Andrea suddenly felt angry. “No one cares about the debt, and no one ever did. It’s all about power. Jockeying for it, getting it, keeping it. Who was I to think I could break into this world? No one wants to hear from the candidate peddling castor oil.”
Rachel grabbed Andrea’s arm and stood up. “Get up. C’mon, get up. I want to show you something.”
“All right, all right, take it easy. Don’t pull my arm out of its socket, okay?”
Rachel led Andrea one block north to the Capitol South Metro station and they descended the escalators into the underground station. When they reached the bottom, Rachel let go of Andrea’s arm.
“Look at that.” Rachel pointed to the wall that was filled with ads. “What do you see?”
“Rachel, have you lost your mind? It’s a wall.”
“Not the wall, sweetie, what’s on the wall.”
“The ads?”
“Read them and tell me what you see.”
“I see seven different ads on one wall and seven different ads on the other.”
Rachel sighed, exasperated. “And who are they for?”
“TechOps Consulting’s government IT solutions. Six Sigma Industries’ mechanized armored vehicle manufacturing. A senior citizens’ lobby demanding protection for Social Security. A college association demanding more grants for higher education. What’s your point?”
“My point is that every one of these ads is about spending government money. Keeping that sweet government money flowing. Do you see any ads talking about cutting spending?”
“No.”
“Of course not. The whole economy around here is based on government spending. No one around here gives a fig about cutting spending. Not even the Debt Rebel Gang.”
Andrea rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think I have a pretty good idea of that after today?”
“That’s why you need to keep at this. Someone has to warn people of the consequences of what they are voting for so that no one can look back and say, ‘If only we had known better.’”
“The guys who were supposed to be warning everyone just gave me the boot, so that someone isn’t going to be me,” said Andrea.
“Don’t be so sure. There’s one more thing I want to show you.” Rachel pulled out her iPhone. “I videoed your entire session with the Debt Rebel Gang,” she said with a wide, slightly devious grin.
“Holy crap,” said Andrea. “What are you planning to do with that?”
“Sweetie, if the Republicans nominate Dan Morgan instead of you, I’m going to press ‘send.’”
“To whom?”
“Everybody,” said Rachel. “Mason isn’t the only person who can play this game. I spent ten years on the Hill. And ten years running campaigns. I know all the tricks.”
Andrea’s eyes were wide as she stared at the phone. “Pretty devious, Rachel.”
“They want to run you out of town as ‘the Establishment,’ you’ve got the ammo to show the world just how committed they are to their debt reduction principles,” Rachel said. “If they take you down, you can fight back.”
Andrea appreciated Rachel’s enthusiasm, but her own enthusiasm was draining away. “I’m so tired of fighting. If those congressmen and their voters want to stick it to elites, or the Establishment, or whatever, let them take their anger out on someone else. I’ve had just about enough.”
Andrea’s campaign for Congress was a desultory march to certain defeat. She could barely bring herself to continue campaigning. People she’d known for years, people she thought would support her, turned on a dime when the Debt Rebel Gang rejected her. All her years of toil for the party hadn’t earned her an ounce of goodwill once the Debt Rebel Gang branded her the handmaiden of the hated Establishment. She felt like the housewife who lost the lottery in the famous Shirley Jackson short story. One minute she was a valued member of the Republican community, the next minute she was being stoned to death.
Her innate lack of confidence, her paranoia that no one liked her or would support her when push came to shove, roared out of the cage she’d put it in after she began her run for Congress. So four months after the meeting with the Debt Rebel Gang, when the nominating convention finally came and Andrea lost to Dan Morgan, she felt relief, as if she’d been released from a prison of her own making. All she wanted to do was shut the world out and bury herself in doing someone’s taxes.
On the morning after the convention, Andrea was lying on the bed savoring the first campaign-free day. No events. No fundraising calls. She could sleep late and watch the sunrise.
Then the phone rang.
Seriously?
Andrea rolled toward the nightstand to see who it was. She recognized the number. It was Ty Washington, a reporter from the local ABC affiliate. She answered the phone.
“Hey, Ty, the campaign’s over. What are you doing calling me so early?”
“Did you know you are all over the internet and Twitter?”
“Huh?”
“There’s a video of you reaming out Lew Mason,” said Ty. “It looks like it’s been out since yesterday afternoon. It’s already gotten half a million views.”
Andrea shot upright and pressed the phone to her ear. She began to bite her lip slightly and rub her forehead. A vein in her temple was throbbing. Get me out of the spotlight.
“Ty, I don’t know anything about this, so I’ve got nothing to say right now,” said Andrea.
“Okay,” replied Ty. “But I’m warning you, this is not going to be the last call you get on this. This thing is blowing up.”
“Thanks, Ty. I guess we’ll be talking later.”
Andrea threw off the covers and dressed quickly. She called Rachel.
“Isn’t this great?” said Rachel giddily. “You’ve gone viral!”
“Jesus, Rachel, you could have warned me about this.”
“I was afraid you’d tell me not to release it,” said Rachel. “I thought it would be better to ask forgiveness rather than permission.”
“What do we do now? After what happened with the Debt Rebel Gang I wanted out.”
“Too late,” said Rachel. “Let’s see what happens. Your political career may not be dead yet.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Andrea.
“Check your campaign inbox,” said Rachel. “You have a following.”
Andrea opened the inbox. It had exploded with hundreds of emails. Many of them were from suburban women like her, angry about how she had been treated and even more frightened about the debt.
“They’re stealing our children’s future!” wrote a mother of two from Phoenix.
“I had no idea how bad the debt was,” wrote a lawyer from Memphis.
“I have a hundred women who want to start a real movement to cut the debt,” read an email from a doctor in Philadelphia. “We need your help!”
“It’s amazing,” said Andrea. “There are emails from all over the country. A lot of them are working moms like me. You think we could start something here?”
“Absolutely,” said Rachel. “I have it all figured out.”
“What?”
“I’m setting up a political organization. We’re going to call it ‘Suburban Ordinary Moms Against the Debt.’ And you are going to lead it.”
Andrea thought for a moment. “The acronym is SO MAD?”
“Genius, isn’t it?” Rachel proudly stated.
Andrea paced across the room. “My husband is still asleep. I should ask him first.”
“Remember, ask forgiveness, not permission.” Rachel laughed. “You want to stick it to Mason and his Debt Rebel Gang?”
“With a samurai sword,” Andrea replied.
“Then let’s do this.”
Andrea took a deep breath. She thought about all the time it took to run the Richland County Republican Committee. Every other weeknight there was some event she had to attend. Not to mention the weekend campaigning and fundraising calls. “Rachel, I can’t sink the time into this like I did for t
he local committee. My family needs me at home. And I have to get back to work. We need the money.”
“We can raise money to pay your salary if you want,” said Rachel.
“No way,” Andrea replied. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing this as a true grassroots movement. No one is going to make money off this. I’m not taking a salary. What we raise goes to the cause and nothing else.”
“I figured you’d say that,” said Rachel. “I’m one step ahead of you. You can go back to your accounting practice. All we need you to do is be the face of the organization. Make videos. Make speeches. Rally people to the cause. I’ll handle the rest. I know the entire Republican PR universe. I’ve got this.”
“If you handle the organizing and I can keep my practice going, I think I can make it work,” Andrea said. She glanced at her family picture on her nightstand. “Okay, I’m in.”
With Rachel’s encouragement fresh in her mind, Andrea got to work making SO MAD videos. She followed the same routine for a month. Every morning, Andrea would record a SO MAD video in her basement, passionately telling moms across America why the national debt threatened their children’s future. Rachel would post it online and work her magic with her PR network. Every morning, Andrea would watch the view counts grow as the videos went viral. One thousand views. Five thousand views. Ten thousand views. Rachel wasn’t kidding when she said she could make SO MAD happen.
Thanks to Rachel’s organizational skills, SO MAD had built a following in just one month, with a mailing list of nearly fifty thousand people. Over one hundred thousand people regularly watched her videos where she talked about the threat the national debt posed to the country. The videos about how the debt would destroy economic opportunities for children had suburban moms up in arms.
Rachel’s PR savvy had made Andrea Gartner a visible voice too. Andrea frequently did television, radio, and print interviews. Politicians suddenly called to woo her. Except the Debt Rebel Gang. Not one of them came calling.
But just as Andrea had insisted, her SO MAD work wasn’t paying the bills. So she returned to her accounting practice, located in a tiny suite in a nondescript suburban office building. How underwhelming it all was. Stuck in her mind was that finely appointed congressional office building. Instead of a marble floor, her building had worn brown carpet, torn and patched in places. Instead of flags outside her office door and her name in bronze, there was a plastic nameplate. The building management was so cheap it hadn’t even replaced the whole nameplate, only the letters. The faint outline of the name of the previous occupant, “Jake’s Doggy Day Care,” could be seen underneath. Instead of the fancy restaurants around the Capitol, there was a hot buffet and salad bar on the first floor. Going to work in her sterile office every day while thinking about the palatial congressional offices was torture.
Some elitist I am. Look at my elite office!
Adding insult to injury, she’d already lost her receptionist to a higher paying job. Ryan was helping in the afternoons before he headed to his night shift as a psychologist at a local hospital.
One afternoon, a little more than a month after the convention and five months after she met with the Debt Rebel Gang, Ryan poked his head into Andrea’s office. “Honey, there’s someone in the waiting area who wants to see you.”
“Don’t I have an appointment in a couple minutes?”
“Your three-o’clock is out there,” said Ryan. “He said it would be okay if you took a moment to meet with this other guy.”
Andrea huffed. “You’re asking clients to wait until I talk to some random visitor? What are you doing? The clients pay the bills, not random visitors.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I’m a psychologist, not a receptionist. I got distracted.”
“What could possibly be going on in the waiting room of an accountant’s office that could have distracted you?”
“Your visitor is important.”
“Is it Publishers Clearing House with one of those oversized million-dollar checks?”
“No.”
“Then my clients are more important.”
“Andrea,” said Ryan softly but seriously, “you need to come out here. Remember that congressman guy who you said didn’t ask you a thing in your big endorsement meeting?”
“Earl Murray?”
“Yeah, him. He’s standing in the waiting room.”
What?
Andrea leaped from her desk and charged into the waiting room. Sure enough, there was Congressman Murray, standing in her small waiting room with the worn People magazines and the half-green, half-brown plant in the corner. Two young people with lanyards stood a few feet behind him. Staffers, Andrea figured. She nervously fixed her hair with her hand and could feel the butterflies growing in her stomach.
She turned to her three o’clock. “I’ll be with you in just a moment.”
Her three o’clock looked up, nodded and, unbothered, returned to staring at her smartphone screen.
“Ms. Gartner. It’s good to see you again.” Congressman Murray extended his hand.
“Congressman Murray. I . . . I apologize for the state of my office,” she stammered, struggling to keep her voice from cracking from nerves. She felt herself swallowing her words but somehow managed to get out a greeting. “Please, have a seat. Can I get you some coffee or water? You don’t need your taxes done, do you?”
Murray laughed warmly. “No, I’m good on my taxes. A water would be great, though.”
Andrea nervously turned to Ryan. “Can you get Congressman Murray a bottle of water?”
“Sure, no problem,” said Ryan, smiling.
Andrea turned back to Murray. “How . . . how can I help you?”
“I heard you lost the nomination for Congress,” said Murray.
“Word travels fast,” said Andrea.
“I saw you didn’t take it lying down, though,” said Murray. “I’ve been getting angry calls all month from your SO MAD followers about how the Debt Rebel Gang is ignoring the debt.”
“I guess we didn’t call it ‘SO MAD’ for nothing,” Andrea said sheepishly, so nervous she couldn’t look Congressman Murray in the eye.
Murray grinned. “A hundred thousand pissed-off suburban moms angry about the debt definitely got my attention. I think they were inspired by your performance at the endorsement meeting. As was I.”
“Really? I didn’t persuade a soul. Three minutes in and the Debt Rebel Gang was endorsing Dan Morgan.”
“Those guys?” Murray rolled his eyes. “They go in whichever direction the anti-Establishment crowd points. You were right. They used the debt issue to gain power and dropped it like a hot potato after President Roberts got elected. You, on the other hand, were a real truth-teller.”
Great. That and a dollar would get me a cup of coffee. Where was he in the hearing when I could have used him? He sat on that dais like an Easter Island statue.
“How can I help you, Mr. Murray?”
“I want you to come work for my presidential campaign. You’re exactly what I need on my staff.”
Andrea did a double take. He’d spoken words she’d dreamed of hearing for years. A presidential campaign? There would be no better perch from which to argue for reducing the national debt. And to most everyone’s surprise, including hers, Murray was likely to win the Republican nomination for president.
But now that she’d heard Murray make the offer, she felt terrified. She was reestablishing her accounting practice. A nice, stable income. Leaving that for the political world? With no guarantee of a job if Murray lost the presidential general election as most pundits were predicting?
Ten years ago, Andrea would have jumped on the offer. But with two kids, a mortgage, and all the expenses of raising a family, she just couldn’t.
“Honestly, Mr. Murray, I have a full-time job, and between my accounting practice and SO MAD . . . well, it’s just too much for me.”
“Then come work full-time for me,” said Murray. “I’ll pay you what y
ou need.”
So much for that excuse. Andrea tried another. “Mr. Murray, with all due respect, I didn’t like the person I was in that room five months ago. I’m not persuasive and I get upset easily. I couldn’t convince a couple hundred people in one congressional district to support me. How am I going to tackle the fiscal problems of the entire nation?”
“Not persuasive?” said Murray in disbelief. “Andrea, your SO MAD group has over a hundred thousand followers on social media. And they’re there to watch your videos. You’re a goddamned grassroots hero. I need you.”
Andrea paused for a moment, marinating in Murray’s offer. “Really? You didn’t say anything at the endorsement meeting five months ago. Not one word about the debt.”
Murray leaned toward Andrea and spoke in hushed, conspiratorial tones. “Look, I need to get elected if I want to deal with the debt. I won’t win if I harp on the debt. You should know by now that no one wants to cut it, not even the Debt Rebel Gang or the rest of the Debt Rebellion.”
“Then what’s the point of all this?”
Murray put a hand on Andrea’s shoulder. “This is where you messed up. We need to run a quiet budget-balancing campaign. I’ll never get past Republican primary voters if I spend my time railing about Roberts’s deficits.”
“If I was messing up so bad, why didn’t you say anything in the Debt Rebels meeting?”
“Because it was worthless. Those guys wouldn’t listen to me. What good would it have done me to chime in?”
See? They’re all out for themselves. Murray had watched her flailing at the endorsement meeting and sat there like a stone because it was better for him. Thanks heaps, pal.
“What’s going to keep you from cutting me loose like you left me out to dry in the Debt Rebel Gang meeting?”
“Mutually assured destruction, Andrea. Your plans will be my plans. We hang together or we hang separately. But we’ll succeed. Before I got elected to Congress, I owned a bunch of auto dealerships. Very successful. I’m a car salesman, Andrea. I know how to make a sale.”
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