OUR LOVE-MAKING was gentle and affectionate when we returned to the apartment. I established that two sessions of such a day was well within my capability. Afterwards, my wife’s head on my chest, we relaxed and reveled in a few moments of serenity.
“I’m not sure how I ever found a wife like you,” I said.
“I found you, Tommy Moran.”
“You’re astonishing.”
“You mean I’m not so bad in bed?”
“That too. But I mean your faith and your loyalty and your courage. Not once through this terrible year, did you complain. It was my crazy idea, but you made it your crazy idea too. I never could have done it myself.”
“We haven’t quite done it yet.”
“We will. Ric tells me that we will carry DuPage. He says that even the Republican leadership out there says we will.”
“Then that’s the ball game … Like I said, you were great this afternoon.”
I was silent for a few moments.
“You know, I think Schlenk was right, not completely but mostly.”
“Cynicism, Tommy love, is a luxury that a democratic society cannot afford.”
The next day all of us were out and running with the crack of dawn. Except you couldn’t tell it was dawn because it rained intermittently all day—rallies in Black neighborhoods in Chicago, malls in the suburbs and the collar counties, elevated and train stops at the evening rush hour, TV pleas for people to vote. Ric’s predictions about DuPage seemed reasonable
enough. There were a lot of Latino women at the malls and a lot of soccer moms too.
On election day, we went to the early Mass at St. Luke’s, the Monsignor blessed us, and gave the kids permission to miss school the next day, “but only if we win.” We didn’t tell him that we had already asked the principal.
Our next stop was at the polling place, just down the street from the parish. There was a huge crowd there already—turnout in our neighborhood was always way over 90 percent, sometimes, as Ambassador O’Malley often joked, over 100 percent. They cheered enthusiastically for us, shook hands, congratulated us, praised our stamina.
“And this,” I said to my wife, “is in our own country and among our own people. It doesn’t seem right.”
“River Forest will be solidly Democratic today,” a neighbor said. “That doesn’t happen too often.”
The cameras were there to catch us. It was a warm sunny day, weather which was supposed to be Democratic weather. My wife wore a beige autumn suit with an orange and black scarf and a jeweled pin which said simply “Tommy.” She was more radiant than ever, completely confident that we would win. I wavered during the night long count. She never did. Next we appeared on some TV spots at the Lake Street L and the Burlington commuter line, begging people to vote. The spots would appear on the noon news.
Then we went over to our campaign headquarters, still suffering from the aftereffects of the bomb. The Ambassador and his wife were waiting for us.
“Too bad that Schlenk guy wouldn’t bet you,” he said. “You would have won.”
“What an evil man!” his wife exclaimed.
Only Dolly and Joe were around from the staff. They were on the phone every second, collecting reports from our new and not always efficient precinct organization. They both seemed worried.
All we could do was sit and wait, listen to the news on the radio, and follow the voting reports from around the city and the state. The word was that there was a surprisingly large turnout in the Chicago suburbs. The noon news said that would be an advantage to Senator Crispjin who lived in suburban
Sycamore, where he had made a lot of money in dubious land development, a subject from which we stayed away, though the Daily News had devoted some attention to it. Not enough as far as Ric and Joe were concerned. We didn’t expect to do much in that county anyway.
The quiet supporters for him and his wife when they voted was in sharp contrast to the disorderly behavior at our River Forest polling place.
Ric and Tina, exhausted but jubilant arrived about twelve-thirty.
“I absolutely guarantee that we will carry DuPage,” he insisted. “No doubt about it. That’s a revolution in Illinois politics.”
“How much?”
“Rodge will do well downstate. Those Christians will throw a lot of votes his way. But we Catholics will turn it around.”
“Listen to him,” Tina chuckled. “When this all started, he was an agnostic.”
“Si, but an agnostic Catholic!”
“Now he wants to order a Guadalupe statue just like the one you’ve ordered.”
“Patroness of all the poor peons,” he insisted. “And we’re only a generation away from being poor peons … I hope you’re feeling confident, gringo, we’ve won it for you.”
“My head is confident. I’m not sure about my stomach.”
My wife who had slipped out for an expedition returned with a tray of malts and sundaes.
“Lent starts Thursday morning,” she informed us.
I drank two of them, proud that I had put on no weight during the campaign. I hadn’t eaten much during the last six months.
Ric and Tina joined the others on the phones. All news was positive.
“What if we win, Tommy? What will we do?”
“I was thinking the same thing myself.”
When deep down in the sub-basements of your soul, you know that you can’t possibly win, you don’t pay much attention to that question. At two o’clock we and the Suarezes picked up our kids at school.
“Who’s winning?” they demanded. “Who’s winning?”
“Too early to say,” I said.
“Uncle Ric says we’re ahead,” my wife said cautiously.
“Gringos are doubters.”
We all laughed.
We then drove downtown to the Hotel Allegro, once a luxurious German-American place called the Bismarck, and now the least expensive spot for a victory party. It had been refurbished, but much of the old, if somewhat tattered, baroque German patina survived.
Mike Casey, tall, slender, white haired, and elegant, was waiting for us in the ballroom.
“Thank God, it ends here in Chicago,” he said. “You’ll be surrounded by Chicago cops, both on duty and off duty.”
“No assassins lurking in the kitchen?” Ambassador O’Malley, who had been in Los Angeles when a nutcase had gunned down Bob Kennedy, asked.
Mike Casey glanced at him with a wry grin.
“This is not Los Angeles.”
We went up to our suite, three rooms for eating, drinking, entertaining the important people. The suite was not exactly run-down, but it lacked the elegance of the Hilton or the Four Seasons.
“The food will be great,” the Ambassador assured us. “I owe that to the memory of Marymarg’s grandparents, as will the drinks. We save money on the hotel.”
“Anything left in the fund?” I asked dubiously.
“Some,” he grinned at me. “Enough for an emergency … Incidentally, the good Rosemarie says I should tell you that I own a townhouse in Georgetown, right down the street from the university. I bought it during the Lyndon Johnson mess, because I knew, short of nuclear war, property values there would keep going up. I’ve been renting it ever since. Nice income. The family that lived in it, grain lobbyist, is going back to Omaha. So I’m offering it to you guys for a hundred dollars a month. Don’t even think of arguing.”
Applause from everyone in the room.
“Done,” Mary Margaret beat me to the punch.
We had never discussed where we would live in Washington, much less if the family would relocate. I felt queasy. This couldn’t be happening, could it?
The game wasn’t over quite yet
The polls closed at seven. The first tallies showed senator Crispjin jumping into a fifteen-thousand vote lead. Silence fell on the room.
“Only one glass of whiskey, Senator,” my wife warned me.
Leander Schlenk appeared on screen from the Crispjin headquarters at the Fairmont.
“It looks like poor little Tommy Moran is going to be buried,” he chortled.
Joe McDermott got off the phone.
“It’s mostly small rural counties south of 1-80.”
I felt a bit like Moses who had seen the promised land and then lost it.
The kids dug out their instruments and began to sing.
The night dragged on. By midnight we had caught up and the lead swayed back and forth. The media said the race was too close to call.
Ric reported that the news was good from DuPage.
The mayor and his wife had joined us, unobtrusive and low key as always.
“In the old days, they used to take the ballot boxes home out there and count the votes in their basements,” the mayor said, “then when all the others were in, they’d report their tallies. A lot of Democratic candidates lost in those basement tallies. Then in 1960, Mayor Daley held back some precincts along Milwaukee Avenue where the Polish people voted. After DuPage gave Nixon the lead, we reported those precincts and won by seven thousand votes. It’s changed a little out there.”
As the night turned into morning, neither of us led by more than a thousand votes. The talking heads on the tube talked on as they must, though they had nothing to say. It was one of the closest senatorial elections in Illinois history. Still too close to call.
The kids put away their musical instruments and went to sleep. Claims of victory continued from the Crispjin headquarters. We were silent. I told my staff I didn’t want anyone down in the ballroom trying to spin the numbers.
“There’s lot of people down there waiting to hear from you, Senator,” Dolly warned.
“They’ll have to wait till the Senator has something to say.”
At two-thirty there seemed to be a little movement in our favor. We were ahead by fifteen hundred votes and that lead seemed firm.
Leander Schlenk complained that it looked like another Cook County election theft.
Then Channel 3 reported that given the unreported precincts it was mathematically impossible for Senator Crispjin to win. They declared me the apparent winner.
“Dolly,” I said, “go downstairs and tell them we’ll proclaim victory when the lead looks safer.”
Inch by inch, with agonizing slowness and occasional setbacks, we crept further ahead. Three thousand votes, thirty-five hundred, four thousand votes.
“He’ll never concede, Joe,” I said. “I don’t blame him. He thought he had it all sewed up. His people told him it was a cinch. He’s shattered. He’ll demand a recount, so would I if I were in his position.”
“It’s all punch cards,” he said. “He can’t turn around this outcome.”
At five thousand votes the remaining Chicago TV stations agreed that I was the winner. At fifty-five hundred, national TV agreed and the Daily News joined the fold.
“We carried DuPage by twenty-five thousand,” Ric shouted.
The kids began to sing.
When, at four-thirty we reached a lead of six thousand, I said calmly, “I think I’ll go down and join the celebration!”
Then an angry Senator H. Rodgers Crispjin appeared on the screen.
“I want to assure all my supporters here,” he stumbled as he tried to read the text of a handwritten statement, “that I do not accept this rush to judgment. I am convinced that the Daley organization has stolen another election. We will demand a recount and go into federal court to seek an injunction. I do not propose to accept this crime without serious protest.”
“His poor wife is crying,” Mary Margaret said.
The mayor congratulated me.
“Same old stuff, Tommy. He didn’t say what relief the injunction would seek.”
“Overturn the DuPage County vote, probably! … Come on guys!”
So we paraded down to the grand ballroom in triumph. The board said we were ahead by 7,825 votes with 99 percent of the vote counted.
The kids led the way, playing some kind of Mexican military march.
I confess I exulted in the cheers. The great unknown lay ahead. But we’d won. Mary Margaret hugged me fiercely.
“I’m here to claim victory,” I said simply. “I understand that Senator Crispjin is not conceding and is demanding a recount. That is certainly his right. In his position I might do the same thing. However, if he is looking for fraud, he should consider his old stronghold of DuPage County which Mr. Sanchez tells me we carried by twenty thousand votes! That, folks, is a revolution in Illinois politics.”
All the women in my family were hugging me and weeping. I had a hard time not sobbing with them.
“We set out, without much expectation of winning. We wanted to demonstrate that one could do well in a state-wide election without spending a lot of money, without my soliciting any contributions, and above all without any dirty tricks, any negative campaigning, and without any attack ads. I’m sure that our victory is substantial enough that it will not be overturned. But at least we proved that it could be done.”
Then I thanked everyone beginning with my resilient family. Mary Margaret gave me a list so I wouldn’t miss anyone.
I concluded by saying it was time for all of us to go home and get some sleep because tomorrow would be another very busy day. I also told my kids and the Sanchez kids that both the Monsignor and the Principal said they didn’t have to go to school tomorrow.
Laughter and cheers.
So far I hadn’t let anyone down.
The media cornered me as the cops and the Reliables led me towards the back exit
“Will you move to the Beltway?”
“I think so. Have to talk it over with the family.”
“Have you chosen your staff yet?”
“No time to think about it.”
“Is Senator Crispjin a sore loser?”
“I would never say anything like that.”
“What do you expect the results of the recount to be?”
“Maybe we’ll pick up a few more votes.”
Actually we won by more than ten thousand votes. Despite the daily stories in the Examiner and the constant complaints of the Crispjin staff, it was a clean victory. Nevertheless, his lawyers went into federal court and requested an injunction to invalidate the election on the grounds of vote fraud. The court rejected the plea. The United States Attorney did his own investigation and could find no evidence of serious fraud. Yet the litigation persists even today. The Supreme Court turned down the case twice.
Was my opponent a sore loser? Everyone seemed to think so. They also thought he would try to unseat me six years hence. When asked about that I said I would not make up my mind about running again for a long time.