5:00 a.m.
I have announced several times recently during moments of either great frustration or great insight that once we get Maynard re-elected this will be my last campaign. When the alarm goes off at 5:00 a.m. and the reality of the darkness and the pre-dawn chill reach me, I am more convinced than ever of the rightness of my decision. “Wake up,” I say to Michael. A muffled groan and an incoherent mutter are my reward. My daughter is camped out at the babysitter’s until tomorrow. My jeans, a well-worn blazer that I am convinced brings good luck and my most sensible ripple-soled shoes are laid out for me to jump into, even if I’m not fully awake yet. “Good lord,” I think as my bare feet hit the cold floor, “Election Day at last!” I stumble to the radio and push the button that brings it to life. Bob Seger is “workin’ on a night move,” but we’ve got to get up and greet this busy day.
5:30 a.m.
Our meeting last night included a strict order to be here on time for a 6:05 meeting. We are here. No meeting is in progress or about to be. We slump into silence. I remember the ’73 campaign when we were asked to come at 5:00 a.m. and we did and found not only no meeting, but the headquarters locked up tight and the staffer assigned to be there to open it asleep on a table inside in full view of those of us outside, and sleeping soundly, oblivious to our frantic knockings and beating on the windows.
6:20 a.m.
The candidate arrives, startling us to attention with his traditional campaign greeting: “Are we going to win?” “Yes,” we respond with a sleepy yell. As a cheering section, we’re a washout at this hour, but he lets us slide. We were scattered in small clots around the room, but now we come together for the last pep talk, the last assignments, the final moment of partial sanity before the madness of the day. I notice that the radio is playing Phoebe Snow crooning about her poetry man. I try to make my mind focus on Phoebe for a minute. I take a deep breath, raise my hand in response to a question about who will be doing bus stops, grab a handful of punch cards and dash out to the waiting vans. Our disorganization is still evident. Aaron’s pants are unzipped.
9:25 a.m.
Smile. Hand them a punch card. “Hope you’ll vote today.” Move on. Move on. Smile. Hand them a punch card. “Hope you’ll vote today.” Smile. Move on. Smile. Hand them a punch card. “Hope you’ll vote today. Can I give you one of these?” Smile. Move on. Move on. It is dark and forty-seven degrees and the people spilling off of the buses gaze at me like they think I am crazy. Why would anybody be dashing back and forth in front of Trust Company Bank at 6:30 a.m. if she didn’t have to be there on her way to work? Hardly anyone refuses to take the campaign literature. Some do. They won’t look at me and stride off a little faster to let me know they don’t want it. I don’t press the issue. I don’t press anyone who looks hostile either. I don’t have time for that. Smile. Hand them a punch card. Move on. I start across the street to hit the crowd in front of McDonald’s and pass Councilman Guthman. “Good morning,” I say. “Hope you’ll vote today!” “I already did,” he says, smiling. “Great,” I say. Smile. Move on. Move on. The van will be back at 8:30. By then, I have passed out over three hundred punch cards. Michael has, too. We rendezvous on the corner of Edgewood and that other street. We are cold, but the activity and the contact have made it definite. It is Election Day at last! “No thanks,” a man tells me, patting the card already tucked into his pocket. “I already got one. From the mayor,” he says with a smile, pointing in the direction where I know Maynard is shaking hands, smiling, moving on. “Well,” I say, “I can’t compete with that.” We laugh. It occurs to me that at any other time I would have some apprehension about dashing back and forth through Central City Park in the dark, but today, it doesn’t occur to me. The people I pass don’t look threatening. Just tired.
10:45 a.m.
My notebook is filling up with things I have to remember: Marc Picard wants a personal interview. Barbara Nevins needs five minutes after the returns are in. Hal Lamar has asked for some private time with the candidate. What were the percentages in the New Orleans primary? Who will handle the credentials for national press? The candidate will vote at 9:30 a.m. Jackie will take care of the calls. Ask Cecilia about a forum. Call Tony about the speech. Call John about the tapes. Jim is already at the Fairmont. Call him first. Peggy answers and speaks in her official voice. “Is that you?” I say. “Pearl, Pearl, Pearl,” she says. “Who did you expect?” I dutifully take down all requests, including ones that will take effect after Tuesday. I feel a moment of guilt knowing that I will pass these on to someone else because at midnight Tuesday, I am no longer campaign staff and the media will have to fend for itself without me for post-election interview scheduling. The guilt passes quickly though. I remind myself they will survive. They always survive.
11:20 a.m.
The candidate dashes with me into a small corner office to avoid the noisy enthusiasm which is reaching a crescendo in the big ballroom. We dial the number at the prescribed time. The radio interview goes well, but it is running long and he has other things he has to do. I pass him a scribbled note: At any point now you can tell him you’ve got to go, but we’ll be calling during the day with updates. He nods thanks. “Well,” he says, “I’ve got to go now, but Pearl will be calling you during the day with updates.” I grin, feeling for the moment like a bush league Jody Powell keeping my boss on schedule.
11:30 a.m.
Paula comes by to crouch in front of my desk. She is excited and her eyes are shining. I am ambivalent. Tired. There is excitement, but mostly paranoia and some boredom. I am folding letters, licking envelopes and answering more phone calls than I care to. I have not confessed to anyone that my own paranoia has reached crisis proportions. What if he doesn’t win? I think as I stuff a letter carefully into its neatly typed envelope. What if he doesn’t win?
12:30 p.m.
There is a science to Election Day voting patterns that I don’t understand. Those around me who do emerge periodically from various cubbyholes looking either concerned, elated or determinedly impassive. I do not question them.
1:00 p.m.
“If they come to pick up credentials before four o’clock, they should just come right up. If it’s after four, they will need security clearance,” the voice tells me. Okay, I think. One if by land and two if by sea . . .
1:20 p.m.
How is it going? I finally ask. A shrug. Pretty well, he tells me; non-committal. I wonder aloud how anyone could consider voting for Harold Dye. “Well,” he says, “people voted for Richard Nixon.” A telling point, I concede, and go back to my envelopes. Brick is singing “Dusic” on the radio and for two minutes and forty-eight seconds while I listen, politics is the last thing on my mind.
The headquarters for tonight is this big hotel. We discover that the hike from ballroom to pressroom is a bit lengthy. I had thought you could go out one door and directly into the ballroom, but we now find you must go down a hall, through the lobby, down an escalator, and through the ballroom to the stage. We are not pleased. “Wait,” says a man in a white apron. “You can go this way.” And we set off following him through a maze of kitchens, hallways, elevators, linen storage rooms, pots and pans and curious hotel employees who wonder what we’re doing back here. I push images of Bobby Kennedy lying on a California hotel kitchen floor to the back of my mind. “We won’t bring anybody this way,” I say to the others. “Right,” they say, as if they shared my nightmare. Right.
10:00 p.m.
The returns are so good, we are slightly slap happy. Rob is grinning and scribbling numbers on a pad. The precincts come in better and better and the euphoria mounts. Still, it isn’t the same as before. There isn’t the feeling of having climbed a great distance and finally reached the peak. There is more comfortable security. Pleasant, but unorgasmic.
10:20 p.m.
There is no way to please the media and security. I realize this and purposely fade myself into the back of the controversy. Roy and Tony handle it admirably, although the media people are still frustrated and angry and security is still as immovable as Everest. I clutch my clipboard and remind myself that it is almost over. The ballroom is full of excited people watching returns. One council race or another. The school board. City Council president. Mayor. They all begin to run together and I feel like I have spent my life here, riding up and down hotel elevators, giggling with Rita and comparing staff badges.
11:05 p.m.
“We need to go on down,” I say to the mayor. “It is after eleven. If they’re going to carry any of your speech live on the eleven o’clock news, we’ve got to go!” “Yes,” he says, “let’s go!” And we are off and running, literally, down the halls of this hotel, dashing to the ballroom. People are hollering so loud I can’t even hear the introduction. The victory speech. He’s doing the victory speech. I hear it. I believe it, but I don’t feel it yet. Am I jaded or just tired?
11:45 p.m.
I am convinced that working for the winner is harder. Somebody has to win and better it is the side I have chosen to be on than the other one, but working for the underdog is a lot more fun. There is the incredible rush of power if you beat them and the enjoyable moral righteousness if you don’t. When you start off in front and stay there, some of the edge is gone. I concede that it can’t be helped, but working for a sane, unbeatable, progressive, sensible incumbent isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
12:15 a.m.
He is talking to the media in a small room near the ballroom. The band is next door playing “Boogie Nights” with a vengeance and it comes through the wall loud and clear, but the mayor is cool, collected and incredibly handsome. I am watching the backs of the media’s heads as they ask question after question. “How many white votes did you get?” they want to know. “Are you satisfied? Are you happy? Is this a mandate? What are you going to do during the next four years?” He answers them calmly, but he is tired. Bus stops, motorcades, handshakes. He must be exhausted. I know I am, but I suddenly hear clearly what he is saying in response to a question about getting his voters to the polls on Election Day. “That,” he says, “is the Saul Alinsky school of community organizing.” Saul Alinsky? My hero, Saul Alinsky? The newly re-elected mayor of Atlanta is quoting Saul Alinsky in the flush of a gigantic victory. I love it! I absolutely love it! It’s not enough to make me forget my tired feet, the lost button on my dress, my smeared mascara and my confusion about top dogs and underdogs, but it is enough to make me smile and move on.