kept arriving. “It has not stopped for two hours. And you know who’s calling?
The View. Good Morning America.
Even Bill O’Reilly wants a piece of the action. I’ve busted my balls for months trying to get us a single mention on any one of those fucking shows. Now I’ve got my pick.”

Her breath billowed out into the freezing air like plumes of steam that matched those from the huddled smokers crouched in each doorway, exiled from inside the downtown businesses. Mike shivered and pulled his jacket tighter around him. He had no idea why, but Dee always insisted on walking out in the freezing air. She ignored the warm, comfortable maze of walkways and passages that meant you could traipse from block to block in Des Moines without braving the winter cold. But Dee’s Southern blood seemed immune to temperature. Or perhaps she simply felt like taking on the cold and beating it into submission with her will, just like everything else.

“This whole thing is perfect,” Dee said with a broad laugh. “I can’t believe I never thought of it before. What better way to get a campaign moving than almost having your guy killed? It’s pure genius!”

Mike shivered from the cold. They were on their way to the Embassy Suites hotel, a little way from downtown, across the river. As they trudged over a bridge, Mike glanced at the gray, swirling waters barely visible in the darkness.

“What happens next?” he asked, struggling to keep pace with Dee.

“Textbook stuff,” she said. “For the first time in this campaign, everyone wants our candidate. So we keep them hungry. Jack Hodges is the hottest thing in America right now and we’ve got to serve him up in small portions. We’ll issue a statement tonight. Then tomorrow hit one of the morning shows. Then spread ourselves out over the next couple of days. We can ride this train for the rest of the week, right until the next debate.”

Dee suddenly stopped in the middle of the bridge and gazed out over the river. “It all changes now, Mike. I’m going to need good people near me. I’m going to need an opposition research guy. Someone good at digging up things on our opponents, maybe even on our friends, too. I know the sort of work you used to do in Florida. I’ve looked up some of your investigative campaigns. It seems like you had a knack for uncovering some of the nasty secrets of those big, old fruit firms down there.”

She flicked her lit cigarette into the river, its little glow twirling like an out-of-season firefly until it was extinguished by the frigid water below.

“You want the job?” she asked. “Do you want to be my guy?”

Mike looked at Dee, trying to gauge what was going on behind that wide, excited smile and those mischievous eyes. But he could read nothing in her face. Opposition research? He knew what that meant. It meant being at the heart of the campaign, inside the bubble and close to power. A shield against attacks and a sword to be used against opponents. It sounded like a good deal to him.