Political Years

9

For most, the bulging bank account that accompanied Isabel on her return to Los Angeles would have been life’s defining experience. For Isabel, conflicted by feelings of love for and betrayal by her grandfather, and the tainted source of her new fortune, the money was not enough to cure her sense of defeat and loss, feelings that traveled with her from Mexico City and remained despite all remedies she used to get past the black days just endured. Loss of Papa Miguel, and the obliteration of his revered pedestal. Loss of self-confidence. She felt adrift. No goal to aim for. No job to go to. For the past six years her work had been her life. Her home was the 6,000-mile sea of air between Los Angeles and the southern coast of Chile, with ports of call in between. Fun, excitement, her ego polished with each new business and romantic conquest. Now it had ended, abruptly. In little more than a week, her triumph with the Banco Temuco deal had spiraled into Miguel’s death, Federico’s shocking revelations and, finally, her humiliating failure to secure the Aragon legacy Miguel had intended for her.

She filled the first weeks of her return with busy work, some necessary, like finding ways to secure and invest her new fortune, some frivolous, like replacing most of her furniture and dressing her kitchen in a happier shade of blue. She wanted her new world to look different than the painful one she was leaving behind. Though she kept herself occupied with mail, phone calls, family, nothing weakened her consuming sense of sorrow. Until she thought of Carmie. Once again, Carmie.

So many times it was Carmie she had turned to when they were both young and things went badly at home, or a boyfriend dumped her, or she just felt teenage blah. Carmie had helped her get past Andres and her miscarriages. Now the need for Carmie welled as an imperative. Once the thought entered her head there was no denying it. A phone call, a plane ticket, and within two days the old friends were together in New York City, sharing margaritas at the Gramercy Park Hotel bar, near Carmie’s apartment.

While Tenny was becoming a force in Latin American finance, Carmie had been growing her own reputation on Wall Street as a trusted and perceptive financial analyst. Carmie knew enough about Groupo Aragon from street talk not to be surprised at Tenny’s story. What did surprise her was the courage and naivety her friend showed trying to upend that corporate behemoth. She loved Tenny for it.

“You know of course,” said Carmie, “Carmona was right.”

“Not from you, too, Carmie!”

“No. Hear me out. Even if Carmona agreed to let you stay there and try to change the culture, your chances of doing it would be worse than zero. The other barracudas in the company would do you in. I fight turf and control battles every day, and that’s right here in New York, where the rule book means more. If you hadn’t lost to Carmona, it would have been to whoever’s under him gunning for his job, or some competitor, or judge, or politician. It’s the system. No. You have to pick fights you can win.”

“What fights? I’ve got nothing now. No job. All my old business ties have been cut. It’s like starting over with no direction, no place to go, nothing to hang onto.”

Carmie jumped off her bar stool and circled her friend like she was a strange object in a curio shop.

“You don’t know what to do? You don’t know what to do? You have no direction? Your old life is over? Are you nuts or what? You don’t have to live in someone else’s corrupt world. Make your own world. A clean slate means no obligations to anyone but yourself. You’re your own person, with all the money anyone could ever want. Put all of it to work—all of it, your money, your time, your experience, your energy, your brilliance, your dedication—all of it—doing something positive, not picking impossible fights.

“What should I do, set up my own foundation and give money to good causes? I’ve thought of that.”

“Listen. You came up with an agenda for Aragon. It didn’t work. Take it somewhere else, somewhere where it will. My friend, you were pretty unrealistic thinking you could change the entire Mexican business and political culture single handedly. Admit it. That was a foolish thing you did. Lovely, but foolish.”

“Okay, maybe so. But then why did my grandfather write me into his will as a future company CEO? He knew as well as anyone that it was a corrupt enterprise. I’d like to think he wanted me there to clean it up.”

“Could be. And I would cherish that thought. He may well have had a late-in-life conversion and after seeing you perform decided you’d be strong enough to clean up their act. That’s really the way you should remember him.”

“Oh, Carmie, I want to. I really want to. Federico has a darker view of it. He thinks Papa misread me. I pulled off so many deals using marginal ethics, Federico thinks Papa came to believe I was one of them and could be trusted to be a figurehead without rocking the boat. That’s the life Papa apparently had planned for Federico.”

“Miguel’s motives don’t matter now. Think kindly of him. It’s easier for you. If he misjudged anything, it likely was how quickly his people would turn on you and run you out. What does matter is what comes next. Are you sure you don’t want to use your money to lead a jet-set, glamorous life? No one would blame you. In fact, it’s what most people would probably do if they struck it rich.”

“No, Carmie, Federico inspired me. He’s doing penance his way. I need to find my way.”

“Well the place to start is in the real world.”

“The real world?”

“You’ve been riding in first class and looking down at the world from 30,000 feet. What do you know about people who can’t find jobs or who need three jobs to keep the lights on and food on the table? Do you know anyone like that? Can you name one person? One hour you’ve spent with them?”

“No, you’re right. Not one.”

“Do you know what it’s like to run away from abusive husbands, with no money and no relatives or friends to take you in? Do you know what it’s like to live every day looking over your shoulder hoping you won’t get outed by your employer for being here illegally, or your husband or wife or kid won’t run a red light and be hauled off to a relocation camp? All the time I see people writing big checks to their old alma maters, or hospital funds or other causes without having a clue where that money goes and what it goes for. But they feel good about it because it’s quote, charity, unquote, and they get the tax write-off. Don’t be one of those people. You’re too good for that. One of your great talents is doing the research before you act. That’s how you got so many clients when no one else in Aragon could. Now do it for yourself.

“If you want to use your money for the Aragon agenda, first do the research on what that agenda should be. Get down on the streets and get some experience learning what organizations do that help battered women, homeless people, hungry people, sick people, unemployed people, overemployed people. To fix problems, you have to understand them. You are what Carmona called you, a rookie. Become a journeyman. Maybe if you see these problems how they really are, in person, you may not want anything to do with them at all.”

“Are you saying I should be like a Salvation Army volunteer for the rest of my life?”

“Well, if you want to become Mother Teresa for Los Angeles why not? My guess, knowing you, is that it won’t take long for you to become more useful than just a soup kitchen volunteer. You’ll figure it out. You’re a smart girl. The point is, you have to start over somewhere. If you’re not interested in a life of luxury and would rather spend time and big bucks helping people, get to know how people live and what they need and what would really help them.”

Tenny stared into her margarita glass, her mind weighing her friend’s advice. It made sense. That was a big key to her business success. Knowing. Being prepared. No winging it. What did she really know about life, other than how it’s lived in the very narrow spectrum of her class of wealth and privilege and power? Federico had considered his move for years. He had weighed all his alternatives, dismissing many for reasons he could explain to himself and to her that awful night in the garden. He made a rational choice. Her reaction had been emotional, impetuous, not carefully considered or realistic.

She lifted her glass and licked salt from its rim.

“Okay, you’re right, as usual. I buy it. Now what do I do? Walk into the closest food bank and volunteer?”

“In a way. Look. I’ve got an idea. For years I’ve been working with a group here in New York called New York Lights. It’s sort of an umbrella organization for a lot of the groups that have food banks, shelters, charity distribution, things like that. We raise money, get management help and back them up so they can spend more of their donations on serving people, not administration. Move to New York and I’ll introduce you to all the players. You’d fit in great here. And think of it, the two of us on the streets together raising hell like we used to. New York’s a great city. It deserves us.”

“I’d love that, Carmie. I’d love to spend more time with you. But my father’s about to retire, mom’s heart’s a big concern for us and Miguel’s death has been tough on her. I should stay close. Besides, I like living in Los Angeles. I’ve had two homes, really, Mexico City and L.A. I don’t think I’m up for a third. After all those years of living on airplanes and hotels, I’m sort of desperate to just live in one place.”

Carmie looked at her friend closely, tapped her fingers on the walnut bar top as if keying up alternatives.

“OK, how about this, then. We have a sister group in Los Angeles called L.A. Lights. Not as big or developed as the one we have here in New York, but it’s really well run and mostly feeds the hungry. An old classmate of ours, Hal Thompson, remember him, from those awful statistics classes? He’s a lawyer and he spends a lot of time helping this group. He’s also in court a lot arguing for tenant rights. He’s a real saint. Hook up with Hal. He knows all the players. You’ll be a good team. I’ll call him and set up a meeting. It’s a way to get started.”

10

“Tenny!”

No one but Carmie had used that name in years. Since college she had been Isabel, prowling Latin America and California wealth communities like a hungry feline. Her prey, big bank accounts. The wealth world knew her as Isabel Aragon Tennyson. Now, here was a voice from her past, startling her with its enthusiasm as she entered Starbucks. Carmie must have asked Hal to be particularly welcoming to her fragile friend. He beamed sunshine and embraced her.

Carmie had known Hal well in college, where she, like most young women in their circle, used sharp elbows against constant competition to dance with him. Tenny hadn’t paid much attention to Hal. Hal had seemed rail thin to her then. Now he filled his suit as pleasantly as a Zegna model. He was clean shaven, a welcome change from all the beards and mustaches so ubiquitous in Latin America. They settled in over lattes.

“So tell me,” she asked, “why am I here?”

“Good question,” Hal replied. “Carmie says you can be anywhere you want doing anything you want. But I’d guess you’re here because you want to do more than entertain yourself.”

“Well, yes. Carmie thinks I don’t know enough about how most people really live. She’s right.”

“Neither do I. I mean, I’m hardly an authority on people. But I’ve had a lot of experience with people near the bottom rungs.”

“Homeless? Out of work?”

“Sure, but you’d be surprised how many need help who have jobs and homes.”

“Like?”

“Just yesterday I got a bank to hold off foreclosing on a woman who works three jobs and it’s barely enough to cover day care for her kids, along with her mortgage and the food for their table. Nearly every day I get a call from some group to help a woman whose husband beat her bloody and she ran from the house and needs protection. Things like that.”

“And where’s L.A. Lights fit in?”

“A bunch of us try to coordinate all the groups on this side of the divide. You know, the food banks, homeless shelters, rape crisis people, all that, to see if we can change things at wholesale.”

“Wholesale?”

“Yeah, wholesale. Social service at retail is important, but there’s never enough volunteers, and too little money. We’re fighting some entrenched heavyweights and we need to bulk up.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I think that’s the answer to your question about why you’re here. I’ll show you. It’s hard to understand if you just talk about it. Just tag along with me for a while. Go where I go. See what I see. It explains itself.”

She took a last sip of latte, the last bite of her chocolate biscotti. This felt right. More than right. Here she was, in her mid-thirties tingling like an impressionable teenager at the prospect of living with the underclass. Hal was offering to guide her on an adventure. She nodded assent, trying as best she could to mask her excitement.



Her car phone rang as she drove home from meeting with Hal. Carmie.

“So, how’d it go?”

“Wow, you don’t waste a minute, do you. I just left him.”

‘And...”

“Hal’s going to show me the streets. That should help cure my 30,000 feet problem.”

“Great. And what do you think of Hal?”

“Nice. Nice guy. He made me feel like he was glad to do this for me.”

“Did he make you feel anything else?”

“Carmie! You’re the one who had a crush on him, not me.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll ask you again in a few weeks, after you two have spent some time together.”

11

Tenny and Hal met most days at Hal’s law office in Studio City, a small enclave of Los Angeles just over the Hollywood Hills in the San Fernando Valley. Hal tried to whip through work for his paying clients during the morning hours, leaving clean up details for his two paralegals. Then it was on to wherever the day’s pro bono work took them. Sometimes to L.A. Lights’ store fronts helping to manage food service or clothing distribution. Other days they could be in court, fighting for a restraining order to stop an eviction. Or at a contentious city council committee meeting to plead for more money for a rape crisis shelter. This was the vortex that sucked up Hal’s days, and now hers, turning her notions of help from abstract penance to a cause with human faces.

The Los Angeles Tenny returned to was home to about ten million people, where rivers of races and cultures converged. Los Angeles had become one of the most unequal places to live in the United States. Earnings, life expectancy and educational achievement all registered far higher for those living in prosperous and whiter beach and hill communities than in neighborhoods largely populated by Latinos and African Americans.

Until Hal, Tenny’s life had been protected as carefully as if she lived inside an insulated rainbow. Unpleasantness not welcome. Now she was sharing streets where a warm cup of coffee, a cot for the night, a clean toilet, medication when needed—so many things taken for granted by those in her pre-Hal life, were daily uncertainties. Not for “groups,” or “classes of people.” But for those with faces, names, families, individual crises that defined their daily reality. Before, in Tenny’s world, there had been safety, now there was just enough disorder to keep her on the edge of discomfort, occasionally even slipping into fright. She was traveling through space she had never known. She loved it.

To these encounters, Tenny brought an important asset Hal lacked, fluency in the Spanish language. She could understand what English-only speakers often missed, key details of a problem, the nuances of feeling. Slowly she was evolving into more than Hal’s appendage, a development Hal welcomed. It meant that they could widen their reach.

One of the best ways to make money is to have money. With the right investments and little or no labor, money makes money through interest, dividends, rising land values and stock prices. Tenny had spent years managing the wealth of others. It gave her a valuable head start on how to manage her own. A billion dollars is a thousand million. Invested at 5 percent, that billion earns $50 million each year. Not all of her money was invested to produce interest. Some was used to buy real estate and undeveloped land for future appreciation. Some went into venture funds. More than she would admit found its way anonymously into local causes and support for individuals who came to her attention. Even with her generosity, even with her annual tax bill, her fortune continued to grow.

In Hal’s world, her new world, she was Tenny Tennyson, volunteer. Presumed well-off divorcee or widow or single woman with a good heart and free time. No one knew of the Aragon connection, the deep Mexican roots, the bottomless wealth stored in her accounts. She was always in jeans, the non-designer variety, sweatshirts or something comparable, tennis shoes or walking shoes, and lightly made up. She cut an unremarkable figure. When they traveled it was in Hal’s eight-year-old Ford sedan, not her silver 700 series BMW.

Months into their collaboration, Hal had a day-long court date in Long Beach, followed that evening by a neighborhood council meeting in East Los Angeles, a poor, densely populated, overwhelmingly Latino-centric corner of the city. That meant a lot of driving. Thirty miles from his office to Long Beach, another thirty back to pick up Tenny after the court session, and then twenty miles each way from Tenny’s home to the East Los Angeles community center. It was 11:00 p.m. when they reached the driveway at Tenny’s hillside home off of Beverly Glen Drive. He had never been here. She had never invited him, until now.

“Come in for a drink,” she said. “Been quite a day for you.”

“One for the road?” he smiled. “Sold.”

“Let’s sit in the living room,” she said. She bent down, turned two knobs and a fire immediately sprang into life from the artificial gas logs in front of her. It was a chilly night. The warmth was welcome. Hal went where visitors to this home always were drawn first, to the floor to ceiling sliding glass doors separating the living room from the outdoor pool and patio, awash tonight in shades of blue and kinetic herring bone patterns designed by the pool’s lights. Beyond the patio, the San Fernando Valley, an endless carpet of light, a transfixing sight, even to those who see it often. A landscape created by man, not nature.

“My home in Mexico City was on a hillside like this. As a little girl I would look down on the city’s lights hours on end. I imagined so much that was happening inside all of those lights. Little girl thoughts. I guess that’s why I bought this home. To recapture some of those feelings.”

She settled onto the sofa facing the fire, legs curled up, drink in hand. She handed Hal his as he sat beside her, looking into the flames, the only light in the otherwise darkened room.

“Oh, that’s good!” said Hal. Much better than I usually drink. What is it?”

“It’s a rye. Dickel, from Tennessee. My favorite. And not expensive.”

“Well, after today it’s really welcome. I was more than ready for it. Thanks for asking me in.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, hypnotized by the erratic dance of flames.

“Actually, if you hadn’t invited me in I was going to ask anyway. There’s some business I’d like to talk about.”

“Oh, Hal, just unwind. You’ve done so much today.”

“Something you said tonight just clicked with me. Remember, during the talk about getting more cops on the streets in those neighborhoods you said I wish I had the power to just do it. I’d just put up the money and the cops would be there. I’ve been thinking about that driving you home. In a way, an indirect way, you already do have that power.”

“Me? Wonder Woman! I had no idea!”

“Well not with a cape and a funny suit. But your money could pay for a political organization that could get the power.”

“Where do you buy power?”

“Politics. Political organization.”

“We already have friends in city hall and other places.”

“This job’s too big for just friends. Not people just willing to give us the time to hear our case and then think about it. It has to be people like us. People who will just do it because they believe in it.  People who already are persuaded. People we put in power and can jerk right back out if we have to. We need a political organization.

“I’m not sure I understand. I don’t know anything about politics. I’ve never voted. In fact, I’ve never even registered to vote.”

“And that’s it,” he said, suddenly sitting up straight. “That’s it. You’re not alone. Think about it. If we could turn the thousands of people like you who work so hard as good cause volunteers into a political force, and lash in the labor people and environmental people and all the ethnic groups—Latinos, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, blacks—what a force. We’d be unbeatable. We could elect anyone we wanted. We. I mean people like you and me, who think like you and me. We could run L.A. and most of the smaller cities in the county.”

Tenny laughed. “Hal, you need another drink. “

He willingly handed her his glass for a refill.

“Yes, I do need another drink. That’s good stuff. But hear me out. If we could register and mobilize all of our natural supporters, we could elect our people to the jobs that make policy and write the checks. Christ. That community we were in tonight needs a thousand more jobs. It needs a rec center for kids. Did you take a good look at those fire engines? Hand-me-downs. Class sizes there over thirty kids, 50 percent more than Beverly Hills. They need safe day care. They need everything. But they’re not even fighting for it. “

“Why?”

“Why? Because we’ve trained them to beg for crumbs and then lick our fingers in gratitude if something, anything, good happens.”

The outburst surprised her. She thought they were decompressing after a stressful day. Dancing fire. Excellent whiskey. Hal seemed in no mood to relax.

They sat quietly for a few moments. She wanted to respond but wasn’t sure how.

He turned to her, smiled widely and shook his head.

“Sorry, Tenny. Didn’t mean to rant on you.”

“It’s one of the things I admire most about you, Hal. You’re doing all this because you really mean it. You don’t just think it, you feel it.”

He took a long sip of his drink. Then another.

“When you said tonight if you had the power. That was an eye opener for me. I’ve been thinking like a lawyer, handling individual cases. And I’ve been thinking like a lobbyist, trying to convince powerful people with arguments they might or might not buy, competing with other people with more money and more influence. But the key to getting what we want is political power. And if we package it right, we can get it.”

Hal turned to face Tenny.

“Tenny, would you be willing to write a million dollar check to start a political action committee?”

“What’s a political action committee, and what do I get for that kind of investment?”

“It’s called a PAC, and it’s a legal way for people to organize for political action. We’d use it to pull together all of our allies into a single political force. We’d put pressure on people in office and we’d elect our own slates. The payoff? Tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars more from the city and county and federal government for all the causes we’re working for.”

“Sounds like a good investment. You figure out how to do it and make it work and I’m in. And if it’s as good as you say I can twist a lot of other arms for more.”

Hal leaned over, held the back of her head with one hand and kissed her cheek hard. The sudden act of affection startled her. He moved quickly between political calculations and gratitude and back again.

“We need a pro to create a strategy, a plan. We have to pull the groups together. We need to run real campaigns. And I know just the guy. Ben Sage. My best friend in high school. Now he’s one of the best political strategists in the country. He works out of Washington. You’d really like him. He knows everything we don’t about running campaigns. Ben Sage.”

He hugged Tenny again, his brain afire with this transcendent idea, his body feeling the glow from two glasses of straight whiskey and now the heat radiating from this woman next him, lips close to his, arms returning his embrace, the scent of her hair.

Tenny needed no further stimulation. Hal’s lips were just inches from hers. She dove into them, her lips wide open, devouring his tongue, running her hands wildly through his golden hair. Her sudden move pushed Hal back into the pillows. She hung on tightly, falling gently with him. She was so very hungry.

There would be other nights. The next three, in fact. Passion had erupted with too much force to be easily contained.  As the days became weeks, the intensity ebbed, but didn’t disappear. Naked body time, once introduced into the lives Tenny and Hal were sharing, would remain.

Many years earlier Tenny had fallen in love with Andres. For her, it was love as she always had imagined it. Andres became her life. Twice since then she had met men who not only set off sexual sparks but consumed her every thought. For a while. Those encounters peaked quickly and just as rapidly declined. She felt she had so much love in her, but that love came in brief bursts. She had been there with Andres. She had little interest in revisiting the pain of a broken heart.



“Did you ever sleep with him?” asked Tenny.

“No,” Carmie replied.

“Tell the truth. I won’t be jealous.”

“Never really came close. I might have if things were different. But outside of just having a good time at parties with lots of other people, we never connected where it could have happened. And since I’ve been in New York, my only contacts with him have been long-distance.”

“Too bad.”

“Are you bragging!”

“No, just stating a fact. Anyway, maybe he wasn’t as good then as he is now.”

“Do you love him? Is this going anywhere?”

“No. It’s just here and now.”

Actually, she did love Hal. She loved him for so many things. His dedication. His work ethic. His courage. His sensitivity to others. Now, she added to that list his exceptional performance in bed. But it was a love of mind and body, not of the heart. She was so thankful for that. Falling into romantic love with Hal would have come at the expense of the other bonds they had. Their work together gave her life meaning. She woke each day with great anticipation of new adventure or satisfying causes that new day would bring. For her, the arrangement was ideal. Her true love was her work.

Hal seemed not to want or need more either. No suggestions they move in together, or plan lives together. No words of love, except during those moments when such words are expected, when they pour forth on their own and evaporate with the last sighs on the pillow. In fact, Hal had a new true love, not Tenny, but politics.

12

In high school, Hal played power forward on the varsity basketball team, six foot one, all arms and legs, bone thin. A starter, not a star, but serviceable on a team that won more than it lost. Popular enough to run for student body president, not popular enough to win. Ben Sage had a different trajectory. He was the writer, the editor of the school paper, the quiet one usually found on the edges of the crowd, not in the spotlight.

Hal and Ben met as high school freshmen. One day Hal offered to give Ben a ride home from school on his Cushman motor scooter. Three blocks from Ben’s house Ben began losing his grip and yelled for Hal to stop. Hal just laughed and accelerated faster. Ben tumbled off the scooter onto the hard asphalt, cartwheeling, scraping, bruising. That was the beginning of their friendship. Don’t ask for an explanation why. They couldn’t tell you. For the rest of their high school years they were best friends. Movies, double-dates, road trips. Then separation into their own life lanes.

Ben never doubted where his lane would lead. He would be a newspaper man, a journalist, an observer and chronicler of action, wherever the action was. Everything interested him, but no single interest so much that he wanted to build a silo around it and call it a career. Journalism could be anything. It was a mile wide and an inch deep. That suited Ben. It was his idea of a great lifestyle.

But as often happens with career plans, reality injects obstacles and choices seldom written into the original playbook. In Ben’s case, the life-changing diversion came in the form of a friend running for mayor of Hawthorne, a forty-block indistinguishable rectangle of Los Angeles County that they call a separate city. Ben succumbed to his friend’s plea to manage the campaign. Why not? It would be an interesting experience, helpful to Ben later in covering elections as a reporter. No one, including Ben, expected this campaign to win. But it did. And what an emotional high election night was. Ben had never felt anything like the rush. Not from alcohol or weed or even seeing his byline on newspaper stories. Others took notice of Ben. A county commissioner. A congressman. More wins. A proposal to join a political firm in Washington, D.C. More success. Now, on his own, a star in the narrow spectrum of stardom that attaches to the trade of electing candidates for public office. Ben’s firm, Sage and Searer, was on the short list of most Democratic Party candidates in the United States who could afford professional consulting and management.

Despite Ben’s other workload, he could not resist Hal’s call to change the political dynamics of Los Angeles. Hal was one of his closest friends, Los Angeles his home base. With some rearrangement of his work schedule, Ben was able to respond to Hal’s call before month’s end. He brought with him to Los Angeles an arsenal of political weapons, including strong contacts with national labor and political leaders. He persuaded those contacts to lean hard on their local affiliates to enlist in Hal’s new political creation. They called it “Lights on L.A.,” or LOLA for short.

“I like it,” said Ben. “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets...you know, from Damn Yankees. We start with a winning image even before our first election.”

Tenny wrote the big check she had promised and raided the wallets and purses of wealthy friends and business contacts. There’s nothing like a war chest to make a political organization real. With money and a coalition of labor, environmental and ethnic groups under the tent, LOLA immediately became a power factor in Southern California politics.

Ben set up a LOLA office in the heart of the city’s financial district, a brash show of force aimed at the local power structure. He imported his partner, Lee Searer, to recruit a veteran team of local researchers and organizers to manage operations.

Lee Searer was Ben’s muse, the wonk who read the eight-page newsletters and hundred-page reports others just scanned, if at all; the researcher who could spot and develop the nuggets of information that would underlie campaign strategy, the theorist who could combine unrelated information into a powerful new way of looking at things. Lee was a refugee from academia, a former professor of American history at the University of North Dakota who met Ben during a campaign for the state’s congressional seat. Lee loved the details, the demographics, the registration and turnout numbers, the polling crosstabs and data overlays. For Lee this all became discovery, and a platform for creativity.

Ben was the artful strategist. He would mold Lee’s information and ideas into the messages that would control the campaign’s narrative. Each campaign custom-made, many breaking new ground, deploying methods never before tried. You never knew what was coming at you from a Ben Sage campaign. It would be novel, hard to defend. It would be a campaign others would try to imitate. By then Ben would have moved on, attacking from new and unexpected directions. Ben began his career as a pencil pushing journalist, but slid seamlessly into electronic communication. He loved writing and directing radio and television commercials. He was a master at training candidates to make the most of their assets before crowds and cameras. Together, Ben Sage and Lee Searer were formidable.

Tenny was intrigued by all of the new political developments. She willingly underwrote and raised much of their costs. But politics was a world foreign to her. What she did know now, thanks to Hal, was the world of need, a world she had entered hoping to find a new life’s purpose. Immersion had changed her. It was no longer about her but about them, those she encountered in her daily work. Those who never expected to be in a free soup line.

Families grateful for bundles of clothing. Children parked in temporary day care for parents who could neither pay nor do without their paychecks. As a charitable organization, L.A. Lights served a broad spectrum of the Los Angeles community. Undocumented immigrants were in the minority, but it was those cases that touched Tenny down to her Aragon roots.

Gloria was one. A sixty-year-old restaurant cook who glued patches of carpet on her shoes so she wouldn’t leave tracks in the desert sand that border guards could follow. Gloria had returned to Mexico after ten years in Los Angeles to attend her father’s funeral and had no legal way back. So she spent her meager life’s savings to be smuggled across the border.

Fifteen-year-old Julio was another. In Sonora, he was threatened with death and the murder of his family if he didn’t join a local drug gang. Father Federico Aragon shielded Julio for weeks until he could put him on a path to safe passage to the United States to live with relatives.

Most of the immigrant women who arrived at L.A. Lights had deserted Mexico after being victims of multiple physical attacks. Lawlessness ruled their daily lives. Bandits and militias would use the darkness of night to steal, rape, and murder.

Once, Federico wrote a letter to Tenny asking about a young woman named Delores who had come to him for protection, and whom he had helped with money, food, and the names of those who would cushion her in her flight to safety. Nothing had been heard from her since she left home. Her family was frantic. Tenny found Delores, in a white bag, with a red tag, in Arizona’s Pima County medical examiner’s office. Delores almost made it, but she had died of hypothermia. Her thin cotton clothing was no match for an exceptionally cold night during which she slept in hiding near the border.

For Tenny, many of those from the Latino community who came through her doors were victims of a system her own family had helped create. Through her contact with Federico, she knew not just why so many of the needy were here but what they had fled from and endured to get here. The flight from thugs hired by large land owners to quash peasant land protests, the scourge of disease casually treated for lack of local medical services, the search for opportunity for better lives than they and their families had ever known. Survivors shared their experiences with Tenny. But Tenny knew more than their stories. She knew the names and addresses and motives of many who contributed to such hardship and made flight, however treacherous and uprooting, an imperative. Tenny could see both the immediate problems and their antecedents. The whole, big, ugly picture.

Inevitably Tenny’s past became current legend among the clients of L.A. Lights. The Aragon name was too well known. The Aragon tentacles too much feared. Yet many new arrivals owed their safe passage to the aid and advice of Father Federico, whom they regarded as a saint. Tenny, in her sweatshirts, jeans, comfortable shoes, and with her generosity of time and money, was approaching that status.

13

The economic engine driving the Los Angeles region is more diverse than most U.S. metropolitan areas. Manufacturing, international trade, finance, entertainment, tourism, and agriculture. Serving the region with water and power is itself a major industry. So is the expansion of offices, homes, highways and other infrastructure needs to keep up with century-long population growth. For many, that growth has been the source of enormous wealth, much of it generated by the labors of one of the lowest-paid work forces in the United States. Tenny joined L.A. Lights when business leaders were promoting more growth by touting Los Angeles as a low-wage alternative to unionized San Francisco.

L.A. Lights’ mission was to help the victims of that economic divide. Hal organized LOLA to help close it.

Lee Searer quickly produced research documenting that tens of millions of public dollars had been invested in recent years to subsidize private projects such as hotels, sports venues, and industrial parks. In addition to actual cash outlays, taxpayers underwrote construction and maintenance of roads, ramps, and water and sewage systems to connect those projects and to advertise and promote them. Many private structures were built on public land ceded to developers or leased or sold at deeply discounted prices. Lee’s research helped Ben create a short powerful mission statement for LOLA: “Public Dividends for Public Investments.”

The research was a wake-up call for small business people who had been paying taxes but not sharing in the rewards. A coalition of small business owners was organized to fight for a more inclusive agenda. Other groups joined: clergy for economic justice, organized labor to fight for better pay and working conditions, environmental groups for land use and recreational payback in the form of parks, green energy and pollution control.

LOLA became the hub of many moving parts, carefully structured to pursue multiple agendas, mostly in a non-adversarial way—through the power of research and calls for equity. The effort was having success, but it still lacked the hefty punch Hal Thompson had envisioned. To do that, LOLA had to elect its own and instill the fear of political retribution in others. Hal and Ben scanned the political landscape for a suitable target, and found it in the form of Bert Wilmont.

Bert Wilmont was one of the key gatekeepers for the business power elite. Home-builder turned politician, Wilmont had chaired the Los Angeles City Council budget committee for the past eight years. Eight years of dramatic population growth but little change in the city’s financial commitment to education, transportation, affordable housing, social services. Wilmont’s tight fist had crushed many progressive plans. Wilmont had been easily re-elected three times. Now he seemed about to make it four. No candidate of substance had dared take the risk of running against him. That was the topic of this day’s LOLA board meeting.

“Eight thousand votes, tops, would beat him in the Democratic Party primary,” said Lee Searer. “Maybe seven thousand if the turnout’s light. I’ve checked these numbers three ways. We’re talking a ridiculously low bar for such an important council seat.”

“Then why haven’t we been able to recruit a candidate?” asked Ben.

“Fear,” said Hal. “Everyone’s afraid of Wilmont. Cross him and forget about ever getting a return phone call. If you want a future in L.A. politics or need anything from the city council, you don’t challenge Bert Wilmont. Lee, how many volunteers can we count on if we compete in this district?”

“Around 130 have signed up. And there’s maybe another 200 or so in the area, no more than a half-hour drive away.”

“So, let’s assume,” said Hal, “only fifty volunteers working an average of four hours each week. That’s two hundred hours with about five solid contacts an hour. A thousand contacts a week over ten weeks. Ten weeks, ten thousand personal contacts.  We can do at least that many on the phones, too. Double that for many households with two or more people and we’re talking forty thousand personal touches.

“Ken, how many union members in Wilmont’s district?”

“About five hundred,” said Ken Barkley, the AFL-CIO representative on the LOLA board.

“Tenny, with the right candidate, could you contribute or raise two-hundred thousand dollars for this campaign?”

“Sure. But who’s the right candidate?”

“If no one else is willing to go for it, I will” said Hal.

All eyes around the table turned toward him. Never before had Hal been mentioned as a candidate for any office.

“It makes sense,” said Ben. “Hal grew up in this district. He knows it well. He has no assets that would be at risk by challenging Wilmont. How much time can you spend on the streets, knocking on doors, Hal?”

“I could start tomorrow and do it nearly full-time.”

“Realistically,” said Ben, “I think Hal could cover two thousand individual doors in a ten-week campaign. Maybe more if we buy him an extra pair of good shoes.”

“I’ve thought this through,” said Hal. “Working with Ben and Lee’s numbers, we can probably reach at least half of the likely voters in the district, at their door and by phone. And we can mail all the likely voters at least three times. With a two-hundred-thousand-dollar budget, we could pay people to deliver door hangers at the homes of target voters we don’t reach with volunteers. Ads in the local papers are cheap. Wilmont’s never raised more than fifty thousand for his campaigns. He won’t this time, either, since he won’t be expecting a tough race. He won’t know he’s in trouble until it’s too late.”

“It’s risky,” countered Lois Morales, representing United Latinos, one of LOLA’s partner groups. “Lose and we’re really shut out of anything we want from the council.”

“Not necessarily,” said Ben. “If we win, we’re golden. If we come close, others on the council not as politically secure as Wilmont will get the message. To be a political power you have to exercise it, show it, make others fear it. Taking on Bert Wilmont is a gamble, but when you see how few votes we need to win, and you add up the resources we can throw at him and the value of the prize if we beat him, this campaign is ready-made for us.”

“But what about you, Hal? Are you ready to be a candidate?” asked Seth Calley, the Democratic Party’s district chairperson.

“I’ve watched that jackass up close for years,” said Hal. “He’ll chase a good idea down three flights of stairs to kill it. Lee’s shown me the research from council votes, committee votes, newspaper and TV clips, conflict-of-interest stuff that no one’s ever reported. I can use all of that to beat the shit out of that sonofabitch.”

Tenny could feel the sizzle of excitement and opportunity arc around the table. The energy in the room was unlike anything she had experienced during her years of anticipation and success in wealth management. She savored the moment. She also sensed that Hal’s life was about to undergo dramatic change, and with his, so was hers.

Whatever campaign skills Bert Wilmont brought to his first election had seriously eroded into complacency. For his past three campaigns, Wilmont had faced rag-tag, disorganized opposition. This time he was confronted with a well-funded campaign managed by a professional national agency using the latest computer-based data to power a field organization built on a database of likely voters. In the media, Wilmont was being forced to answer for votes and decisions he was hard-pressed to explain, but which served as grist for the creative media campaign being run relentlessly against him. Hal Thompson, a social service advocate with little prior name recognition, proved a telegenic contrast to Wilmont’s dour demeanor. When the two went head to head at forums and debates, Hal held his own as a tough and informed challenger.

Organized by Sage and Searer’s veteran teams, election day was worthy of a presidential voter turnout effort. Hal not only won a powerful seat on the council, but the victory stamped LOLA as the strongest political organization in Los Angeles County. The voiceless now would be heard. East Los Angeles would get not only more cops on the street, but also a new recreation center and low-cost day care. Before long, Hal would entice hundreds more good-paying jobs into this area of the city that desperately needed them.

14

Two years into his city council term there was a new Hal Thompson, a savvy politician, comfortable in the halls of power and the board rooms of the powerful. Hal was seldom seen now at the L.A. Lights office or other stops along his once familiar daily trail. It wasn’t that he had abandoned his social activist roots. He was just growing new ones, as a creative force in Los Angeles politics, popular with the media and the public. Ben Sage’s campaign expertise and Tenny’s money allowed him to retain tight control of LOLA, and with it, a powerful lever for shaping city policy.

Tenny continued to live on both sides of the economic divide. During most days and many nights, she was a leader in the Los Angeles social service community, camping out in L.A. Lights headquarters and offices of affiliated organizations, donating and raising money, serving on boards, handling broad administrative jobs, and solving problems at the most personal level. Other days and other nights she was the wealthy heiress, socializing with moneyed friends, enjoying concerts and operas and art show openings, skiing, or traveling. She and Carmie made time for one another. They traveled together to sample Italy’s wine and nightlife, and on a longer break they explored Japan and China.

As Tenny’s role in L.A. Lights deepened, so did her mother’s. Despite fragile health, Maria Tennyson was a frequent presence at the food banks and resale shops, insisting on volunteer duty. Estrangement between Tenny’s mother and grandfather had framed a life for Tenny that spanned her Mexico City childhood and her family’s exile to Los Angeles. Tenny had borne the tension, but she never understood its origin or the reason for its intensity.

“Why, mom? What was it between you and your father that made you go to New York as a young woman and made us leave Mexico?”

Tenny had never asked while Miguel lived. Whatever barrier there was between Maria and Miguel, she desperately wanted not to be part of it, not to mediate differences, neither to condemn nor defend. She loved them both and as long as their estrangement remained in a dimension beyond her own, she could share that love without guilt.

But now Miguel was gone, the Miguel who lived and the Miguel whose once pristine image had been warped beyond recognition. Questions begged for answers. Driving her mother to L.A. Lights for a morning’s volunteer work, Tenny found the courage to ask.

For a while it seemed that her mother would not answer. Maria sat quietly, an aged woman with multiple physical infirmities, at a stage in life when events that once seemed defining can be jettisoned to lighten the load for whatever comes next.

“If he had died young,” said Maria, finally, weighing her words carefully, “I would have loved him as a daughter should love a father. But it was as if he had died while knowing he was very much alive. Can you understand that, Isabel? He was alive, my father, but never my father.”

“Many fathers travel and work nights and put careers ahead of family,” Tenny said.

“Yes,” said Maria. “and many children accept that. This was different and I was different. For Miguel, it was as if I did not exist. No interest in me. What I was doing. What I was feeling. I was an inanimate object. He cared more for those damn portraits on the wall. They were his life, his past, his legacy. I was nothing. I grew to hate them. I grew to hate him.”

“You know, mom, I was kind of wild growing up. Maybe not as rebellious as you, running off to a different country. I can understand that. But when you and dad went back to Mexico City, Papa gave Federico and me so much time. Maybe he regretted not giving all that to you, too.”

Maria disappeared into a world beyond words.

“Mom,” said Tenny, after a few moments of silence, “Mom, are you okay?”

Her words came, reluctantly. That chapter of her life was long over, the scars buried deeper than words could excavate.

“After we returned,” said Maria, “I learned some things. I sensed some things. Our home was beautiful. I love Mexico City. I had many friends there. But I learned...”

The silence returned. Maria clearly was being consumed by emotion. Sentences disjointed, unfinished.

More silence.

And then a complete thought.

“Miguel is gone. Let’s pray his sins are forgiven and he’s blessed by the Lord.”

Maria knew. Somehow she knew. And knowing, she fled, leaving behind her son, Federico, to find his own escape. Maria’s father was a criminal. She had consigned Federico as a victim. That decision, that past, was too painful, even now, for Maria to discuss.

Tenny said nothing more to disturb her mother. She had her answer.



Although Hal had moved on, Tenny found her life without him to be good and satisfying. She would talk to him occasionally, meet less often in person. Both kept full schedules, especially Hal, who wore his city council role like a new skin. Since their meetings had become rare events, Tenny was mildly surprised when Hal invited her to have lunch in his office. It had been months since their last contact.

When she arrived, another surprise, Ben Sage was also there to welcome her. Ben was seldom in Los Angeles since Hal’s election to the city council. Campaigns across the United States kept him constantly on the road. But Tenny and Ben stayed connected by phone. Ben was not shy about asking her to contribute to whatever candidates and campaigns were current. She was a willing contributor. And their conversations spanned more topics than money. She enjoyed Ben’s colorful stories of political combat and the people involved. Ben also was obsessed with scientific discovery. His journalist’s mind could assemble nuggets of information from multiple sources and synthesize them into compelling visions. At any moment in any situation Ben might captivate listeners with what seemed like tales from the future.

“Think of it,” Ben might say, “we’ve discovered the elements of life at the genetic and cellular level, and we’re close to being able to move those genes and cells around to create whatever living thing we want and to stop whatever gets into our bodies to kill us. We’ve found god, and damned if it isn’t us.”

Another time he might focus on something as simple as a mushroom. “We’re related to fungi, you know. Unlike most plants, fungi inhale oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide and get sick from the same kind of germs we do. Fungi are incredibly interesting. In fact, when you put them under a powerful microscope what you see is a sea of threadlike membranes. It looks like a cross section of the human brain.”

He loved to inject what he considered fun facts into the most sober meetings. He used it as a tactic to lower tension or divert topics. At one especially contentious meeting Tenny attended, where a Sierra Club official was balking at joining the LOLA coalition, the official was about to walk out, saying all this was giving him a fierce headache.

“Did you know,” Ben said, without missing a beat, “That until 1916 whisky and brandy were listed as scientifically approved medicines in the United States?” Ben opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels. “Take a couple teaspoons of this,” he said.

Now and then, not often, but often enough to concern her, Ben also could be sorrowful. Once she asked him about that, hoping to cheer him from whatever had him down. “In this business I’m entitled to have five bad hours a month,” Ben said, laughing it off.

“Have you noticed it, Carmie?” she asked during their long flight home from Beijing. “Ben’s such a good guy, but as much as he tries to hide it, sometimes I think he’s also a sad guy, a lonely guy.”

“Let me tell you about it,” said Carmie. “It’s not something Ben wants to discuss, ever. I learned about it from Hal. Ben was married once, happily, apparently. A woman by the name of Alma. They called her Almie. Ben and Almie had a daughter. Both were killed when a drunk driver slammed into their car. Ran a red light.”

“How awful.”

“Ben was traveling at the time, deep into a campaign. He’s never been able to forgive himself for being away, not being there for them. As if that wasn’t terrible enough, the other driver, an elderly woman, was politically well connected. Her driver’s license was suspended for a year and she was put on some sort of probation, but no more than that. Ben wanted her tried for manslaughter. It never happened. “

“How long ago was this?”

“Not sure. Ten years maybe. I got to know Ben a few years back when he was working in a New York mayor’s race. That’s when I realized that after you dig through all of the poll numbers and thirty-second spots, you find one deep guy. Lots of layers you seldom see. Ben visits their graves a lot when he’s in Washington. I know it sounds weird, but Hal says Ben still writes letters to Alma, I guess to keep her memory alive.”

“Weird, yes. It also would be incredibly romantic if it wasn’t so tragic. He needs to move on.”

“I know. A few times since I’ve tried to draw Ben out about it, see if I could help. But he just seems to have buried his soul with Almie so he can keep being with her.”

“Has he had professional help?”

Carmie shrugged. “Hal would know. I don’t. I think winning campaigns is some therapy. Beating people he thinks use their money and status to bend the rules and hurt people I think is his revenge.”



Hal had box lunches waiting in his office when Tenny arrived.

“Sorry about that loss in Texas,” said Hal. Ben’s candidate had just missed winning a primary election for Congress.

“A tough one,” Ben conceded. I made a few mistakes.”

“No one can be perfect all the time,” consoled Tenny.

“No,” said Ben. “In fact I just read that Kevlar, Super Glue, Post-It notes and photographs all came to us from lab blunders. Maybe I’ve just invented something wonderful.”

“Well let’s talk about creating something wonderful together,” said Hal.

“Tenny, Pete Marcus told me in confidence the other day that he wouldn’t be running for re-election.”

“Marcus, the congressman?”

“Yes, CD 1. East L.A., Compton, Carson. Heavy Hispanic. He asked me to run for it.”

“Really. Go to Washington? Are you going to do it?”

“No. I’m going to run for mayor.”

She was stunned. Hal? Mayor? It had never occurred to her.

“Whoa. Pick me up off the floor. After only two years on the council, you’re going to run for mayor? Do you think it’s possible with your record of social action? Would the money people let you get away with it?”

“You know, I get invited these days to places they go. They still want things they used to get from Wilmont. I think I’ve convinced a fair number that it makes sense to have a mayor who’s at home across all the interest groups—blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos. We’re in a different place since the Rodney King riots. Even after all the years since then it’s still tense out there, and not just for the cops. The business community really feels it when there’s social unrest. I’m arguing that I’d be their best bet to lower the temperature, bring communities together.  I think they trust me. We’ll see.”

“I’ve drawn up the game plan,” said Ben. “In a five-or six-candidate primary, Hal needs about a hundred fifty thousand votes to come out on top. With his background in L.A. Lights, we can probably get half of that in the Latino community alone. If he wins the primary, he wins the general. Not a slam dunk, but worth a shot.”

“Amazing,” she said. “Mayor Hal. I never considered it.”

Hal grabbed a straight backed chair, turned it around so the slats were facing Tenny and moved it directly in front of her, cage-like, not two feet away and sat facing her.

“Here’s another thing you’ve never considered. We want you to run for that first district congressional seat.”

Tenny looked at them both blankly.

“That’s crazy. I’m no politician. Am I even eligible?”

“Of course you’re eligible,” said Ben. “You’re an American citizen, born in the U.S.A. You’d be a lock to win it. The district is 43 percent Latino. After what you’ve been doing in that community we can clear the field for you. Little or no primary opposition. No Republican would come close.”

“I’d run as a Democrat?”

“Of course. Aren’t you registered as a Democrat?”

“Yes. I did it just a few years ago, first time I registered to vote, when we got into politics. But I’ve never paid much attention to politics, except around here. I don’t know the first thing about Washington. Why would you want me to run?”

“To scoop up federal dollars,” said Hal. “If I’m mayor I’m going to need you there to get more money for our projects. Simple as that. We’re short-changed now because there’s no one in the L.A. delegation who has your drive. They all take no for an answer. You wouldn’t. You and I together could make everything we’ve done so far look like small change. We can transform L.A. and the whole area.”

Tenny smiled and shook her head. “Get serious, you two. Me? A political candidate? Why don’t you ask me to be a standup comic, or a tap dancer? It would make just as much sense.”

Tenny clapped her hands and smiled at her own joke. Or what she considered a joke. But Hal and Ben were dead serious. Ben pressed on.

“You’ll be great. Just be yourself. Walk the streets, shake hands, give a few speeches...”

“Speeches! I’ve never given speeches.”

“Of course you have,” said Ben. “You give speeches every day, but just to small groups. What do you think you’ve been doing these past years? Doing the same thing for politics is no different.”

“Bull shit!”

“OK, there are some differences. But listen, I wouldn’t even suggest this if I wasn’t absolutely sure you’d win.”

“And then I have to move to Washington? I don’t want to move to Washington!”

“Not really. Just commute. Back and forth. A couple days a week.”

“Ben! Don’t mess with me.”

“OK. But there’s nothing wrong with that life. You’ll be great at it. Nobody says no to you here, and they won’t there. For the same time and effort, you’ll be doing a lot more good for a lot more people.”

“But what about L.A. Lights? I just walk out on them? What happens to it?

It was Hal’s turn.

“Tenny, you’ve built L.A. Lights into an incredible operation. You’re helping more people than ever. Just as important, you’ve built a real organization. Very talented and committed people. That’s what a great manager does. The simple fact is L.A. Lights will run just fine without you.

“In fact, if you deliver from Washington and I deliver from city hall, that organization will have way more help to give. Don’t get me wrong, but you’ve outgrown day-to-day management of L.A. Lights. You came here to get real life experience. Few people in government have the understanding and background you have now. It’s time to move on and use everything you’ve learned to get more done. That is, if you’re still interested in this kind of life, helping people. No one would blame you if you moved on to other things. You’ve done so much already.”

She had no defense against his reason for her leaving L.A. Lights. In fact, she had been mulling future moves herself. More and more asking herself “what’s next?” Going to Washington, D.C., as a member of Congress was far from what she ever considered “next.” To her, that seemed like an admonition spoken in tongues. But the more Hal and Ben wrapped her in their net of logic, the less remote it felt.

She stared at them both with a mock glare.

“And what will it cost me to give up a job I love and move to a city I’ve never wanted to live in?”

“Probably $500,000.”

“Or put another way, a half million dollars!”

She turned to Hal with her arms outstretched. Tenny was feigning distaste for the idea, he could see that.

“Hal, do something. Say something.”

He moved his straight backed chair even closer to her, their noses nearly touching. Eyes locked tightly on hers. One-time lover to one-time lover, mentor to student:

“Do it.”

15

“Tell me what to do, Ben.”

“What do you want to do?”

In a few hours she would officially file as a candidate. People would be asking questions. She didn’t know what to say. In her anxious state of mind Ben’s reply sounded sarcastic. Ben had pushed her into the race. She expected to be handled by this professional political handler.

“What kind of answer is that?”

“A serious answer,” said Ben. “Some candidates need a lot of help. They freeze in front of crowds. Some have no idea why they’re running, except to get elected. Some work well in small groups but not on big stages. Some make no eye contact. Others shake hands grudgingly or walk around with forced smiles. Being a candidate is an unnatural state of being.

“Most people I’ve worked with are just good people entering a totally foreign and unnatural world. But I’ve seen you in all kinds of situations, Tenny. You’re great with people one-on-one. You know what people of this district need, and you have good ideas. You may be a bit shaky at first, but it won’t matter. Hardly any media will cover you this early. Make your mistakes and learn from them. Pick your topics. Talk from your head and your heart. I’ll come up with a schedule for public appearances. For the first week or so I’ll go to most of them with you. I’ll take notes and we can talk after. My team will manage all the details like organization, media hand-holding, bookkeeping, scheduling, all that. Just be the candidate. I trust you. Trust yourself.”

During the first days of the campaign Tenny was on the street visiting key community leaders and delivering two or three speeches a day in living rooms and public spaces. At night, she and Ben would meet for dinner for what he called the download, carefully assessing everything about her. He had advice on what she wore, how she walked, where she looked when she shook a hand. He annotated her speeches, making suggestions on how to tighten them up, where to leave room for applause, reordering speech topics to build to more emotional endings.

By design, during the campaign’s first days Ben scheduled Tenny to be in familiar, comfortable places with encouraging friends. Even then, for Tenny, it was unfamiliar territory, asking for help and support rather than delivering it. She was self-conscious, a bit embarrassed, often unsure of what to say or how to say it. It didn’t matter to those she met. They were her people, ready to hit the pavements for her, offering suggestions and advice. Never before a creature of politics she had no concept of politically correct limits. If it was on her mind, it was on her tongue and expelled with great intensity through her lips. What she said gave voice to the collective thought of tens of thousands of people in her congressional district, messages she understood well after years of working the streets of Los Angeles’ forgotten. Whatever she said, no matter how long it took to say it, her listeners always wanted more. They had never heard it said so well before, if ever. Their hunger to be recognized for who they were was insatiable.

As campaign weeks bled into months, Tenny evolved into a campaign phenomenon. One of the nation’s richest people campaigning to represent some of the poorest, with large crowds cheering her on. Of all the candidates in all of the Los Angeles area’s congressional races, she was the most quotable. Television cameras were her constant companion, drawn to her because her events were good theater. Her scripts came from her own memory, drawn from realities lived, not position papers read. Her prescriptions for change had been forming through the years. Now, she could visualize them as programs for how things could be. Her campaign was transforming her, and her own self-image, irrevocably, from Isabel to Tenny.

Meanwhile, in the mayor’s race, ideas that only a few years earlier might have been considered revolutionary were being discussed as mainstream options—so far had Hal moved the debate during his time on the council. His speeches and public appearances were augmented by Ben’s media, setting the campaign agenda for all the candidates. Hal preached a gospel of stronger regional development propelled by better distribution of growth’s rewards. New investments in rapid transit, living wages, publicly supported day care and kindergarten paid for by a fairer balance in the local tax structure. Hal’s was a platform designed to appeal both to those who favored more developmental growth for Los Angeles and to those who had been left behind in sharing the benefits from past area growth. He didn’t assess blame or promote rancor over how the economy became so skewed toward the wealthy in the first place. The pushback from the city’s economic elite against this one-time pro bono street lawyer was more tepid than in past campaigns by insurgent candidates.  

Hal’s primary day victory in municipal elections was not assured until all the votes were counted, and recounted. Two months later, in the congressional primaries, Tenny cruised to victory and became Congresswoman Tenny Tennyson.

16

“Just call me Fish, everyone else does.”

Tenny and Sheila Fishburne bonded immediately. Two high-energy divorced women on similar missions. Fish’s mother was the daughter of a whaling boat captain from Barrow, America’s northernmost community, well north of the Arctic Circle. Her father went to Barrow from Indianapolis to teach English. What he assumed would be a year’s lark lasted a lifetime. Fish, like Tenny, was a product of two worlds.

Fish was picture-perfect for Alaska tourism brochures. Tall, slim, athletic. The hiker. The hunter. The all-around outdoorswoman. Savvy enough to hold her own with the oil moguls, politically agile enough to get elected as a Democrat in a state that elects mostly Republicans.

As congressional newbies, Tenny and Fish clung together through the initiation months, finding paths through corridors they’d never before tread, sharing thoughts about fellow members of often indeterminate logic and motive. Their new class was female-centric. Of twenty-six new Democratic members of the House, seventeen were women. Many beat long odds to get here and had no idea how long it would last, certainly not a lifetime. They were in a hurry.

Fish and Tenny organized “Great Cooks and Tough Cookies,” thirty-three women, a once-a-week lunch group to pool their influence. “After all,” said Fish, “one of the most successful groups like this ever assembled was organized by Richard Nixon as a young congressman, the Marching and Chowder Club. Two members of that group, Nixon and Gerald Ford, became presidents.”

The women used their weight of numbers plus extraordinary gifts of persuasion to achieve multiple victories. While Fish was burrowing in with good results, securing her seat in Alaska’s politically tough soil, Tenny was carting big wins back to Los Angeles, raising her stature not only in Southern California, but statewide. She staffed her Washington and Los Angeles offices with workers from L.A. Lights, people who knew the district she represented. She knew her district, too, really knew it. Carmie had once pointed out that her view of life was from a first class seat in a jet 30,000 feet above reality. For five years leading to her election Tenny had been schooled in reality, her classrooms were homes, schools, work places, police stations, trial courts, food stamp offices, union halls, and day-care, rape-crisis, and immigration centers. It had been a crash course. Now it was paying off, both retail and wholesale, as Hal had once described this business of helping people in need. Her staff was expert in solving individual problems. She and Hal were the wholesalers, compiling lists of big ticket items to bring back for entire communities. Though there were more senior members representing other Los Angeles area districts, she was Hal’s main conduit. She was vocal, tough, popular with the media, secure from campaign opposition, and, not to be dismissed, the largest political donor and best fund-raiser in the delegation.  

Beyond the bread, butter and bacon issues, Tenny fought fiercely for Latino rights and immigration reform. She enjoyed little success, but to the Latino community she was a champion, much in-demand for her fiery speeches, respected for her heritage. A Tenny speech inevitably had the political faithful on their feet. The promise of such an appearance guaranteed its sponsors a sold-out house.

And she had one more priority.  

“I’m sort of in awe at how fast you’ve taken to all this,” said Carmie.

She and Tenny were lunching in the congressional members’ dining room. Many other members of Congress stopped by to greet Tenny and be introduced to Carmie. Tenny had only a short window for lunch. She was a member of the Banking Committee, and was on tap to introduce a piece of legislation at their 1:30 committee meeting.

“To tell you the truth, so am I. I think it’s all the work I did in wealth management. You know, that’s just sales with higher priced products. That’s what I do here, mostly. Picking targets, selling ideas, wearing people down until they do what I want.”

“I’m so happy and proud for you, Tenny. I just never dreamed you would be a politician, of all things. Why on earth did you even agree to run?”

“Well, Hal made a pretty persuasive case that we could work together and get a lot done. But I’ll tell you, Carmie, and only you. It finally occurred to me that in Congress I might be able to do something about Aragon and all the other Mexican companies like them.”

“Change Aragon, a Mexican company, from the U.S. Congress? Unlikely.”

“Not as unlikely as you might think. A lot of business goes on between the U.S. and Mexico. Not just trade, but treaties, law enforcement, money changing. I once thought I might be able to work my way up the management ladder at Aragon and recruit allies and change the culture there. Well, now I think I can work my way up the political ladder here and really have an impact on what goes on in Mexico.”

“You’re still holding a grudge after all these years?”

“Not a grudge. It’s no different than what I wanted to do from inside the company. Only now I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen the human wreckage.  I’m going to do my best to change it there and keep it from being imported here.

“But you are still holding a grudge. I can tell. You’re planning to get even with Javier Carmona, aren’t you?”

“And the whole rotten, corrupt crowd. I’ve done my research on this one, Carmie. I’m not a rookie anymore.”



While Tenny did not forget or forgive what she had learned about Groupo Aragon, neither did Javier Carmona lose sight of her.

“In the event you had not noticed, Miguel’s little girl has become a big player in the United States government,” Carmona informed members of the Groupo Aragon board shortly after Tenny’s election to Congress.

“Many strange people serve in their government,” replied banking director David Colon. “At least now she knows she can buy influence, something she warned was an awful thing for us to do.” The room erupted in laughter.

Carmona was not smiling. “I don’t like it. This woman did not go quietly. Her ties with us are too personal, too historic. If she continues to gain political power she could be a threat to us.”

“From the United States? How would that be possible?” asked Colon.

“How is it possible that a woman, who by blood and bearing is one of us, got elected to the United States Congress at all? It’s extraordinary. And we cannot afford to lose sight of her. We have made her an enemy. She could become a dangerous one.”

17

For three congressional terms, six years, Tenny owned her congressional seat. No one dared challenge her. Her popularity, her money, her success serving the district dissuaded anyone, Republican or Democrat, from trying to oust her. It might have lasted forever had it not been for Grant Hamel’s overactive libido.

Hamel, a Democrat, was serving his fifth year as U.S. senator from California when rumors began circulating about his frequent visits to a pleasure palace near Reno. The rumors became a scandal when the Sacramento Bulletin published photos of Hamel entering and exiting the Beauty Farm, a well-known fee-for-sex establishment. Not just once, but on multiple occasions. What made it worse was that those dates coincided with official committee trips for hearings on nuclear waste disposal and mass transit issues, all paid for at government expense. A Nevada hearing had been cancelled because Hamel reported he was ill—on a day photos showed him at the Beauty Farm.

Hamel fought back, apologized, offered himself for counseling and embarked on a well-trod trail of apologia. All this might have worked, despite his crashing poll numbers. It might have worked, had not the Los Angeles Courier published copies of the credit card receipts Hamel used to pay for Beauty Farm services. The public could have forgiven yet another married man straying onto a prostitute’s reservation. But paying for it with a credit card? To get mileage points? The balance tipped against him, and Hamel resigned, leaving the Senate seat open for the governor to fill until the next election, just eighteen months distant.

The governor who would make that appointment was Harold Thompson.

While Tenny was having success in Congress, Hal had been building his own reputation as mayor of Los Angeles. Power is addictive, and Hal had inhaled it deeply. His public face remained that of a progressive reformer. With much less attention, he was also finding ways to see that oil, agriculture, and other industries with deep financial roots in California came into his debt. Personally engaging as ever, Hal became a fixture on the state’s social A-list circuit. During one spin around that circuit he met and married Sally Pounds, the daughter of L. Irving Pounds, whose media holdings included dozens of California newspapers and broadcast properties.

Five years after his surprise election as mayor, Hal ran for governor. While progressives were now suspicious, his years of ground-level work for their movement continued to pay residual dividends. Ben was able to build a statewide organization from the base of the original LOLA movement in Los Angeles. Hal tapped into a deep well of campaign money through Tenny and through Irving Pounds and his influence. The state’s oligarchs had learned to trust Hal as mayor. Many were willing to take a chance on him as governor.

Now, a year into this powerful new role in Sacramento, it was Hal’s lot to appoint a U.S. senator who would fill out Hamel’s term until the next election.

Ben Sage had no doubt who that should be.

“Tenny, of course. She’s the most popular political figure in California next to you. The Latino community will be thrilled. Women will be grateful. When she needs to run on her own next year, she’ll be a strong contender. San Francisco is reliably Democratic. Tenny won’t have a problem winning the L.A. area vote. No matter who the Republicans nominate, she’ll win. And it doesn’t hurt that she can finance her own campaign.”

Hal wasn’t so sure.

“I’ve been getting pushback from the chamber, growers, and just about everybody. Mainly the banks. They’d go nuts. She’s become a wild card. She makes them really nervous, more than anybody else. If I appoint her, I’ll have a lot of explaining to do, especially with my own father-in-law.”

“Well if you name someone those guys want, your own numbers will take a hit. There’s no one else as popular as Tenny or with her name recognition. With the right candidate, the Republicans could take that seat next year.”

“Does she even want it? I know she likes being in the House. I haven’t heard from her.”

“Then ask her. If she says no you’re off the hook with all the groups that support her. If she takes it she’s a winner. With her on next year’s ticket she’s probably worth a few more seats in the state legislature, maybe enough for a super majority.”

Tenny had been ambushed into her first race for the U.S. House. Now that she was here, in Washington, seeing how power and influence was exercised, wielding a bit of it herself, she wasn’t immune to the itch for more. A Senate seat, a national stage. Heavier weapons. All very attractive. Nevertheless, she was not expecting a call from Hal. She knew it was a tough choice for him.

Their past relationship would be red meat for the opposition. Could she handle it? Could Hal? Tenny had won election to the House on her own. The Senate seat would be a gift from a former lover. If the Republicans ran an effective campaign it could bring them both down. Then there was Hal’s family to think of. Hal’s wife would have to answer the other woman questions through the whole campaign, in public and in private, to all of her friends. Irving Pounds would have to answer for it to everyone he maneuvered into supporting Hal’s campaign for governor. Pounds’ newspapers regularly took Tenny apart in editorials. Pounds would be furious if Hal appointed her. No, she didn’t expect Hal to call.

But he did. “My first choice,” he said.

“I hope you have others,” she countered. “You know the downside as well as I do. You’d be committing political suicide and setting yourself up for divorce.” Then she spent ten minutes outlining all the credible reasons to avoid walking into such a political tar pit.

As she talked, Hal’s thoughts turned back to their first meeting in that Starbucks. He, the idealistic lawyer, practicing alone, struggling to pay his rent, for what—to do things for people he knew needed his help. And Tenny, this wildly rich heiress, with a powerful motivation to get involved, and hardly a clue as to what she’d be getting into. Those were good days and good days together. Their lives had diverged but the memory of it was not so easily erased. On a political level, Tenny was right—she should be the last person he would appoint to the open U.S. Senate seat from California. On a potential performance level, no one else was in her league.

“Tenny,” he finally said, “I’m appointing you to the Senate seat. Will you take it?”

The connection went silent as she took a number of deep breaths.

“Yes, Hal. Heaven help us both. I will.”

18

Moving from the U.S. House to the Senate meant not just more office space, larger staff, a change of address. It would be a move from a small stage to one of the world’s largest and most significant. Now she would be representing not just the 700,000 people in her congressional district, but the nearly 40 million people living in the most populous state in the United States. There were more Californians than there were Canadians.

California’s economy, measured in GDP, was larger than most other countries’. Significantly, and most meaningful for Tenny, she was now representing a state economy twice the size of Mexico’s. Her decision to accept the Senate seat had been tempered by personal relations, hers and Hal’s. Now she was coming to terms with how radical a scale-up this would be.

After getting a yes from Tenny, Hal called Reed Guess, the Democratic Senate majority leader to alert him. It was the decision Guess was hoping for. Tenny’s policy views were aligned with his. She would be a strong ally, if they could get her through the next campaign without being pulverized into unrecognizable parts by what promised to be a meat grinder of an election.

“Congratulations, I’ve just heard the news.” The call surprised her. Hal asked her to tell no one until he could set up the announcement properly. But here was Reed Guess, phoning just moments later. “I’ve got a private office in the Capitol, away from the majority office,” said Guess. “Can you meet me there in say, half an hour?”

Senator Guess understood the importance of the California Senate seat to his reign as majority leader, and how fierce the battle would be to hold it in next year’s election. Tenny was filling an unexpired term. She would have barely more than a year to build a statewide following. If most California voters knew of Isabel Tennyson at all, they knew her for what much of the California media termed her radical ideas, her rich-girl background, her intense support for immigration reform.

Connecticut had elected Reed Guess as a war hero, a Silver Star winner, a young Marine lieutenant who saved his unit with minimal casualties after it was surrounded in Iraq. In an act of supreme courage, he had picked up a live grenade and thrown it back just before it detonated. Many lives were saved at the cost of Reed Guess’s left hand and vision in his left eye. He entered the Senate, much like Tenny, with a progressive agenda and a fighting spirit, quickly rising to become Democratic leader. He had not only a compelling personal story, but also a strong platform presence. Marine erect and body fit, an aura of command developed in officer’s training school that didn’t fade in civilian life, a handsome family and clearly spoken ideas on what government could and should be. Guess also had designs on the White House. From the day he was sworn in as Connecticut’s U.S. senator, he began laying the groundwork for a future run for president.

Tenny took to Reed Guess immediately. Why not? He was her kind of senator. Smart. Quick. Ideologically on the same page. And now, even before her appointment was announced, he was offering her any committee assignment she wanted and all the support he could provide to keep the seat next year.

“OK, now that we’ve done the expected,” said Guess, “let’s get to know each other.”

They settled in for another half hour, discovering mutual fondness for American Indian art and textiles, pre-Columbian artifacts, ancient Peruvian weavings. Guess showed her photos of his wife and daughters. He invited her to go sailing with the family. He was so personal, so genuine, so interesting. She hoped her meeting with Guess was a sample of how her life would be in the Senate environment, more collegial and congenial than in the 435-member House. That would make her new life so much more pleasant than the one she was leaving. If not, she knew how to handle herself in open combat.



At 6:00 p.m. on a summer’s evening, the Big Fish restaurant on Highway 1 in Rehoboth Beach, near the southern tip of Delaware, swims with summer holiday patrons. The Big Fish is cavernous, its walls alive with huge swordfish, marlin, and tuna, none in motion, all caught close to the Delaware shore and frozen in time for restaurant patrons. The centerpiece is a 715-pound blue marlin. Each year, a few miles south in Ocean City, Maryland, millions of dollars in prize money attracts anglers who bet on an underwater lottery, that the heaviest marlin will accept their offering of a squid snack on a J hook. Through the summer, the strip of shoreline connecting Delaware and Maryland is scented by coconut body lotion and the pervasive aroma of fresh fish on hot coals.

Lewes, Delaware is just north of Rehoboth. It’s one of the oldest settlements in the United States, once a small slice of Holland. From Washington, it’s three hours by car, an hour by Ben’s red and white Piper Cherokee 280. Lewes is Ben’s refuge. The single engine Cherokee is his preferred means of getting there. Lewes is where Ben vents to release the tensions of campaigns, where he tries to think big thoughts and avoid small thinkers. Ben has a home in Lewes, overlooking Delaware Bay, with a long stretch of unobstructed beach for walking, doing mind dumps of the present, digging deeper to bury the past, and adding words to his personal journal, one he’s been keeping for years. His early entries were about them, helping to fill the airless space he occupied without them. Now he took dictation from whatever inspiration whispered to him when he had time to open his journal. He was no longer alone when he could write notes to himself.

In Washington, D.C., Ben maintained a studio apartment, large enough for his few changes of clothes, his computer and printer, and basic kitchen tools should he decide to eat at home and alone. He’s rarely there.

Tonight he’s at the Big Fish with Lee Searer. They flew here earlier, above the traffic snakes that curl to summer beach weekends from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and points between.

“Okay, now we have her. What are we going to with her?”

Ben had just picked up their two martinis from the long bar managed tonight by Alena and Laura, two young women whose mixing and pouring skills were performance art, virtuosos of their trade, magnets for locals, welcome company for long-absent visitors.  

Ben had pushed hard for Tenny’s Senate appointment. It would be up to Ben and Lee to help her keep that seat in next year’s election. The primary election was less than a year away. The general election sixteen months. The appointment was announced earlier that Saturday morning, timed to make the Sunday papers and Sunday California talk shows.

“This can be pretty messy,” said Lee.

Ben grunted as he took a long first sip from his drink. “Very.”

“You drew the big picture for both of them before they decided?”

“Yes. And maybe a little no. I really wanted her there. She’ll be great. I may have understated how hard it’ll be to be to keep her.”

“Understated? You wanted to make sure we got the account?”

Yes, Ben wanted the account. Sage and Searer was a business. A very successful business in a very competitive service industry. To survive, marketing skills had to be on a par with political skills. And, often, fee collection skills from defeated candidates.

“We’ve done worse to get accounts. Sure. Why not? It’s statewide California. You saw how much we made on Hal Thompson’s governor campaign. This could be as big or bigger. How often do Republicans get a chance to pick up a California Senate seat? They’ll be all over it. Spend their last dollar if they think they have a chance.”

They made room on the table for the steamed shrimp.

“Here’s what I’m thinking. She’s a natural at being a candidate. She can write a check tomorrow. Let’s start the campaign right away.”

“Not a full-blown campaign?”

“No, and not one that’s obviously political. Let’s buy into all the cable channels reaching places that aren’t slap-happy Democratic dependable. Statewide. Overload where they’ve never heard of her. Make her as familiar as Oprah. Get her on every day, maybe five minute blocks, same stations, same programs. Some people watch “The Price Is Right” every day of the week, like it’s their job. They’ll see her hundreds of times before we ever get to the real campaign. What is there between now and next November?”

Ben stopped to count on his fingers.

“Sixteen months times four weeks, what’s that? Sixty-four weeks. Times five times a week. That’s three hundred twenty time slots on each individual program. Different programs for sports shows than game shows or movies. We target her programs and messages.”

“A lot of production. A lot of money.”

“But not expensive production. Nothing that makes it look produced. No wild graphics or big set pieces. Just her. Sometimes in the Senate studio. Sometimes around Washington. Every time she goes to California we get a camera on her. She talks right to camera, right to the people watching.”

“And the message?”

“The central message is her, Tenny, her character. Someone you like and trust. Someone who’s smart and dedicated. She’s real. She meets with real people in identifiable places. Let her talk, whatever she wants to say. She’s so damn good at it. We just give her a subject that we want to hit, or one she wants to talk about, and let her run with it. So personal, it would be like getting naked in front of the camera. Over time making her unforgettable. With cable’s reach, by next November maybe 20, 25 percent feel like they’re on a first-name basis with her, thinking of her as their friend Tenny.”

“I like it. We’d need to put on a separate crew, just for that.”

“Right, and a million feet of videotape to index and store.”

“And a ton of research to give her fresh material.”

“Right.”

“Worth it. If you think you really ‘know’ someone you’re more likely to get mad at the attacker than believe the attack.”

“That’s my point,” said Ben. “The best way to insulate her is for Tenny to do it herself, first-person. You see enough of her and she really comes through as strong and genuine. If they don’t know her they may believe all the crap.”

Lee nodded, finished his martini and took the last shrimp off the common plate.

“They’ll be onto this sex thing soon,” said Lee. “How about going on offense instead of playing defense? Let’s do a big appointment ceremony. She goes to Sacramento, he hugs her, she hugs him, Hal’s wife hugs them both. The daughters hug her legs, sort of welcoming their new aunt. They all go to San Diego and L.A. and San Francisco together, get on the front pages and television news. We get some press yo-yo to ask about the sex thing and they all shut him up and make him look like an ass. Makes it harder for the political press to do it again. The Republicans would have to carry the whole load with paid commercials.”

“I like it,” said Ben. “I’ll see if I can get Hal to sell it to his wife.”

“If his wife buys in, it may stop her father from going crazy attacking Tenny with those newspapers of his.”

“If we do this right we might be able to win this campaign before it even starts by convincing any Republican heavyweight he’d be toast if he challenged Tenny.”

Ben had ordered rock fish, a local specialty. Lee had a thick slab of Alaska halibut. Both dishes came steaming. The partners’ appetites were now ready to receive them.

“Did you know,” said Ben, “Earth is the only known planet where fire can burn. Everywhere else there’s not enough oxygen.”

19

For seven years as a member of the U.S. House, Tenny had aggressively tilled a small plot of ground. One congressional district, the poorest in Los Angeles, home to many jobless and with a catalog of needs beyond the resources of those living there to satisfy on their own. Tenny’s job was to help narrow the gap between need and aspiration. That job wasn’t done. It might never be. But now it was for others to try.

As a senator she surveyed an entirely new landscape of possibilities. She was like a tiger suddenly released from a cage into new habitat. Fertile soil for ideas and attention, unlimited prey to feed her appetite for reform and retribution. She needed only a few moments to get her new bearings, and then she pounced.

Henry Deacon was her first hire. Deacon, PhD in economics from Wharton, eight years on Wall Street, six more at the Securities and Exchange Commission, three aggressive years as staff director for the Senate Banking Committee. Deacon would be her chief of staff. She let him hand pick two legislative assistants who would specialize in bank regulations, hedge and equity fund operations, and other stops along the big money trail. She would enter combat with the money changers with claws sharp and fangs at the ready.

Her next hire was Rita Gonzales, long-time director of Our Goal Is Justice, one of the most important groups in the immigration reform movement. This was a fight they had to win, she told Rita. Conventional, unconventional, whatever was needed. We’ll be there. She unhooked Rita from a leash with one instruction: “Get it done.”

The close personal friendship that blossomed between Tenny and Reed Guess, her majority leader, didn’t deter her from crashing Senate tradition. Within three weeks of her appointment, Tenny gave her first major Senate floor speech, a withering attack on the U.S. financial system, the people who manage it, and the government regulators whom she accused of weak oversight and a culture of coziness with those they were responsible for monitoring. Even her fellow senators took the lash for timidity in the face of raw financial power. Prescriptions for change? She listed a dozen and promised far more. Tenny had no intention of being a back bencher. Not now. Not ever. Reed Guess more than once during those early weeks whispered private counsel of temperance. “Sorry,” she responded. “I’m a full-frontal attack person. You will just have to clean up after me.”

Tenny’s maiden Senate speech mobilized a vast constituency of political activists and reform-minded economists and writers. Within hours she was receiving interview requests and speech invitations. She accepted all she could. Experience in Los Angeles taught her that it takes a rampaging wall of public opinion to break down barriers of financial interest.

For a time, it seemed that Tenny’s rocketing voter approval ratings would discourage other formidable political figures from challenging her. But the lure of a full six-year U.S. Senate term representing California was too enticing. Tenny’s statewide base of support was still new, fragile, and untested.



Nineteen hundred miles southwest of Washington, D.C., Javier Carmona was stunned at Tenny’s elevation to the United States Senate, a much more powerful role with infinite possibilities for dangerous mischief. Now that she had identified her targets with her first Senate speech, he knew what must be done.

Foregoing travel on a Groupo Aragon private plane, too easy to recognize, he arranged a charter to the border city of Mexicali piloted by trusted men who were paid well to have short memories. Carmona’s long-time top security aide, Bernard Soto, waited at the ramp with a nondescript Ford SUV. The destination, a private hilltop compound, thirty miles south of Mexicali’s city center. There, Carmona met with a small group to plan what he would call his “Legacy Project.” Its goal would be not to create a legacy, but to end one.



Kip Dowling, the Republican congressman from San Diego, had come within eight percentage points of defeating Hal Thompson in the state’s most recent campaign for governor. Eight points is not close as contested elections go, but political ambition needs little encouragement to reseed itself. Dowling’s ego was being nourished from two separate sources. The national Republican Party believed it had a chance to regain a Senate majority. A rare open seat in California could not be conceded. From the money side, Dowling was visited by a trusted long-time banking industry friend who promised that campaign money would be available, a lot of it, whatever was needed.

A few hours before the filing deadline, Dowling showed up at the secretary of state’s office to announce he would run against Senator Tennyson. And he immediately signaled the type of campaign it would be.

“You’ve all heard the saying that politics makes strange bedfellows,” Dowling told the media. “Well this year we’re going to test whether California voters enjoy having a governor and a senator who actually are bedfellows. I think voters will find that both strange and unacceptable.”

It came as no surprise that Hal and Tenny’s past would be injected into their political future. But the intensity of that effort was beyond anything they had expected. Unflattering photos of Hal and Tenny in their social service days soon arrived at news desks of every publication and television station in California. YouTube and other Web sites were flooded with video clips and photos artfully Photoshopped and edited to create the impression of—whatever the viewer’s mind could imagine. Some leaving little to the imagination. One particularly popular scene was two naked bodies in bed, with Tenny and Hal’s photos attached and dialogue balloons over their heads.

Hal: I love screwing you.

Tenny: Now let’s get back to screwing the people.

And so on. Coarse stuff. Gross stuff. Stuff designed to leave lasting images of a naked Tenny, a promiscuous Tenny, a corrupt Tenny willing to use her body and her money to grasp political power.

Another image: “Tenny” and “Hal” half-clothed in a cheesy motel room after sex. Starry-eyed Tenny, looking much older than her years, handing Hal a stack of hundred dollar bills.

Tenny: “Damn you’re good, and worth whatever you charge.”

Photocopies of Tenny’s contributions to LOLA and Hal’s political campaigns added to the unseemly picture.

And it wasn’t all just sex.

L.A. Lights was accused of being something of an underground railroad for drug pushers and dangerous cartel members. Dowling’s campaign matched criminal records with some who were helped at L.A. Lights when Tenny was prominent there. Two men who turned to L.A. Lights for meals and beds and were later arrested by federal marshals told the media that L.A. Lights was a well-known haven for people like themselves trying to evade criminal charges in Mexico. Dowling demanded investigations by state and federal enforcement agencies.

Sex and crime. For a while during the campaign, these were the only two campaign issues the media cared about.

Leading the media charge were publications owned by L. Irving Pounds, Hal’s father-in-law. In deference to his daughter, and despite the heat and ridicule Pounds endured for it from his friends and fellow business elites, Pounds had endorsed Hal for governor. No one would accuse Pounds of betraying the business community this time. His media attacks on Tenny took on the armor of a holy crusade. Daughter Sally had agreed to join the road show announcing Tenny’s appointment as a way to soften future attacks. Ben and Lee’s strategy seemed to work well at the time. The photos of them all together, Tenny with Hal and Sally, were upbeat and charming. But against the backdrop of the political attacks that followed, the images just added more spice to the story. The worst was the cartoon of the three of them in a bed under the caption “My turn!”

Sally was mortified. For a while she buried herself in child and home management. As the campaign intensified, she and the children spent more and more time anywhere but in California.

The money being spent against Tenny was extraordinary, even for California, a state familiar with table stakes political spending. Most of it was funneled through dark money groups technically independent of Dowling’s campaign committee. More than once Tenny had to dip deeply into her own fortune to keep pace.

Tenny under siege. It was an entirely new political experience for her. Maddening, hurtful, embarrassing. But all of the positive early media had worked to make Tenny a familiar and trusted figure to millions of California voters. In personal campaigning she was proving to be strong and resilient. The attacks hit her hard as Tenny, but she did not seem to flinch as the Candidate. Her immigration reform speeches and media had solidified the Latino vote beyond any majority ever seen in California polling. Her economic reform intensity increased as election day drew closer. It was a magnet for independents, campaign volunteers, and rally crowds, and it was a stark contrast to an opposition campaign built largely, not on issues, but on attacks on her character. A year’s worth of advance positive media, the media campaign designed by Ben and Lee over martinis at Rehoboth, Delaware’s Big Fish restaurant, was proving worth the $50 million that campaign had cost.  As a result of it, the attacks she was enduring proved counter-productive to its attackers, riling voters who felt they knew Tenny well enough to reject the charges. Dowling’s negative numbers increased as voters redirected their anger to Dowling for subjecting her to a gutter-level campaign.

This was both puzzling and disheartening for the small group meeting in Palm Springs to plan the final weeks’ push to defeat her. Top Republican figures from Washington and Sacramento were there. So were representatives of many of the industry groups that felt threatened by her senatorial power.

Cal Burns, their polling guru, was fielding new numbers daily. “She’s where she’s been for weeks,” said Burns. “We got her down to fifty-three percent, down ten from where she started but now we’ve flat-lined at fifty-three and can’t get Kip above forty-three.”

“There must be some weakness we can play to,” said Reese Rollins, lead consultant for Kip Dowling’s campaign. “Give us something to work with.”

“Sex isn’t working,” said Burns. “As many people think it’s romantic as think it’s awful. And the more you hit her on that L.A. Lights thing, the more people see she spent years as Mother Teresa. But she did hang onto her Mexican passport until she got into politics. Tie her back to that Aragon company she worked with. Maybe she never really left. Maybe she’s been secretly working with them to get business away from American companies. Maybe it’s a jobs thing. Any good research on that?”

Rollins turned to Sam Moncrief, the chief lobbyist for California’s banking industry and ad hoc leader of the industry’s campaign to defeat Tenny. The money flow through Moncrief had been virtually bottomless. Experienced political operatives had never seen a gusher like the one Moncrief controlled.

Now Moncrief imperceptibly shook his head to Rollins. The issue might have promise, but the campaign couldn’t go there. Only Moncrief and a few others knew  the money gusher’s source. There were hints that it was Aragon money. No proof, of course. Moncrief picked up the money in cash from an associate in a San Bernardino bank, who said his contact was someone in San Diego. Across the border was Tijuana Nacionale and its regular delivery of pesos for dollars exchange. Beyond that, who knows. And for this purpose, better not to know. Without doubt, someone in Mexico wanted to defeat Senator Tennyson so badly that he had a wide-open check book and an enormous free flow of pesos to back it up. Best not to turn the spotlight there.

Reese Rollins got the signal from Moncrief.

“I don’t think so, Cal” he said to his pollster. “What else have we got?”



Ben’s Journal Entry

Almie

I celebrated Tenny’s election by treating myself to a day at Santa Anita. Santa Anita is such a beautiful race track. The horses are magnificent. I could stare at them for hours in the paddock. Like royalty, which in the horse world they are. Fast horses get bred to fast horses to make faster horses. Horses bred to run longer distances come from horses with distance pedigrees. It’s a science and art and it really works.

Since Tenny’s campaign just ended I had her on my mind while I was watching these bloodline products today and thought of hers. Centuries of royalty. It works in horses. Does it in people? That’s the way the world used to work. Once a king always a king. Until they bred some idiot who blew away the family jewels. How to explain Tenny? Is there some divine right about her? Aragons rule! When I think of all the people in California I know who would give their birthright to be a U.S. Senator. They live the dream with every breath, every word, every action. Now, here’s Tenny. Just a few years from even knowing what Congress is. Never registered. Never voted. Whoosh, she circles the field and beats them all home.

Of course we had to enter her into the race. That’s because she looked like the best choice. But the way she did it. Once Hal appointed her she flew out of the gate like no one I’ve ever trained. The Republicans threw everything they could think of at her. Nearly every other candidate I’ve worked with would have been blown away if they were hit with all the nasty stuff, backed by unlimited money. It hurt. It cut. It brought her down a bit. But all her positives overcame their negatives. She just attracts and inspires disciples like some kind of mythical goddess. And for someone who’s never done this before...I watched her get stronger as the going got tougher.

On my bedroom wall now I keep a photo of Secretariat winning the Belmont stakes. He won by thirty lengths or more, like he was in a different race than the horses chasing him, horses that were the best in their generation. He made them look like pack mules. What I love about the photo is that Secretariat’s front legs are extended as far front as nature allows. His hind legs are so far back they’re almost out of the picture. Three of his hoofs are off the ground. He’s flying. Just flying. The ultimate competitor. Straining every muscle to win.

Somehow, Tenny does the same thing to people, voters, in elections. But if I had a picture of her doing it she wouldn’t be straining. For her it’s effortless. Natural. What kind of bloodlines create such a person? I read Kirstin Downey’s book about Queen Isabella, the book called the Warrior Queen. Are we looking at a bookend here? Half a millennium later? It’s scary.

Love, forever (mean it!)

Ben

20

The night streets of Zona Dorada in Tampico, Mexico once were alive with young people heading to popular bars and travelers searching handicraft stalls for exotic bargains. That was before the murderous gangs decided to compete for control of this port city. Now, one takes quick steps through the dark, else they risk kidnap or worse. Tourists keep their distance. Many of those with wealth are gone, leaving their colonial mansions for others to live in, loot, or burn.

The priest and the woman having a late dinner were two of only six in the Fiesta Inn coffee shop designed for dozens more. Staff leaned against walls or made only intermittent appearances. There was little to do, few to serve, much time to think of better ways to spend one’s life.

The woman was United States Senator Isabel Aragon Tennyson. It would have been extraordinary for any of those in the hotel, where she was staying, or in the coffee shop, where she was dining, to recognize her. She was clothed for invisibility. Unremarkable black slacks, a white sleeveless blouse for this warm May night, a simple, beaded brown necklace. Recognition odds were higher for her companion, the priest, Father Federico Aragon. His mission had taken him through this region before. Tonight he was here to meet his sister.

Tenny did not check out of her suite at the Four Seasons hotel in Mexico City before flying to Tampico late on this day. She would return to Mexico City early tomorrow morning to continue as a member of a U.S. Senate delegation studying narcotics and arms traffic illegally crossing the United States–Mexico border. Tomorrow the group would travel to the Mexican side of the border with Mexican government officials. Tonight she was here to talk with Federico. Not idle talk. By phone days earlier, Federico had said something that alarmed her. So alarming that she felt the need to risk being chided by her Senate companions for “sleeping out” so that she could meet with Federico here, tonight, in one of the most violent cities in all of Mexico.

“Were you followed here tonight?”

“I can never be sure, Bell, but I don’t think so. They don’t follow me everywhere. You know, they don’t like to sleep on the floor or miss meals.”

“I’m serious, Federico.”

“So am I. It’s true. There are times when they don’t even try to hide that they’re watching. Other times I just get a quick look and they duck. But most of the time I don’t think they follow me at all.”

“Do you know who they are?”

“It could be anyone. The cartels. The Mexican government. Maybe even the bishop is just checking up on me.”

Tenny shook her head and closed her eyes.

“You’re hopeless,” Federico. “No one follows you because they want to do you good. You’ve been at this life so many years already. Find a church or a mission somewhere else. Come to the United States. I’m sure they can use you somewhere other than wandering from village to village. I mean it. Not a day goes by when I don’t worry for you.”

Federico turned his attention to the bowl of vegetable soup and bread before him. He had the look of someone who did not eat often or very much when food was available. His robe hung from him with little structural support. He was not a large man. In Jesuit dress he seemed even shorter than his five foot seven frame. His brown hair, once thick and coarse, was now mostly memory.

“When I told you I was being watched, it was for your safety, Bell, not mine.”

“My safety?”

“Yes. I first noticed it after your election last November. I don’t know exactly. Maybe in January, February. And I didn’t see it myself. A young man in a village I was visiting. I was staying with his family for a few days. He mentioned it. Padre, he said, who is that person following you all day? I wouldn’t have known. Why would I know? Who suspects that they are being followed? But after this young man told me, I did pay attention. And there was a man following me. I don’t know if he was trying to hide or was just careless. I was surprised, of course. So I decided the next day I would just go ask if I could be of service to him. Many are too shy to ask. But he was gone the next day.”

“And it happened again?”

“Many times since. Once I actually did speak with my shadow. I asked if there was anything I could do for him. No, padre, he said. Would you like to walk with me? I asked. No, padre, he said again. May I ask why you follow me? I asked. I am being paid to follow you. By whom? I can’t say, he said. And what is it you hope to learn? I asked. I don’t know, he said. When they ask me what you did while I was watching, I tell them. Who asks you? I can’t tell you, he said.”

“How extraordinary.”

“Yes. My followers seem to be simple people. Not dangerous at all, and I believe they have little idea why they follow me. But they need the money and it seems a harmless occupation.”

“It sounds like someone is paying these people not actually to watch you or get information, but just to let you know you’re being watched.”

“Or they want you to know I’m being watched. And that’s why I told you. I am nothing to them. But you are important. If your enemies are paying people to watch me, they may be sending you a warning.”

“Then you are in danger.”

“I’m in more danger from the idle bandit or militia gang or disease or the drunken husband. These things I am conscious of every day and I take precautions. I mean no harm to anyone. But what you are doing is certainly a threat to powerful people.”

Since her election, and with the prospect of six more years in the U.S. Senate, Tenny had reloaded for combat with the bankers, brokers, and others from Wall Street who had been her campaign foils. She had promised voters she would fight for change, and she meant it. The seed of mission had matured since that awful night learning from Federico the truth about Groupo Aragon. New branches sprouted with every new casualty of class warfare who walked through the doors of L.A. Lights. Federico had his mission. She had hers.

“Help as you can,” Federico would counsel. “Help as you can. Dear Bell, you can only change things for the times, not the eternities. For eternities, the money changers have walked the earth and mostly ruled. They were in the temple distressing our Lord. Our own ancestors in Castile and Aragon could do no more than the purses of the wealthy would permit. It was the bankers and merchants of Venice and Genoa and elsewhere who held the strings to those purses. Use what power you have to achieve the possible. Don’t squander it on unlikely quests.”

Federico had taken Jesuit vows of forgiveness. Not Tenny.

“Isabella defeated the bankers, Federico. Columbus returned riches beyond anyone’s dreams. She was able to cut those strings on the royal purse and turn warring provinces into a rich and powerful Spain. She wasn’t timid. Oh, I’m sorry, you know I meant ‘timid’ as no reflection on you. You are anything but timid. It’s personal bravery that allows you to do what you do. Power is to be used. Our family has used its power to crush people. I intend to use whatever power I have to cut cords of bondage and in a way free the serfs of our time.”

They had had these talks before. Many times. But not like this. With Federico possibly becoming a target as a result of what she saw as her mission in Washington, D.C. This conversation had been too disturbing. She had little appetite for food.

“Come with me, Federico. Tomorrow. Come with me to Mexico City. I can’t give up my work, and you needn’t give up yours. You’ve helped so many here. Others need help in other, safer places.”

“We can’t run from callings and be at peace, Bell. Look, tonight we are in one of the most dangerous cities in all of Mexico. But we’re secure because we are careful. We don’t tempt danger. If I were to wind up in a shallow grave somewhere I would be of no good to anyone—me, you, our people, or the Church. I have no intention of leaving this world until the Lord says it’s my proper time. I have what you might call good survival skills and a network of those who look after me.

“For my mission, I know my dangers, my risks. If you consider it your mission to threaten some of the richest and most powerful people in this world, you must be aware of yours.”