CHRISTMAS AT the O’Malley’s with singing and dancing and arguing and cameras snapping all the time was its usual madcap experience. I could imagine why Tommy’s respectable parents thought we were awful. But as Chucky always said, “There is a time for rejoicing and a time for not rejoicing and this is a time for rejoicing.”
Everyone called my Tommy “Senator.”
“Crispjin,” Rosie said to me, “has taken a little too much for granted. People are tired of his Dutch solemnity and self-satisfaction. They’re ready for a mischievous Mick.”
What if we really do win, I asked myself. Then what do we do for an encore?
I was still upset by Tony’s assault on Tommy, though not enough to ruin the Christmas fun. He was a problem that would always be with us, win or lose. The fights would continue. At some point I might have to tell him that he should stay away from my house and my kids.
The day after Christmas we sat down with Joe and Ric and Tina and Dolly to lay out our plans for the campaign up to the primary. Chucky was there of course, preternaturally quiet.
“Our goal is to win more votes against token opposition than Senator Crispjin gets against token opposition. That way we have some credibility.”
“And Bobby Bill will crank out money for the attack ads,” Joe said.
“If we get them really worried they may overplay their hand. Anyway we’ll pick up the usual Chicago votes but we can’t take them for granted. Dolly, we should be in at least one Black church every Sunday. Better more than one.”
“You bet.”
Dolly was a lawyer like the rest of us, but she had chosen to become a very high-priced public relations consultant. Slender with a head that was almost shaved, she was the most radical of us and a few years older. She had grown up in a housing project and had worked with grim determination to achieve success in her studies and to pass the bar exam. She had carefully crushed all traces of African-American dialect from her speech, but quit the practice of law after less than a year. She had married a very successful African-American banker and found that she hated law. Too dull, she asserted, while PR was always exciting. She took a leave from her own firm to work for us. Dolly had strong dislikes and strong loyalties.
“We will concentrate our efforts here and in the collar counties, with a couple runs down state,” Tommy said, “just so they’ll see our faces on TV. The Illinois Federation of Labor is meeting in Carbondale. I should be there and in some Black churches in East St. Louis. Ambassador, we will need a plane for that trip and maybe once more. Small one, just me and Joe.”
Chicago pols divide the region into the city, the “county towns” (suburban Cook County) and the “collar counties”—Lake, McHenry, Kane, DuPage, and Kendall.
“And a couple of security people.”
“Not so fast, white man,” I said.
“And my wife,” Tommy added.
“The money is coming in nicely,” Chucky said. “I’ll get a good plane and a good aircrew and put them on retainer. I have a friend who owes me a favor.”
“Aircrew?” Tommy frowned.
“Captain and first officer, one of them a woman,” I ordered.
That was that.
“Ric, we play our Latino card early, do we not?”
“The HDO won’t be happy with us, but I can lean on them to turn out crowds in the city. I figure we establish that base early and then tend it carefully till November. We’ll have no trouble using parish halls and the local community centers. Bring the mariachi group of course.”
Idiot that he is, Chucky went through the motions of strumming a guitar.
“Kids only on weekends,” Tina insisted.
“And Friday nights if they have their homework done first.”
“There are tens of thousands of Mexican Americans in the suburbs and the collar counties,” Tommy said, “especially out in DuPage and down in Joliet. How do we get them? They don’t seem very well organized.”
“There are parishes that have a Mass on Sunday,” I said, “maybe some of them will let us use their parish halls. We can pass out leaflets before and after the Mass.”
“Till the pastor chases us off parish property!” Dolly said with a laugh.
“And,” I said, “a lot of Latino college kids have called to volunteer. We can send them out to wherever we find concentrations to ask them to come and listen. They can be part of a precinct organization later.”
“Many of them in the suburbs are not legals but they may come anyhow. It will stir up interest.”
“We can’t afford empty houses,” Ric said. “Which can happen if there’s a snow storm.”
“That’s your job, Ric. No Hispanic empty houses.”
“I hear you, Tommy. I’ll get you on the Spanish-language stations too. They’ll be dying to have you. Also in East St. Louis when we’re downstate. And the Spanish radio stations too. Rodge Crispjin won’t know what hit him.”
Tommy nodded.
“What about polls?” Joe asked.
“We don’t do them,” Tommy said firmly. “We make it clear that we are not running a campaign based on polls. On the other hand we read very carefully every poll we can get our hands on.”
“I got some friends who run focus groups,” Chucky said. “They owe me some favors. Maybe they can do a couple pro bono.”
“Your father has lots of friends,” my good husband observed.
“He should have. He has worked all his life collecting. Now is a good time to … what’s the phrase, Chucky?”
“Call in my markers. But I don’t ask for any campaign contributions unless someone offers to make one. I know the rules.”
Laughter all around the room.
“What about the media, Dolly?”
“We all watch Chicago TV news. We know whom to trust and whom not to. Since this is a new kind of campaign we will emphasize our total transparency.”
“What does that mean, Doll?” I wondered.
“It means we tell the truth, a whole lot of truth, more truth than anyone expects us to tell—not necessarily the whole truth!”
We all laughed.
“Besides,” Dolly continued, “your husband is the slickest pol I’ve ever seen. He’ll tie the media in knots and laugh them off and he’d route Crispjin in a debate.”
“There won’t be any debates,” Tommy dismissed the possibility. “Why should he give me more attention?”
“If you start to catch up, he might have to,” Dolly said.
“He’ll just pour more money into attack ads, most of which we will ignore.”
“If you say so, Boss man …” Dolly said, rolling her deep brown eyes, “and when we make mistakes, when we stumble, when no one shows up, we admit that we’re novices, just learning. And, oh yes, we ignore the Chicago Daily Examiner and Leander Schlenk. If he comes to a news conference, we answer his questions politely, no wise-guy stuff. But we do not answer anything he says in the paper. In some cases I’ll issue a clarification. We don’t want that crook unnerving us.”
“We are polite to everyone,” Tommy insisted, “even the most pushy media intern. Or ordinary folk who ask obnoxious questions. It will be Joe’s job or his muscle’s to keep us moving when we have to move. No temper tantrums from anyone.”
“Why is everyone looking at me?” I asked.
It was great fun. The fun wouldn’t last. We would grow weary and discouraged and angry. We were up against big odds. It just wasn’t fair.
I was wrong that day. The primary campaign continued to be fun. So did the summer and fall campaign. It stopped being fun only when it began to look like we had a good chance of winning.
I took a leave from the firm to help “manage” my husband’s campaign. I would come back for one major case in April on which I had worked and my partners said they absolutely
needed me. It would also provide us with a little more cash for day to day living.
Tommy hammered out his campaign speeches and responses to questions during our winter season.
The first one was his standard populist speech. It played well with union people and Blacks. The latter seemed to identify with Tommy like he was one of them, perhaps because of his smile and his laughter. He enjoyed the cries of approval from the congregations and responded in kind.
“Be careful, Tommy,” Dolly advised him tongue in cheek. “You won’t never be one of us, but you might have a hard time being white.”
Average family income, taking inflation into account, increased in the United States in the thirty years after the end of World War II. It kept pace with the yearly increase in the nation’s productivity. That meant that ordinary folk were sharing in the nation’s growth. However, after 1975 family income froze despite the increase in productivity. That meant that the rich were creaming off all the increases in the economy and leaving the rest of the people behind. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the middle class was locked in place.
There are many reasons for this situation. However, in those years, especially in the Reagan and Bush administrations greed became fashionable again. Companies dropped older employees because their salaries were said to be too high. They fired men and women just before they became eligible for pensions. They outsourced jobs to companies who paid substandard wages. They fought to destroy unions. They exported jobs overseas. They canceled pension programs to escape bankruptcy. They cut jobs when they had made serious mistakes, so they would be lean and mean—though they always had been mean. They closed American factories. They cut workers’ salaries but never their own. The top executives paid themselves exorbitant salaries that were unrelated to their success in leading the company. They called them golden parachutes. One man’s parachute was a hundred and forty million dollars, though the company’s stock went down twenty-five percent during his years in charge. They played all
kinds of merger games which brought big gains to themselves but lost a lot of jobs for workers. All the time this was happening, the government did not try to stop them. Rather it encouraged them. The main villains are Big Oil, Big Pharmacy, and Big Insurance—all of which are gouging us day in and day out. It’s time to stop them. That means it’s time for a Democratic Congress again. This could be a turning point election, time to take government out of the hands of the rich and give it back to the people. It’s time for the government to stop supporting the haves and have-mores and become concerned about those who have less.
MEDIA: Tommy are you ashamed that you were Mr. Mom for a couple of years?
CANDIDATE: Why should I be? I liked it. I got to know my children better. They got to know me better. Poor dad was so hapless and helpless that they tried to make life easy for him. I think they liked Mr. Mom. Now even when they’re becoming teens they seem to like him too, which as you all know is against the rules.
MEDIA: Do you think all dads should be Mr. Mom for a couple of years?
CANDIDATE: I’m not prescribing for anyone but myself. It was the thing to do for us at that stage of our family life.
MEDIA: If you win will you continue to be Mr. Mom and a Senator?
CANDIDATE: No!
He didn’t say that he became Mr. Mom because his wife was prone to a PPS syndrome. I had to do it because of my crazy wife.
MEDIA: Don’t you think it’s wrong to use a foreign language in your campaign?
CANDIDATE: Spanish isn’t a foreign language. It was the language of vast sections of our country before English came along. Is it really a foreign language in Los Angeles, the city of Our Lady Queen of the Angels? Most Latino Americans don’t want a separate culture any more than did the Irish or German or Italian Americans. They don’t see a contradiction
between being Americans and keeping alive the best of their heritages. I’ll talk to people in any language they know.
MEDIA: Isn’t the Mexican music inappropriate?
CANDIDATE: Those who aren’t Latinos seem to like it too.
This was our first big surprise in the campaign. The mostly “anglo” audiences in the suburbs wanted the mariachi band. They would join in the singing with the Latinos in the crowds. We had to buy Mexican dresses and sombreros for our daughters. The winter winds kept stealing the hats.
That phase of the campaign was dense with good will and excitement. We were having a good time and so were our crowds. We ignored the Examiner just as Rodgers Crispjin ignored us.
Tommy and I found ourselves deeply in love again. It was the first time since the Law Journal that we had worked together. We didn’t need the Bushmill’s to find the right mood at the end of the day.
I was dragged before the TV camera to defend myself against the charge of exploiting our three beautiful daughters.
TV: Don’t you think people flock to your husband’s rallies so they can ogle four beautiful red-headed women?
MARY MARGARET: In the middle of winter? They could watch Kirsten Dunst on DVD in the Spider-Man films.
TV: Did you take your family to that resort in Mexico every summer because you knew you were going to run for office?
MARY MARGARET: No. My husband felt that it would be good for our kids to learn about another language and culture … And it wasn’t a resort. It was a small bungalow.
TV: Didn’t your children resent losing their summers?
MARY MARAGARET (laughter): My kids are adventurers. They love Hermosillo. We’d put it to a vote every year and it was always unanimous.
The trickiest of Tommy’s talks was the one aimed especially at the Latinos. He had to praise them without seeming to pander.
Every immigrant group has made an important and unique contribution to the country. I for one am fed up with the stereotype
that the bigots today use to attack new Mexican immigrants who are trying to improve the lives of their families just like the rest of us once did. We hear nothing about the long-lasting Mexican contribution to American culture—the names of cities, the mission churches, the art, the music, even the sombreros which my daughters have a hard time protecting from the winds.
I never hear these bigots acknowledge that Mexican Americans are hard workers, that they have a strong family life, excellent health, and a deep religious faith which influences everything they do. If I’m elected to the Senate I will try to bring an end to the senseless immigration policies which kill so many men, women, and children in the desert. This slaughter has to stop. It was once said of my ancestors that they could never become really good Americans. They drank too much, they were lazy, they were shiftless. Well, that wasn’t true. The same things are said against Mexican Americans today. And they aren’t true now either! Finally there is a tremendous contribution that Mexicans are making to American life. Their religious faith emphasizes that God comes to Mexican families and celebrates their feasts with them. Our dour country needs more of that festivity and joy!
Then we’d segue into the mariachi, often expanded to include O’Malley cousins with horns and drums and even the good Rosie with her lovely voice. The crowds sang with us. The nice thing about Mexican music is that you can vocalize along with it even if you don’t know the words.
It all seemed to work reasonably well, dead of winter or not.
By the middle of March we were running on nervous energy. The primary came not one day too soon. Fortunately for us the snow storm held off till mid-evening.
We decided not to buy space in a hotel for a vote-counting party. The Moran basement was still our headquarters. The nine o’clock news on a Chicago channel reported an “upset victory” for our side. We had collected twenty-five thousand more votes in a virtually uncontested primary than Senator H. Rodgers Crispjin had piled up in his similar primary.
The anchor person was usually an airhead, but she was correct in her hasty analysis.
“It looks like Senator Crispjin has a horse race on his hands.”
Tommy and I walked out in the falling snow to face the two cameras which were waiting. He was coatless, as he always was.
“As Winston Churchill said after the battle of El Alamein, ‘It is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.’”
We walked back into the house, arm in arm.
Leander Schlenk dismissed the outcome in his commentary the next morning.
TOMMY’S “VICTORY” DOESN’T MEAN MUCH, POLS SAY
Veteran Chicago political observers discounted this morning the apparent “victory” in the primary beauty contest between househusband Tommy Moran and incumbent Senator H. Rodgers Crispjin. The Senator had remained in the national’s capital during the campaign while upstart Tommy campaigned vigorously, if not always tastefully. “The Senator’s campaign has not even begun,” one pol said. “When it does, he’ll bury Tommy.”
“He’s right,” Tommy said the following afternoon. “Now the negative ads start.”
“He may overkill,” Dolly suggested.
“I wonder how many readers believe Lee Schlenk,” Ric Suarez said. “Their circulation is way down.”
“Our job is to keep pushing,” I suggested. “At least they know we’re around.”
Congratulations and promises of support poured in from Democratic leaders all over the state. No one liked Crispjin very much.
“OK,” Joe McDermott said, “we got a lot of votes from Cook County, but we did better than the Senator in the collar counties, especially DuPage. That’s the first time something like that happened. Dolly, why don’t you get a statement out on that.”
“I’ll do better that that. I’ll say it on the five o’clock news tonight.”
We decided we would rent a store front on Chicago Avenue, just down the street from Petersen’s Ice Cream, as our headquarters—in keeping with our style of a surplus store campaign. We would at last take a breather to get ready for the main campaign which would start Memorial Day.
“We’ll visit every county in the state,” Tommy promised. “Let’s begin with a big song festival in Grant Park—ethnic music: American, Polish, Italian, Irish, German, Korean, Chinese, and Mexican.”
“One from many,” Ric Sanchez agreed.
Tommy and I were supervising the work on the storefront the following week when a TV reporter caught us with the first poll.
“It shows Senator Crispjin 30 percentage points ahead of you, Tommy, 55 percent to 25 percent. Do you have any comment.”
“How large was the sample?”
“Four hundred and three voters interviewed by phone.”
“I’m not surprised,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “He is after all an incumbent Senator running against an amateur. I’d comment that 55 percent is his maximum and 25 percent is my minimum. We’ll catch up.”
“Four hundred respondents,” I said, “isn’t very many.”
“It’s probably a good guess, however.”
He sat down under a huge picture of himself, surrounded by kids of all colors.
“Do you think the other side could be faking polls?” I asked.
“Bobby Bill is capable of that,” he agreed. “No one ever promised us a level playing field.”
The negative ads came like the deluge. Tommy househusband versus a real man. Tommy the demagogue against a great unifier. Inexperienced Tommy against the experienced and veteran Senator, whose previous job description was a real estate developer, but it was against the rules to say that.
We hunkered down and waited. I activated some more of our volunteers to compile phone lists for October and then went back to the firm.
We took the kids to Grand Beach for a winter weekend. They pummeled us with snowballs. The TV cameras which
had invaded the village caught some wonderful pictures of the kids attacking us and then of the grinning little demons throwing snowballs at the camera person. They were smart enough not to hit her.