“YOU’RE NEW here in the Senate,” said the minority leader, slumped deeply in his huge chair. “Just elected and all with some new and interesting ideas.”
He reminded me of the late “Tip” O’Neill, a New England Democrat with red face, white hair and twinkling blue eyes, not quite as tall as Tip, but in better shape. Like all of his kind, he eliminated the letter “r” from the middle of his words (his son had attended “Fodham” down in New Yok) and compensated for it by adding the letter at the end of words (“Atlantar Geogiar”).
“But quiet and harmless,” I said, sparring with him as I had done for a half hour.
“Got a lot of phone calls from Senators the day you were elected?”
“Only Democrats.”
In early December my election was actually certified. Senator Crispjin and the Examiner had struggled mightily to prevent certification on the grounds of “blatant and systematic fraud” and demanded that the courts intervene to change the outcome. They first had sought an injunction that the state election commissioners show cause why they should not reverse the outcome. The federal court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction. They then turned to the state courts which summarily dismissed their motions that there was no persuasive evidence.
In the meantime the Examiner had begun a drumbeat demanding that to end the “confusion” I should concede the election.
My brother phoned from Panama to urge me to concede.
“It’s the only honorable thing to do Tommy. Everyone knows that Senator Crispjin won the election. You should be a good loser. When we were kids I tried to teach that you should always be a good loser. People respect you when you do that. You’ll earn a lot of respect if you concede.”
“We won fairly,” I replied.
“That’s not true, Tommy. You know it’s not true. If you do go to Washington you’ll always be under a cloud.”
The conversation ended when he said, “I’ve got to get to work. There’s a lot to do down here. I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.”
Every time a new motion was filed, Leander Schlenk had claimed triumph for honest elections.
APPEALS COURT LIKELY TO RULE FOR SENATOR
Veteran legal observers are saying that the attempt of little Tommy Moran to steal the election from Senator H. Rodgers Crispjin will not survive an emergency hearing in the Illinois Appellate Court tomorrow morning. The Court is not subject to the political power of the Chicago Machine. It has always supported honest elections. It is likely to rule unanimously that Senator Crispjin was reelected.
A week later I was talking to the Minority Leader who apparently did not take the legal battle seriously. Neither, for that matter, did I. It was, however, a nuisance, though I wasn’t the direct target of any of their motions.
“I’ve got a nice, large office for you on the second floor of the Dirksen building, facing the Capitol.”
This was an unheard-of prize for a freshman Senator.
“I won’t turn it down.”
He laughed, he had laughed a lot during our conversation.
“Are there any special committees on which you’d be wanting to serve?”
“If I had my druthers, I’d like Judiciary and Armed Forces.”
He wrote the names down on a small sheet of notepaper, the only item on his vast oaken desk.
“Judiciary because of immigration and Armed Forces because of the routine raping of women in the military.”
It was a statement not a question.
“I’m told that there is a lot less work in Judiciary than in other committees.”
“That’s true … Now you won’t be flying back to Chicago every weekend, I hear. Moving your family here, I’m told.”
“I gather a lot of my colleagues spend two or three nights here and the others at home with their families.”
He cocked a suspicious eye, “Well I don’t know how important that is. They spend a lot of time with their constituents and raising money.”
“I don’t raise money.”
“So they tell me—no negative ads, no asking people for money, and no campaigning till after Labor Day … Interesting ideas …”
“They might not work twice.”
“And if they do it will be hard on a lot of people,” he laughed again. “Generally, the first thing a man thinks about when he arrives here is reelection. After the first one it’s not so difficult.”
“I don’t know whether I’ll like it here and whether I’ll do a good job. I won’t make up my mind about reelection for a few years—like five.”
He sighed and squirmed in his desk. “They said you were different and I’m beginning to believe them.”
“Irish Catholic kid from the west side of Chicago. Haven’t been many like that around here.”
He grinned. “That’s for damn sure … Mind if I make a few suggestions?”
“I was hoping you would.”
“Your lobbyists are all over the place.”
“Tell me about it. Three of them have already offered to do a nice reception for my swearing-in. I declined.”
He smiled thinly.
“First time does no harm.”
“Slippery slope.”
“Just the words I was about to use … They’re nice friendly fellas, most of them. And they’d do anything to please you and make you happy. And your wife and kids too. They don’t ask all that much either. Except maybe to own your vote.”
“Pick up their markers, as they say in Chicago.”
“The point is not to leave too many markers around for anyone to pick up.”
“I think I’ve dropped a few already this afternoon.”
His whole body shook.
“I figured you being Irish and all, you’d be into loyalty no matter what favor I offered. Still and all, it doesn’t hurt to sink some roots, does it now?”
“Whenever you need my vote, Senator, you got it!”
“That makes things a lot easier.”
“If you don’t stand by your friends, who will you stand by,” I repeated a Chicago political adage.
“You’ll find a lot of people wanting to be friends, Senator. Lobbyists, business leaders, people with lots of money, media folk, people over at the White House, cabinet people, everyone. And yourself with a beautiful wife.”
“I noticed that too.”
“Everyone needs friends. The trick of it is to realize that a lot of them will eventually want something from you.”
“More markers.”
“You got it.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“A United States Senator is one of the most powerful men in the world. He has a lot less money than he has power. There will be minefields of bribes lying in wait for you. I think you’re smart enough and agile enough to recognize them and turn them down.”
“God help me if I don’t.”
“No one else will, Tommy. No one else will. They’ll spoil you rotten too. Weekend trips to the best golf courses in the country. Skiing in the Alps. A trip to Africa during recess. A lecture in St. Petersburg, Superbowl tickets. The Kentucky Derby. You name it, you’ve got it, all expenses paid and expensive souvenirs for your wife and children. A dozen bottles of expensive wine. Anything you want.”
“I’d be a sucker for the occasional bottle of Bushmill’s Green. Beyond that I don’t want anything on your list. And when I fly somewhere I’ll pay my own fare.”
“We don’t pay senators enough money. One hundred and sixty-five K in a city like this for men, most of whom would
earn at least a half million any place else … We’re dirt poor compared to the men we have to associate with: lawyers, lobbyists, corporate executives, oil people. We have little tricks now in which an outside committee recommends tiny wage increases. Our opponents in elections use that against us. If the country wants to eliminate the worst corruption here, they have to give us as much money as the typical lobbyist. That’s not going to happen, Tommy.”
“If we can’t make a go of it on my wife’s billable hours and my royalties, then we’ll go home.”
“Your wife has the same convictions?”
Bluntest question yet.
“All she wants is to buy things that are on sale, better yet to get them wholesale. Seriously, her convictions, as you call them, are stricter than mine.”
“Daughter of that fella who takes pictures?”
“I’m sure you’ve talked to him already, Senator.”
Another big laugh.
“She’s working for her law firm here. Supreme Court kind of stuff?”
“Appeared there several times. Won her cases.”
Long pause.
“You are a talented and attractive couple. I presume you don’t fool around?”
“Wouldn’t dare.”
“There will be a lot of attention focused on you. I’ve seen older men than you lose their balance. I don’t want to sound like that Polonius fella. You seem to have your head screwed on proper. I just thought a word from me might be a little help.”
“Word of warning.”
“Something like that.”
“Point taken … and gratefully.”
We both stood up.
He extended his hand.
“When you get settled in, Eileen and I would like to have you over for supper sometime. Nothing elaborate.”
“We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Of course his wife’s name was Eileen. What else would it be?
He walked me to the door of his office, opened it and then stepped out in the corridor with me.
“It’s been bad days for us in the last twenty years. We did some dumb things and missed some great opportunities. Should never have let the insurance people torpedo Hillary’s health insurance thing. The tide is turning, though it will take the next four to six years to do it. Then we should have a good long run. They wouldn’t be far from wrong who might say that you can do a lot.”
Properly vague, as Irish predictions tend to be.
“Sounds like fun,” I said being equally vague.
I took a taxi back to our new house on Q Street where my wife and mother-in-law were reveling in the decoration and furnishing of the place. The Ambassador was playing gin rummy with Mary Ann—and consistently losing to our Good Witch of the West Side. I was constrained to recount in full detail the conversation with the minority leader.
“He likes you, Tommy,” my wife said, her eyes wide in admiration. “He really likes you.”
“What’s not to like?” the Ambassador asked.
“Gin!” squealed our middle child. “You lose again, Gramps.”
Our next big initiation meeting was with my Chief of Staff and media person, both women, both five or six years older than us, both handsome, both veterans of service in the senate, both recommended by the minority leader and both a little skeptical of us. My campaign staff all had personal and professional reasons for staying in Chicago, though Joe McDermott had taken over my Chicago office.
Christine Taliferro (pronounced Tolivar), our Chief of Staff—once called administrative assistant when the job was a lot easier—was a Protestant from the hill country, Eastern Kentucky just at the end of West Viriginia.
Manny (short for Emanuela) Rodriguez was Dominican, hence both Black and Hispanic and Catholic.
They were especially skeptical of my wife, who had taken them seriously when they said it would be an informal Saturday in my new office, and dressed in jeans, tee shirt, and windbreaker for the warm mid-December day.
“I don’t know of any freshman senator who had ever had an
office like this,” Chris said with a touch of disapproval. She was even taller than my wife.
“We Irish stick together,” I said.
We were seated around my impressive desk. My wife watched and listened, her natural exuberance hidden behind what she called her “appellate face.”
“You’ve seen the minority leader already?”
“I was summoned to his holiness’s chamber for an hour pep talk, which was in fact a sage warning about all things I might do wrong. I assured him that I would always be polite to lobbyists and take nothing from them, not even a swearing-in party.”
“He said that?” Chris asked, just a touch of the smoke of the hills in her voice. She was a tall, slender woman with the body of an accomplished athlete. A golfer and a marathon runner, it would turn out. Her husband was a retired Colonel who worked as a civilian in the Pentagon. She was given to pacing back and forth on the office floor, an outlet for a tremendous store of nervous energy.
“I told him that I’d already declined three such offers.”
“Well, that settles one office policy early on.”
“We don’t do lobbyists.”
“That’s very wise, Senator,” Manny said almost reluctantly, the music of the islands still strong in her accent. “They’d be very generous to you and your family, but they’d end up …”
Manny was about my height, maybe a little shorter, as laid back and relaxed as Chris was manic. She hummed calypso songs when she was thinking. The only way to describe her figure was to say she was luxuriant. Her husband was a retired relief pitcher who had played for the New York Mets and now worked in Baseball’s national office in public relations. The leader had chosen two strong and attractive women to mother me. It was clear from the approbation in Marymarg’s eyes that she approved of both of them.
“Owning us,” I said finishing Manny’s sentence.
“Something like that … the first thing we need to decide is what to hang on the wall of these offices. The waiting room, first of all.”
“I hadn’t thought much about that. The hangings should shout Illinois! Right?”
“Preferably.”
“What about some glorious color photos of the Prairie State by a Pulitzer-winning photographer? Put some of them in the main office? Change them every once in a while?”
“That sounds striking. Would they be expensive?”
“Get ’em wholesale.”
“Free,” Marymarg spoke for the first time. “My daddy.”
“And in my office same kind of pictures of my family. Also free. He’d hang them for free too.”
“You’d be surprised, Senator, how many problems freshmen senators have with this issue.”
“Your relations with the media?”
“Back home? I don’t know anyone here yet.”
That morning Leander Schlenk had struck again.
CORRUPT BOOK DEAL FOR TOMMY
Little Tommy Moran has already profited from his attempt to steal the senatorial election even though the outcome is still before the courts. The Examiner has learned that Tommy’s publisher has secretly awarded him a three book contract “in excess of seven figures.” His first book appeared to thunderous bad reviews all over the country and has already disappeared from the nation’s bookstores. The publisher is obviously hoping for clout in the United States Senate in the unlikely event that Tommy is actually seated.
Dolly issued the usual denial. The contract was not a secret, the book was in its third printing and was in fourth place on the national bestseller lists.
“Back home is important, Senator,” Manny said as they were prepping me for my role as a senator. “That’s where your voters are.”
“Generally they are no more hostile than to any other public figure. They want to entertain the audience by trapping you. A couple are very hostile, particularly Leander Schlenk of the Examiner and a woman named Lupe Gonzalez of a Spanish language TV station. Both are probably in the tank with the former senator who is already running for reelection. And in turn Bobby Bill Roads is likely subsidizing both of them …”
“An oil man from Oklahoma,” Chris was up and pacing, “who thinks his money can buy anything he wants.”
“So far,” Manny continued, rolling her jet black eyes, “no one has proved him wrong.”
“We have a tape of my pre-election interview on PBS …” I said tentatively.
My wife handed it over.
“Excellent. It will give us an idea of your style.”
“Or lack of it.”
Manny was silent for a moment.
“Bad people,” she finally said. “There’s a lot of bad people out there. They blew up your car, right, and someone took a shot at you? We’ll have to talk later about your security here. The Beltway media are not much better. They’re also in decline as the papers curtail and combine their bureaus and focus more on features about people instead of news and analysis.”
“You’re a hot property now, Senator,” Chris said, as she gave up her pacing. “Every small city paper around the country will want a profile on you. It should help your presidential visibility.”
Ah, a trick question.
“What was it General Sherman said?”
“I will not run if nominated and not serve if elected?”
“Yeah.”
“You agree, Ms. O’Malley?”
Herself was startled to be dealt into the game?
“Huh? Oh, I wouldn’t divorce him if he tried that. I’d kill him.”
They laughed uneasily, still not having figured my wife out. She went to the main office and came back with the coffee pot, cups, and rolls we had brought over. I was not worried that she would win my two school marms over. Rather I feared that she would make common cause with them against me.
“So then we are generally reluctant to grant interviews that are not about issues and are not with major papers—L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Daily News, Boston Globe, and of course the Times and the Post.”
“And maybe the Post Dispatch which is read in downstate Illinois,” I added, “and the Chicago TV stations and PBS.”
“That will make our work a lot easier.”
“Our Chicago people created a pretty good Web site for the campaign. You might want to look at it. We could put any of our stuff on it. They tell me it gets a lot of hits.”
“We’ll surely coordinate with them. Those sites become more and more important. Maybe you could write a little message every week …”
“Why not?”
“You can’t expect to write everything yourself. You’ll need a speech writer and one of your Legislative Assistants will draft the bills you will propose … Oh, I forgot, Senator, you’re a writer … I’m sorry …”
“Da nada. Let’s have the speech writer.”
“Did the minority leader indicate anything about your committee assignments?” Chris continued the interrogation.
“I think he said that he thought Judiciary and Armed Services would have room for me.”
Dead silence.
“You asked for them?”
“And got them?”
“Yeah.”
“You know what that means, Senator?”
“Along with this office?”
“I think so.”
“Manny, our new Senator is really a hot property!”
“Don’t let it go to his head,” my wife murmured, as she cut the rolls into conscience-salving little bites.
“The leader will expect loyalty, you understand?”
“He knew he’d get it anyway. We Irish are a clannish crowd.”
They were beginning to like both of us.
Did that matter? You bet your life it did.
“The size of a Senator’s staff grows bigger every year,” Chris began her main lecture, doubtless carefully rehearsed. “In the absence of any other system, he has become an ombudsman for his constituents against the federal government. You will receive a huge amount of mail every day, some of it hate mail …”
“Round file.”
“Right! Much of the mail from constituents who think they have been cheated by the federal government, and in many cases are quite properly angry. They expect us to get their lost Social Security check, to pay for the damage a Postal Service truck did to their front lawn, to prevent the IRS from hassling them about taxes already paid.”
“Ward committeeman work.”
“That will take a lot of time and people in your office, mostly smart young people who like the idea of working for a Senator for a while. They will normally handle these kinds of complaints themselves. They will call the offending agency and investigate the case. You’d be surprised at how responsive the bureaucracy is when they get a call from a Senator’s office. Only rarely will you have to intervene. Most of the time, our young person will straighten out the mess and write a letter in your name to the constituent and sign it with one of the robot signatures we will have available. An enormous amount of mail will come in every day. Only a small amount will reach your desk. You may have to sign two or three letters every day and personalize them with a little note. The only alternative is to do hands-on mail, which would drive you crazy!”
“Crazier.”
“You will have several legislative assistants who will coordinate with the LAs of other Senators on matters of joint interest and on drafting legislation. They are very bright young lawyers, just out of law school, who are desperately eager to earn a name for themselves. We have to moderate them a bit.”
“Better you than me. When I was a Mr. Mom, I couldn’t moderate three sweet little girls.”
“I assume you’ve already received invitations?”
“First one is tomorrow night.”
“Soon you could have six invitations for every night. Sometimes you can do two, a reception in late afternoon and a dinner party every night. There are also lecture invitations that would add to the burden. There are some parties and receptions to which you should go and an occasional lecture you should accept. For the rest we can provide quite acceptable excuses, hand written by our robot … Unless Ms. O’Malley you would want to handle this responsibility?”
“Marymarg … God forbid! Can your robot provide a handwritten note for me?”
“It would be happy to try …”
“Good robot.”
“You will also need a scheduler, Senator, in addition to this gentle robot. Someone who will try to see that you don’t find
yourself caught in two places at the same time. Uh, Marymarg, she will need to coordinate with you.”
“Maybe we can have an electronic calendar on our respective computers. That’s how we kept himself from getting lost forever in Kendall County.”
She refilled the coffee cups.
The conversation droned on. I was growing weary. However, I had to let them go on with all the dreary details of how a well run senator’s office is run. They seemed to know what they were doing, thank heaven, because it would take me years to figure it out. Finally I tried to absorb the rules about our hiring and firing policy and sexual harassment in the office.
“It is unlikely, Senator that you will harass anyone …”
“Wouldn’t know how,” the good Mary Margaret observed.
“Which does not mean that charges won’t be made. However, even among the staff there have to be clear-cut rules.”
“I should hope so.”
“Anything more? Manny.”
“I think we’ve covered all the bases.”
“We are honored to be asked to serve you, Senator. And we’ll do our best not to seem bossy …”
“Irish men are used to it. Usually they don’t even complain. I am the one who is privileged to have such good staff planning. Otherwise I’m not even sure I could find my way from here to the Senate Chamber.”
“Marymarg, it’s hard to read your face …” Chris said carefully. “I hope you are not offended by our detailed instructions for the Senator.”
“It’s my lawyer face, which is much less revealing … I’m glad some people are taking charge of him, especially people that know what they’re doing and I’m fascinated by the complexity of a Senator’s life. It would seem that like the monarch of England and perhaps the father of the family, he reigns but does not rule. I promise to stay out of your way. I don’t believe in Mom and Pop shops. I may show up occasionally to cadge a lunch …”
Then Chris said something that I would later learn Chiefs of Staff rarely say to their Senator’s wife.
“Some day we might want to have you around all the time.”
That was a real compliment for the O’Malley woman. The flush that spread across her face showed that she realized it.
“That probably wouldn’t work, but it’s nice of you to say it.”
“Then you won’t mind if I say something to you and the Senator about your children?”
“Not in the least.”
“They’ll be going to Gonzaga and Ursuline.”
“The oldest to Gonzaga this year. Two of them next year.”
“Both fine schools. Our kids are there too. It’s difficult to be a teen and a Senator’s child. Our kids are quick to say ‘stuck-up.’ The child must be careful not to talk about their father or any of the perks, like ice cream socials at the White House or tickets for early viewings of new films.”
“Our kids,” Marymarg said firmly, “will never go into the White House for ice cream socials or anything else. They’re Republicans over there. We don’t take any favors from anyone, unless it is a bigger office with a nice view and the right committees and great staff, and neither will they. We’ll make that clear to them. They’re adventurers. They like new things and new people. No one will ever push them around a second time.”
“She’s right,” I said. “They’re throwbacks to Irish nobility or Phil Sheridan’s cavalry riding down the Shendanoah.”
We had a heart-to-heart with the kids when we returned to our new home. They listened impassively.
“Like we don’t know those things already,” Mary Rose said with a frown.
“We totally will not be pompous,” Mary Ann protested.
“Who’s going to hang out in bars with creepy boys anyway,” Mary Therese, our nine-year-old sophisticate, added to the consensus. “We got more sense than that.”
“Really!”
“Point taken?” Marymarg pursued the issue.
“Yeah.”
“Fersure.”
“Totally.”
I don’t know what else we expected.
Manny asked my wife to put in a few hours several days later to help them sort out mailing lists, e-mail addresses, and the Internet.
“We worked it all out,” she reported back to me. “All you have to do is to write a reflection of some sort every week and we’ll put it on our Web page, send it out on e-mail, and mail to our list of major donors, if we have one.”
“Sure we do. Chucky keeps it … I don’t want to see it.”
“Who says you have to? Chucky also gave us a list of people, not necessarily all major donors, who deserved more than a robot letter and an answering call if they phone. If they tell you someone is on the line they will also add that that person is on Ambassador O’Malley’s list. I also gave them a list, a short list, of people who should have your personal phone number. Like Dolly and Tina and that bunch.”
“My brother?”
“He’ll be flagged for a call back.”
“How did the work go?”
She frowned as Mary Rose did when we tried to promulgate our new rules. “Fine. They’re very able women and already dedicated to you. They say you have the best Web page in the Senate, though we have to keep updating it. The Internet is the new big thing in politics and it doesn’t cost much.”
“They expect you to work with them on it?”
Again the frown.
“Why not? I can do it all by phone or by e-mail.”
Later in the office I was informed that my wife was a remarkable woman and that I was a very lucky man. I didn’t disagree. They had bonded already.