“In plain speak, that means no private insurance. Your opponent calls it socialism.”
“He can call it whatever he likes. But his solution only benefits millionaires and billionaires. It would pour billions of dollars into the coffers of Big Pharma and the insurance companies while denying access to health care to millions of hard-working middle class Americans.”
“Just Americans, Congressman? We’ve got fifteen seconds. Would you deny health care to undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers?”
“Ricky, that’s a topic worthy of a discussion that will take much more than fifteen seconds. But in a word, no, I wouldn’t deny anyone coverage who was working within our system.”
Brewer turned away to face the main camera. “Thank you, Congressman Hugh McKenzie. You’ve been on The Razor’s Edge.”
The red light above the camera went off, and the producer shouted, “Clear.” McKenzie took a deep breath and exhaled gratefully.
“You did pretty well, Congressman,” Brewer said. “Hope to see you back. And good luck to you, sir.”
“Thanks. Everybody’s telling me how much I’m going to need it.”
“You’ll be fine,” Brewer said. “That’s what I’m hearing. Don’t let ’em get to you.”
1 John Brennan: “Our Election Systems Need to be Strengthened,” interview with Chris Matthews on Hardball, July 26, 2019.
13
The polls began to stabilize by late September, showing him down by four points (forty-two to forty-six) with 12 percent undecided. Morton Nash, his campaign consultant, remained upbeat because the steady erosion of his favorables they’d been monitoring over the past few months had bottomed out and forty-six was still beatable. He had crafted a series of negative mailers about Aguilar that were about to drop, and now they were up on TV and radio as well. The campaign had underestimated Aguilar at the beginning, and brought Nash on board in a panic to right the ship. They should have hit hard on Aguilar’s negatives much earlier. Nash argued that Aguilar’s central campaign message, about the rule of law, was about to backfire—with a little help. “It’s all about the messaging,” he said at the daily staff meeting. “From here to Election Day, we’ve got two goals. Win over the undecideds, and peel back his support among female Hispanic voters, who will vote with their heart, not their head. We do that, and we win.”
“Aguilar wants to deport Grandma?” McKenzie said.
“That’s right, Congressman. But don’t worry: you don’t have to say that.”
McKenzie knew Nash was right, but he still didn’t like it.
“What about winning fair and square?” he said.
“There is no fair and square, Congressman. This is politics. Either you win, or you lose. Do you want to win?”
McKenzie was planning to air his misgivings to the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, Senator Vince Bellinger, once they had wrapped up the first debate prep session. They had served together in the House when McKenzie was a freshman, before Bellinger went on to win the vacant U.S. Senate seat from New York. Bellinger had urged the campaign to select McKenzie to play Vice President Mike Pence because he had never seen anyone who so perfectly captured the vice president’s sanctimoniousness. “He’s a natural,” Bellinger had argued. “I need to practice ignoring it.”
The mock debate had gone well. McKenzie thought he had scored some points using Aguilar’s attacks on Medicare-For-All, which Bellinger initially fumbled. “How can you possibly go before the American people and tell them that eighty-five million of them—eighty-five million!—are going to lose their insurance because of a cockamamie scheme that puts the government in charge of your health care?”
“With all due respect, Mr. Vice President, that’s not what will happen,” Bellinger said.
Bellinger’s handler from the campaign, former DNC chairman Nathan Bullock, jumped up and started screaming at the cameramen and the two debaters to stop. “Horse pucky, Senator. Grow a pair. Don’t let Pence wrap you up in his phony compassion shtick.”
Bellinger looked down at his notes. “How about this?” he said. Turning to face the cameras directly, he shook his head in sorrow. “It is so disappointing, Mr. Vice President, to hear you lie and lie and lie again. You know that’s not going to happen. And everybody in America knows. We’re going to transition into Medicare-For-All while leaving private insurance in place for those that want to keep it.”
“Better. Throw it back at him,” Bullock said.
And so it went for another two hours, back and forth. McKenzie found himself almost believing the Republican talking points he had practiced for the mock debates. Many of them dovetailed what Aguilar was using against him. Maybe that is the answer, he thought. Don’t focus on his uniqueness. Paint him as just another Republican taking orders from the party in Washington. We’ve been here before, people. Don’t let yourselves be fooled by the fancy tricks, the mariachi bands and celebrities. Nelson Aguilar is just part of the machine.
On second thought, maybe not.
“You did well, buddy. Maybe a bit too well,” Bellinger said once they have finished. “Sounds like you’ve let your guy get into your head. That was pretty damn convincing!”
“Isn’t that what the campaign wanted?”
He tried to turn it into a joke, but Bellinger saw through it.
“I hear you’re in trouble.”
“It’s true. I’m behind in the tracking polls.”
“In that district? That’s got to be one of the safest Democrat seats in the nation.”
“Not after re-districting,” he said.
“If my memory is correct, it’s still over fifty percent Democrat.”
“Fifty point two.”
“So what happened? You get caught harassing a female staffer? Suggest soccer moms should quit their jobs and stay home to take care of the kids?”
“No. My opponent has got a ton of money. He’s Hispanic. He’s a businessman. And, well, everybody treats him like a rock star. Even the media!”
Bellinger wrapped an arm around his shoulder and drew him off to the side where the staffers couldn’t hear them. “Sounds to me like you need some insurance,” he said.
“I was hoping for another one million dollars from the Party.”
“Your Uncle Vinnie’s got better than that. I have somebody you need to meet.”
He wrote a familiar name on a yellow Post-It note, along with a cell phone number, then put his finger to his lips.
“Don’t talk on the phone,” Bellinger said. “Just tell him Uncle Vinnie asked you to meet. See if he can’t join us at the next debate prep. Then it’s all yours, Hugh-boy.”
Hugh-boy! When was it going to stop?
14
The first week of October went by in a whirl. Congress was out of session and everyone was in full campaign mode. Aguilar was doing rallies almost every night, or so it seemed, bringing hundreds of people into churches and schools. Stan Harris, McKenzie’s opposition research guy, was all over them. He had guerilla campaign workers filming every minute of them, filming the crowds, and especially, filming the candidate when he thought he was speaking privately to big donors.
“We’ve got great stuff, Congressman,” he said at the next campaign meeting at DNC headquarters. “We’ve got amazing footage. Look at this.”
Harris played tape of Aguilar in his suit, top two buttons of his dress shirt unbuttoned, showing a giant gold cross on his chest, with a hand up to his face to hide what he was saying to a person so enormous that “porcine” would be an understatement. The other person was holding out a check.
“Fat cats give dark money to Republican candidate,” Harris said. “My guy got his camera on the other side of that hand. See the zeros on the check? We’ll put in subtitles when we do the ad. What he’s saying through all the background noise is, ‘I’ve got your back, boss
.’ That’s your opponent, Congressman. Don’t believe what he says about representing the little people. He’s in the pocket of the special interests. He’s with the millionaires and the billionaires. That’s the punch line.”
McKenzie let it sink in for a minute. It sure looked bad for Aguilar, that’s for sure.
“Any way we can get the Super PAC to do that so I don’t have to say I approve of this message?”
Morton Nash, who had written those lines and discussed them earlier with Harris, twirled a finger in the air in exasperation. “Of course, Congressman. That’s the plan.”
He did a couple of house parties that week, meeting with his own versions of the Republican pig, who turned out to represent the restaurant and food chain lobby—a fitting irony, McKenzie thought. He had Jenn walk his donors through the numbers, making sure they all understood that he was in trouble—just enough trouble to get them to open their wallets, but not enough trouble to despair of victory. Then he gave his stump speech: Medicare-For-All; fifteen-dollar minimum wage; Green New Deal; and, for the one event with Jewish donors in Potomac, Israel’s qualitative military edge.
But through all of it, Hugh McKenzie was distracted. It was as if he was watching himself perform down on a stage while he sat on a cloud, dreaming of other things. The actor down there knew his lines and recited them perfectly. But up here on the cloud was the candidate, anticipating the meeting with T. Claudius Granger after the next vice-presidential debate prep.
To his relief, Granger was waiting for him. His was a well-known face from the Sunday talk shows, but nobody pretended to notice he was there. He sat in the back row of the conference room at Myers, Ogilvy, Pantazis, and Pugh, the Democrat law firm on Vermont Avenue that was hosting the secret debate prep sessions, well-shielded from the media. Granger came to the campaign from Governor Tomlinson’s black mafia. In his early sixties, he was distinguished, well-dressed, and soft-spoken, and on television defended Mrs. T. and her campaign better than the official spokesperson. But behind the scenes he was the campaign hatchet man, their fixer. Once everyone else had left after the debate prep, he motioned for McKenzie to join him. Jenn naturally stood up with him and approached. Granger gave her a gracious bow and took her hand.
“The Congressman and I are about to have a discussion, Miss—what was your name again?”
“Lindh. Jennifer Lindh.”
“Miss Lindh,” he said, letting go of her hand. “I understand that you and the bodyman were about to go sit with the receptionist until the congressman and I have finished our little chat.”
Jenn gave McKenzie a querulous look, but he just shook his head. “Yes, I guess we were,” she said finally. “By the way, do you have a first name, Mr. Granger?”
“Just Granger,” he said. He wasn’t going to tell her, or anybody for that matter, that he never wanted to be called Thomas. He was an avenging angel, not an Uncle Tom.
Once they had left, Granger motioned for McKenzie to sit down.
“I hear you have a problem,” he said before McKenzie could say anything. “I have solutions. That’s why Mrs. T. pays me all this money. I fix things so well that nobody realizes they were broken.”
McKenzie knew vaguely about the Democrat presidential nominee’s background as a Chicago gang member and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, I can see what you’re thinking,” Granger said. “Shame on you, cracker.”
“No, I wasn’t—”
“Oh yes you was.” Granger gave a great belly laugh, making fun of them both. “Yeah, that’s right. I came out of the Black P Stone Rangers, just like her. And I did time for it, too. But that was years ago. Went to law school while I was in the slammer. Me and Mrs. T go back a long ways…. Now please explain to me why this wetback boy is giving you such a run for our money.”
So, McKenzie laid it all out. Aguilar had money, he had charisma, and he had the Hispanic vote. Since that was usually a solid demographic for Democrats, and close to 35 percent of the registered Democrats in the district were Hispanic, he was in trouble.
“So I hear,” Granger said.
He drummed his fingertips against the wooden arm of the leather swivel chair, as if pondering what he was about to say.
“We have a special program,” he said finally. “It’s very close hold. Normally, we wouldn’t give access to anyone outside the campaign. But since you’ve become a favorite of Uncle Vinnie, he convinced me to make an exception. We certainly wouldn’t want to lose your vote in Congress. This will give you a guarantee.”
He wrote a name and a phone number on a Post-It note and smoothed it onto the arm of McKenzie’s chair.
“Have your IT guy give Navid a call. Tell him Granger told you we’re all in. They are to set up a meeting. Just the two of them. No one else can know about this. Not even your wife.”
Not my wife? McKenzie wondered. She hated the Republican yahoos in the new district more than he did.
“If one word of this ever gets out, we are all dead men. Understand?” Granger gave him a look that chilled him to the bone. Apparently, he wasn’t just talking about losing an election. Nor was he talking metaphorically.
“Speaking of IT,” McKenzie said, trying to make light of the implied threat. “I was on The Razor’s Edge last week just after Director Counihan was talking about how the Russians or somebody in a basement might hack our electoral systems during this election.”
“Yeah, we weren’t very happy about that,” Granger said. “Sometimes Director Counihan would do better to keep his mouth shut. You did pretty well, by the way.”
Granger got up. That was it. He was dismissed.
15
“Nelson Aguilar: paid for by millionaires and billionaires. Hugh McKenzie: the people’s representative. Brought to you by Progress Maryland, not affiliated with any political campaign.”
The Crocodile was fuming. He was pacing Aguilar’s office at the radio station, tapping stacks of paper, thumping bookshelves. He was red in the face. If the cause of his concern hadn’t been so serious, Aguilar would have laughed at seeing him so out of sorts. The Crocodile never lost his cool, let alone his temper. But this latest attack ad from the McKenzie campaign was all over cable television, and they had just finished watching it together. For the third time. It was scurrilous. And it was untrue—or mostly so.
“You know what happens right after that sequence they aired with the guy from the National Restaurant Association? You remember what I said?”
Aguilar chuckled. “Of course I do.”
“That was me speaking, not you. I am the one who’s saying—to you—‘I’ve got your back, boss.’ Because that’s what I do. Everybody knows that’s what I do.”
“That’s right.”
“It wasn’t you making a promise to a donor. It was me protecting you!”
“It’s true,” said Annie. For all the Crocodile’s sustained proximity to her candidate, she was happy to back him up.
“And then I grabbed the check from that idiot before he could give it to you. You are never ever supposed to touch money.”
“And I don’t. I didn’t.”
“No, but it sure looks like it the way they filmed it. They made it look like that fat idiot was giving money to you personally. Or buying favors. Or whatever. Bad, bad, bad!”
The Crocodile had no hair on his head to tear out, but his arms were flapping, his fists shaking at Heaven.
“We’ve got to hit back immediately. AB,” he said, turning to Annie, who had been listening to his tirade sympathetically, “we’ve got airtime booked on all the networks, right?”
“We’re maxed out. That’s right.”
“Can we shift the spot we had planned for tomorrow evening and rotate in a counter-attack?”
“What did you have in mind?”
The Crocodile stopped pacing, suddenly taken aback. “I don’t know,
actually. So much to choose from.”
Aguilar couldn’t help but feel a hint of amusement as he watched the Crocodile fret. As a TV reporter working in war zones, Aguilar had been shot at. He’d been bombed. He’d been spat upon by angry crowds at political rallies. He’d been physically assaulted by Antifa thugs. Through all of it, he always kept his cameras rolling, and if he was doing a live feed, he kept on talking. That’s what we have to do now, he thought. Just keep on talking and let the bombs fall where they may. God will do the rest.
“Relajas! Chill out, my friend. Don’t let them get under your skin.”
“What are you thinking?” the Crocodile said.
“You all have done amazing work. We’re hitting him every day. Annie, remind us of what’s coming up.”
She had the media buy sheet on her clipboard and read out the titles of their upcoming ads.
“‘Secure the border,’ ‘Medi-scare,’ ‘American dream,’ ‘Fair weather friend.’ That one’s about Israel,” she said.
The Crocodile picked up the thread. “So fifty-fifty, attack and support,” he said. “Remind me what’s in the border piece.”
Annie pulled up the script. They had actual footage of Congressman McKenzie crossing the border into Mexico and meeting with groups of asylum-seekers, including a close-up of a flyer he was handing out. It was mostly in Spanish with the English words highlighted. “He’s telling them what they are supposed to say when they get stopped by the border patrol.”
“So he’s actually coaching them on how to break the law.”
“That’s the punch line. ‘Hugh McKenzie: law breaker, not lawmaker.’”
“That’s it!” the Crocodile said. “Let’s rotate that in starting tomorrow.”
“I’m ahead of you,” Annie said. “Already done.”
Annie had a glow to her that was hard to miss, Aguilar thought. Perhaps she was pregnant? He remembered how Graciela had glowed. It filled her eyes with a kind of dreamy haze and gave a special smoothness to her skin. It started early on, too. It wasn’t just with Brady, who was turning fifteen, but with the one they had lost early to a miscarriage. Precious lives, he thought. Precious, precious lives.
The Election Heist Page 6