23

THE ROGUE RABBI

As dawn broke the next morning over the Des Moines airport, Henry gripped the railing of the Citation II’s drop-down staircase and hauled himself and his bags onto the jet, following Peele. The two-day Florida swing would culminate with the Florida Straw Poll at the Orlando Convention Center, but the main mission was raising money from Miami Jews.

Diane Spriggs had rolled her eyes when she handed Henry their latest Jewish direct-mail piece, which essentially warned American Jews that the only thing standing between them and the storm troopers was Tom Peele. Since Peele’s leftward fund-raising shift, they had stepped up their mailings to Jewish donors, spending $3 million on letters to lists from AIPAC and the National Holocaust Museum.

Henry settled into a front-facing seat and swallowed. Arrival in Miami threatened disaster. An hour earlier, as he was brushing his teeth, Diane had phoned to tell him, “We’ve got a rogue rabbi.” A Miami rabbi had alerted the local media that Peele was coming to town for a fund-raiser hosted by a prominent member of the rabbi’s flock. The rabbi had arranged a white Rolls-Royce to pick them up outside the Miami general aviation hangar. Footage of Peele descending from the clouds in a Citation II and climbing into a Rolls, like a twenty-first-century version of Hitler in Triumph of the Will, could go viral.

Diane had been scrambling to cancel the Rolls and line up suitable American wheels, but nobody was taking her calls or answering her e-mails at six thirty in the morning. Henry planned to begin monitoring his BlackBerry in twenty minutes, after they reached cruising altitude. You run the device while the pilots are taking off, you can jam their instruments. Which, in this case, might offer another solution. He’d tell Peele about the rabbi later, if he had to.

Henry had been bolstering their message with the Jewish press, dispatching their New Media whiz to barrage their Jewish media list and bloggers. He put Peele on calls with reporters from New York Jewish Week, Jewish Daily Forward, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Jewish version of the Associated Press. A call with a reporter from the leading Israeli daily Haaretz had stretched from a scheduled ten minutes to thirty-seven minutes, as the reporter kept saying, “One more question.” Finally, Henry cut in and told the guy he was asking his fifth final question. The man said, “Well, it was going to be the last question, but after the Senator just raised this fascinating point, how can I not ask this follow-up question?”

As the Citation II roared southeast, a headache chiseled Henry’s temple. He put down a sheaf of papers and closed his eyes, but the pain didn’t ease. Nausea and light-headedness followed. He had skipped breakfast, after only a tuna sandwich the night before, which meant his blood sugar was down. Even if they had soda on the plane, it would be Diet Coke, since Peele was watching his weight. One of the glistening wooden cabinets might hold some packs of sugar for coffee, but he didn’t want to burn the energy to ask.

Peele began yammering about polls. In a USA Today/Gallup national poll the day before, Peele had edged Sadler and was within four points of Dagworth. Peele was blathering in a stage whisper, top-secret stuff, even though it was just the two of them in the cabin; the rest of the team was already on the ground in Florida. Henry was listening, but mostly he was releasing strategic burps, which seemed to ease the pressure on whatever was trying to expel the meager contents of his stomach. A few spasmodic breaths generally followed a burp. He tried to keep this gastrointestinal symphony quiet, nodding as Peele prattled.

Peele was saying that their own recent poll jibed with the USA Today results, was actually even stronger, and that they were going to begin doing their own tracking polls in about a month, coordinated with their first TV ads in Iowa. Henry released a long, silent burp. Fogel had already told him about the tracking polls. They would do them in three-day intervals. Every evening, their pollster would fill a room with laid-off telemarketers, who would dial through voter lists. They would start one poll on Monday, another poll on Tuesday, and a third on Wednesday. On Thursday, they’d get the results of Monday through Wednesday’s polling. On Friday, they’d get the results of the separate poll that ran Tuesday through Thursday. And so on. And they’d begin to see what effect Fogel’s TV commercials were having, and which ones.

Peele asked for the USA Today poll story and Henry leaned over to fish the clip from his briefcase. Immediately, he was sure he would puke. He anticipated a multicolor gush spraying the bulkhead. He closed his eyes, pushed out another burp, and felt the reflux point slide down his esophagus. He breathed and let his head loll back against the rest, vowing never again to skip breakfast.

As the Citation dived toward Miami, a different pang hit Henry. He had forgotten to turn on his BlackBerry, to check on the Rolls-Royce and any other crises. Too late now. As they taxied to the charter hangar, Henry gazed out a porthole window. He saw a horde of sundresses, pastel blazers, and straw hats and two separate throngs waving signs. One of the groups had to be the Florida team, another African-Americans for Peele. The third might have been from Democrats for Peele, judging by their youthful good looks. Their various coalitions made sure to turn out greeting parties for every Peele public arrival. Then, in the distance, Henry saw some of the campaign team, standing beside a dark blue … Buick.

On the ground, Henry’s stomach settled a bit. Their national political director, Florida leadership team, and Moffat the bodyguard took custody of Peele. Moffat didn’t give Henry any special attention; Gargano probably hadn’t admitted to his buddy that he’d been bloodied by a suit.

In the hangar office, Henry fed some bills into a vending machine and pulled out a plastic-sheathed slice of yellowed cheesecake topped with strawberry syrup. He swallowed it as fast as he could, which wasn’t fast, as Peele made phone calls from an office.

In the Buick, as they whisked past palm trees along sun-bleached asphalt, the Florida chairman gushed about the straw poll and how well Peele should do. From what Henry could tell, the guy’s main point was that Florida was a first-class state—big, influential, and diverse—with a straw poll to match, while Iowa and its straw poll, which got much more attention, were shit. The guy had a case. Unlike Iowa, you couldn’t buy votes in Florida’s straw poll. Voting was limited to the thirty-five hundred elected delegates, who even covered their own $175 registration fees and hotel rooms. Still, Henry knew, that hadn’t stopped Sadler or Dagworth from buying a list of delegates and sucking up to them for weeks with calls, letters, and now breakfasts during the three-day extravaganza at the Orange County Convention Center.

For Henry, the Florida trip rushed by in a blur of fund-raisers and meet-and-greets. Along the way, Peele announced that the assistant HHS secretary nominee was fit, after all, to oversee medical devices. In the five weeks since Peele first voiced concerns, pharmaceutical executives had packed three of Peele’s fund-raisers, including one in Miami. Maybe Cass figured they had soaked the drug companies enough.

The second afternoon, Cass took Henry to a Cuban-American reception, where he gleaned that the Angel had been making promises to the Cuban exile delegates, offering deals on congressional legislation, and paying shills to talk up Peele. Saturday, at the finale, Henry could only watch as the delegates milked the poll results roll call for hours, introducing each of the sixty-seven counties with a description such as “home of the largest rodeo east of the Mississippi.” In the end, Peele took second, edging Sadler but five points behind Dagworth—not far from the USA Today results.

Peele gave a few interviews outside the ballroom, then raced off to the airport while Henry stayed at the convention center to work the press. He would catch a commercial flight to Washington that evening.

“Clearly, Senator Peele’s centrist message is resonating in Florida and throughout the country,” Henry dictated to a big-name national reporter as she banged his quote into a story on her laptop. She was pressing a deadline, and needed a primer on the Florida process. Oh, if it were always so easy.