WE REALIZED in July that the summer campaign was a waste. We still lagged seven or eight percentage points behind in the polls. Senator Crispjin remained in Washington on the Senate’s business. Some of his colleagues, men in difficult races, found time to return to their constituencies. The Senator allegedly did not think that was necessary because he was so far ahead. “You don’t use a tank to swat a fly,” was his attitude according to the indefatigable Leander Schlenk. September and October were the only months that really mattered in a campaign.
“Next time, Tommy,” Joe McDermott sighed one afternoon as we waited in the airport for our plane to arrive, “we campaign only in September and October.”
“If there is a next time,” I said.
I was in a mean, nasty, irritable, mood. So was Tommy, though his moods are more low-key than mine. We had been squabbling for days. We had dumped the kids at the Michigan City Airport to be picked up by their Aunt April. They needed a time out on the beach with their cousins. They had been griping and complaining all week, bickering with us and one another. When we told them we were giving them a free weekend, they had turned sullen and sulked silently on the flight from Midway to Michigan City. They hated their cousins, they had informed us when the plane landed. They were BORING!
“Brats!” I had said.
“They’ll have a great time,” Tommy had predicted, probably accurately.
“Adventurers indeed!” I had grumbled.
Tina had taken her brood to Green Lake. Ellie McDermott supported the campaign, as she had said, by not burdening us with her presence. I didn’t argue.
I don’t remember what cities we were visiting on our downstate trek, LaSalle-Peru, maybe, and Bloomington. Most downstate cities, it seemed to my urban cynicism, were interchangeable one with another—nineteenth-century river towns in the prairies surrounded by vast fields of tall corn. Scenes from State Fair, two-and-a-half-hours’ drive and a century away from Chicago.
It had been a hot summer, the sun, grimly implacable in cloudless skies and thick curtains of humidity, making every step an intolerable exertion. I made all of us, even the Reliables, put on sun-block cream. “No suits for cancer later on.” The stress and the strain, the heat and the humidity, the dour faces and the weariness of the crowds had all taken their toll on poor Tommy. He still smiled magically, laughed at himself, joked about the kids hating us for forcing them to take a weekend off. He still gave his standard talks with his usual verve, still worked the crowd like a Chicago ward committeeman. Yet there was no light in his eyes when the show was over or when we drove from the next airport to the next rally.
“You go south of 1-80,” Chucky had warned us, “and you’re not quite in the South, but you’re not in the North either. Marymarg, jeans and T-shirts for you, and only moderately classy. Tommy, you can wear a tie and a jacket but you take them off when you begin to speak.”
We did as we were told. I also wore a sombrero. When there were enough Hispanics in the crowd to respond to Tommy’s brief greetings in Spanish, he might ask me to sing a song or two and apologize for not having the whole band. One of the Reliables would give me my guitar.
None of us could tell how they were reacting. They applauded enthusiastically and laughed quietly at Tommy’s jokes. Even the anglos loved my songs. (I always said that my voice was not as good as Rosie’s. Everyone else in the family, herself included, insisted that, as a torch singer, I was a little bit better.) They shook hands eagerly with Tommy and the women shook hands with me. They were Democrats of course or they wouldn’t have been there.
After the rally, there would be the usual press conference with the usual questions and Tommy’s usual smile and effective answers. Often we’d take a brief ride to the local television station for a longer interview. The only tough question would be
MEDIA: Why should people here vote for you, Mr. Moran, instead of Senator Crispjin?
CANDIDATE: Well, because I’m a Democrat and am more likely to be on the side of poor and ordinary folks than a Republican would be. It’s time for a change in Washington, to give the workers and the farmers and the middle class their rightful say.
MEDIA: You never criticize the Senator, do you?
CANDIDATE: I don’t think you should win elections by vilifying your opponents.
MEDIA: You’ve experienced a lot of negative ads this summer and a couple of attacks on you and your family. How do you explain that?
CANDIDATE: I don’t. I can’t. They haven’t frightened us off.
MEDIA: Do you think there are people who don’t want you to win?
CANDIDATE: I hope not.
Nothing very exciting, but a chance for a lot more people to see and hear Tommy and to realize, we hoped, that he was an intelligent young man and not the wimp or the inexperienced demagogue that the attack ads, growing more relentless as the summer went on, claimed.
There were a lot more questions about the violence than we would have expected. Clearly that concerned a lot of people. Nor did they seem to accept the argument that we had brought it on ourselves.
Anyway as we waited in that tiny airport with inadequate air conditioning, drenched in perspiration, and with cleansing showers a long way off, we discussed the folly of a summer campaign.
“In England,” Joe said, “they only permit four weeks of campaigning for a general election. Makes a lot of sense to me.”
“Senator Crispjin, as always, has made the right decision,”
Tommy said wearily. “He campaigns effectively by remaining in the Beltway and tending to his senatorial responsibilities while his ads beat up on me. An unknown candidate has to travel all over the state so people can see him on the television news on Saturday or Sunday night. We have no choice. This a holding action. We haven’t gained on him, but we haven’t lost either. September and October will be the critical months.”
“What will we do then?” I asked.
“I’m not sure … I think the race will be won in the Chicago area. We’ll do well in Chicago, though we will have to do the Black churches as often as we can. Victory is in the suburbs and the collar counties, especially suburban Cook and DuPage. So we concentrate there. Lots of challenges to the Senator to debate. Some stations will schedule debates. Of course he won’t come, but we’ll show up every time.”
Joe nodded.
“I think you’ve learned the game pretty well this summer, Tommy. What do you think, Ric?”
“You’ve created a lot of enthusiasm among my people, Tommy. They think you’re really on their side. You have to keep pounding on that. This time we will get out the votes, I promise.”
I wondered if that would really happen. Latinos had yet to be mobilized in American politics, except in a couple of California districts.
“Mary Margaret?”
“There are an awful lot of soccer moms out in the suburbs. Don’t forget them.”
“Soccer moms and Hispanics,” Tommy worked up enough energy to laugh. “Well, that’s where the research shows the new Democratic majority is supposed to be … What’s Crispjin going to do, Joe?”
“He’ll go for his downstate base, especially the Evangelical churches. And he’ll fight us tooth and nail in DuPage county.”
“So that’s where the battle will be, fair enough! There’s a lot of people out there who should be Democrats … Does the St. Luke’s women’s soccer team have any games in September, Mary Margaret?”
“You bet and your daughter is the star.”
“Whom do we play?”
“Our arch enemies—St. Vincent!”
“Just so long as we don’t have to defeat a team from DuPage county.”
“I’ll do my best to look like a soccer mom … How do we cope with the violence question?”
“Do you think we can make anything out of it?”
“It’s on everyone’s minds … I don’t know what to do with it.”
“The plane is landing, Senator,” a Reliable whispered softly.
We flew to another city, Peoria, I think, met the media at the airport, went to another rally, and did our best to fight the good fight despite the scorching heat. It was late in the afternoon when we finished. We Chicagoans expected a bit of cooling breeze from off the Lake. But we were too far from the Lake and there were no breezes off the sluggish rivers which crisscross middle western America.
“I have an idea,” I said to Tommy as we tried to sleep that night despite the noisy air conditioner in our motel room.
“We need them.”
“Does it violate our norms if we use that tape of you in front of our ruined house in which you say that you simply don’t know who was responsible and hate to think violence has become part of the American political process. Then you hug all of us as you did that day and the voice over says, ‘Who wants to keep Tom Moran out of the Senate so badly that they would kill himself and his whole family?’”
He thought for a long moment.
“Of course we know who was responsible—Bobby Bill.”
“No one else does. We have never accused anyone. You have explicitly said that you don’t believe the Senator had anything to do with it.”
“I mostly believe that anyway.”
“So you’re pointing the finger in another direction—at mysterious, conspiratorial forces who are ready to use violence to defeat candidates they don’t like.”
“I could say on camera that I have no reason to blame my opponent who is not that kind of man and talk about mysterious forces.”
“Why not?”
“Sounds good … Let me think about it … Good night my loyal love.”
He kissed me very gently.
The St. Luke–St. Vincent soccer match was Labor Day itself. Not much for the news that night. The cameras would be out in force at the park.
It was a clear and blessedly cool morning. Mary Rose promised us that they would win.
“We will totally beat those brats and I will totally score two goals!”
“Young women are taller and stronger these days, aren’t they?” Tommy said. “And far too aggressive and competitive?”
“They’ll grow up to be pushy wives and mothers.”
Our team was dressed in red and white and the bad guys in black and white because it was a Dominican parish.
“Our guys are better looking,” I announced.
“Naturally,” he agreed.
Well we did win 3-1 and our reckless young heroine, her red hair a flaming comet trailing behind her, did score two goals. I thought that the bitches from St. Vincent’s had roughed her up unnecessarily.
“Are you proud of your daughter, Tommy?” A TV woman asked.
“Frightened of her,” he murmured.
“Will you permit her to play soccer in high school and college?”
“How could I stop her if I wanted to … Which I don’t.”
“You approve then of women playing violent sports?”
“I think that crowd of amazons out there will scare away teenage boys for a long time … Which may be a very good thing.”
The camera also picked up a gloriously sweaty redheaded young woman with a huge grin.
“I told my daddy that we would win just like he will win the election.”
Then she modestly ducked away from the camera.
Could this be the little newborn babe I held in my arms only yesterday?
The next morning we met at our reconstructed office and
laid out the plans for the next two months. Our experts pointed out the issues in the various county towns (as they’re always called in Chicago politics) and suburban bastions—Elmhurst, Hinsdale, LaGrange, Lisle, Naperville, Oak Brook—and the location of Mexican concentrations. We constructed a tight, tight schedule which covered white suburbs, Latino concentrations, and Black churches. We would appear in shopping malls (especially the huge one in Oak Brook). We would go on every radio or TV program that would take us. We would do band sessions anywhere and everywhere. We would issue repeated invitations to a debate in which we would tell the opponent that we would meet at a place and a time of his own choosing.
“We have to be prompt at every one of our scheduled appearances,” Dolly McCormick insisted. “My husband here is my enforcer. He is in charge of getting people to the Church on time.”
Randal McCormick, her towering bear of a man, was an investment banker with a reputation as tall as he was. He grinned happily. “I like this. I never knew politics was this much fun.”
We met that afternoon with Chucky and his friend who was doing the ads for us. They were mostly shots of my Tommy talking about his policies and convictions. They were put together either from TV tape or from shots made on the spot. He was flawless the first time around on every ad—the charming articulate witty trial lawyer, even when he made a joke about being Mr. Mom.
“Some say that only a wimp could stay in the house all day long with three little girls. Well, let me tell you, you have to be really tough to cope with three little kids of either gender. Besides they let me out of the house occasionally so long as I was home before dark.”
“How could anyone vote against him, huh, Marymarg?” my father said … “You think that’s too much of the candidate?” he hollered at Ted McManus, the PR man making the ads.
“How could there be too much of that candidate?”
“Let’s do the violence one now,” Chucky insisted, brimming with even more than his usual enthusiasm. “This one is really neat.”
“We’d say totally cool, Chucky.”
We did it and then redid it several times.
“Perfect,” Ted McManus said finally. “What do you think, Chucky?”
“What do you guys think?” he bounced the question at us.
“It was my idea, so naturally I like it.”
Tommy hesitated.
“You’re going to try it with your focus groups, Ambassador?”
“Certainly.”
“It gets by them, go with it.”
It did and we did.
We got a quick reaction from Leander Schlenck
TINY TOMMY TAKES THE LOW ROAD
Even Tiny Tommy Moran can sink lower than he is. His early ads, pedestrian in every other respect, now suggest that the distinguished Senior Senator from Illinois, H. Rodgers Crispjin was behind the bombing at his campaign headquarters this summer. With his ratings in the polls falling precipitously, Tommy has forgotten about his own pledge to eschew negative ads. He is now a completely dead duck.
Dolly issued the usual “correction” that she did after every such column and after every new Crispjin ad. She sent them to all the media outlets. Sometimes the Daily News or one of the TV stations used them.