The Prodigal Daughter

by Jeffrey Archer

  Florentyna dealt with as much of her Senate work as possible between making frequent trips to New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. Edward had chartered a six-seater Lear jet for her with two pilots available around the clock so that she could leave Washington at a moment’s notice. All three primary states had set up strong campaign headquarters, and everywhere Florentyna went she spotted as many “Kane for President” posters and bumper stickers as she did for Pete Parkin.

  With only seven weeks left until the first primary, Florentyna began to spend more and more of her time chasing the 147,000 registered Democrats in the state. Edward did not expect her to capture more than 30 percent of the votes, but he felt that might well be enough to win the primary and persuade doubters that she was an electoral asset. Florentyna needed every delegate she could secure before they arrived in the South, even if possible to pass the magic 1,666 by the time she reached the convention hall in Detroit.

  The early signs were good. Florentyna’s private pollster, Kevin Palumbo, assured her that the race with the Vice President was running neck and neck, and Gallup and Harris seemed to confirm that view. Only 7 percent of the voters said they would not under any circumstances vote for a woman, but Florentyna knew just how important 7 percent could be if the final outcome was close.

  Florentyna’s schedule included brief stops at more than 150 of New Hampshire’s 250 small towns. Despite the hectic nature of each day, she grew to love the classical New England mill towns, the crustiness of the Granite State’s farmers and the stark beauty of its winter landscape.

  She served as starter for a dogsled race in Franconia and visited the most northerly settlement near the Canadian border. She learned to respect the penetrating insights of local newspaper editors, many of whom had retired from high-level jobs with national magazines and news services. She avoided discussions of one particular issue after discovering that New Hampshire residents stoutly defended their right to oppose a state income tax, thus attracting a host of high-income professionals from across the Massachusetts border.

  More than once she had occasion to be thankful for the death of William Loeb, the newspaper publisher whose outrageous misuse of the Manchester Union-Leader had helped destroy the candidacies of Edmund Muskie and George Bush before her. It was no secret that Loeb had had no time for women in politics.

  Edward was able to report that money was flowing into their headquarters in Chicago and “Kane for President” offices were springing up in every state. Some of them had more volunteers than they could physically accommodate; the overspill turned dozens of living rooms and garages throughout America into makeshift campaign headquarters.

  In the final seven days before the first primary, Florentyna was interviewed by Barbara Walters, Dan Rather and Frank Reynolds, as well as appearing on all three major morning news programs. As Andy Miller, her press secretary, pointed out, fifty-two million people watched her interview with Barbara Walters and it would have taken over five hundred years to shake the hands of that number of voters in New Hampshire. Nevertheless, her local managers saw to it that she visited nearly every home for the aged in the state.

  Despite this, Florentyna had to pound the streets of New Hampshire towns, shaking hands with papermill workers in Berlin, as well as with the somewhat inebriated denizens of the VFW and American Legion posts, which seemed to exist in every town. She learned to work the ski-lift lines in the smaller hills rather than the famous resorts, which were often peopled by a majority of nonvoting visitors from New York or Massachusetts.

  If she failed with this tiny electorate of the northern tip of America, Florentyna knew it would raise major doubts about her credibility as a candidate.

  Whenever she arrived in a city, Edward was always there to meet her and he never let her stop until the moment she stepped back onto her plane.

  Edward told her that they could thank heaven for the curiosity value of a woman candidate. His advance team never had to worry about filling any hall where Florentyna was to speak, with potted plants rather than with Granite State voters.

  Pete Parkin, who had a good-luck streak with funeral duty, proved that the Vice President had little else to do: he spent more time in the state than Florentyna could. On the eve of the primary Edward was able to show that someone on the Kane team had contacted by phone, letter or personal visit 125,000 of the 147,000 registered Democrats; but, he added, obviously so had Pete Parkin because many of them had remained noncommittal and some even hostile.

  Later that night, Florentyna held a rally in Manchester which over three thousand people attended. When Janet told her that tomorrow she would be about one fiftieth of the way through the campaign, Florentyna replied, “Or already finished.” She went to her motel room a little after midnight followed by the camera crews of CBS, NBC, ABC and Cable News and four agents of the Secret Service, all of whom were convinced she was going to win.

  The voters of New Hampshire woke up to drifting snow and icy winds. Florentyna spent the day driving from polling place to polling place thanking the party faithful until the last poll closed. At eleven minutes past nine, CBS was the first to tell the national audience that the turnout was estimated at forty-seven percent, which Dan Rather considered high in view of the weather conditions. The early voting pattern showed that the pollsters had proved right: Florentyna and Pete Parkin were running neck and neck, each taking over the lead during the night but never by more than a couple of percentage points. Florentyna sat in her motel room with Edward, Janet, her closest staffers and two Secret Service agents, watching the final results come in.

  “The outcome couldn’t have been closer if they had planned it,” said Jessica Savitch, who announced the result first for NBC. “Senator Kane thirty point five, Vice President Parkin thirty point two, Senator Bill Bradley sixteen point four percent and the rest of the votes scattered among five others who in my opinion,” added Savitch, “needn’t bother to book a hotel room for the next primary.”

  “If the result of the New Hampshire primary turns out to be satisfactory…”

  Florentyna left for Massachusetts with 6 delegates committed to her; Pete Parkin had 5. The national press declared no winner but five losers. Only three candidates were seen in Massachusetts, and Florentyna seemed to have buried the bogey that as a woman she couldn’t be a serious contender.

  In Massachusetts she had fourteen days to capture as many of the 111 delegates as possible, and here her work pattern hardly varied. Each day she would carry out the schedule that Edward had organized for her, a program which ensured that the candidate saw as many voters as possible and found some way to get onto the morning or evening news.

  Florentyna posed with babies, union leaders and Italian restaurateurs; she ate scallops, linguine, Portuguese sweet bread and cranberries; she rode the MTA, the Nantucket ferry and the Alameda bus line the length of the Mass Pike; she jogged on beaches, hiked in the Berkshires and shopped in Boston’s Quincy Market, all in an effort to prove she had the stamina of any man. Nursing her aching body in a hot tub, she came to the conclusion that had her father remained in Russia, her route to the Presidency of the USSR couldn’t have been any harder.

  In Massachusetts, Florentyna held off Pete Parkin for a second time, taking 47 delegates to the Vice President’s 39. The same day in Vermont, she captured 8 of the state’s 12 delegates. Because of the upsets already achieved by Florentyna, the political pollsters were saying that more people were answering “Yes” when asked “Could a woman win the Presidential election?” But even she was amused when she read that 5 percent of the voters had not realized that Senator Kane was a woman. The press was quick to point out that her next big test would be in the South, where the Florida, Georgia and Alabama primaries all fell on the same day. If she could hold on there she had a real chance, because the Democratic race had become a private battle between herself and the Vice President. Bill Bradley, having secured only 11 percent of the votes in Massachusetts, had dropped out because of lack
of funds, although his name remained on the ballot in several states and no one doubted he would be a serious candidate sometime in the future. Bradley had been Florentyna’s first choice as running mate, and she already had the New Jersey senator on her short list for consideration for Vice President.

  When the Florida ballots were counted, it came as no surprise that the Vice President had taken 62 of the 100 delegates, and he repeated the trend in Georgia by winning 40 to 23, followed by Alabama, where he captured 28 of the 45 voters, but Pete Parkin was not, as he had promised the press, “trouncing the little lady when she puts her elegant toes in the South.” Parkin was increasingly trying to outdo Florentyna as a champion of the military, but his choice of legislation setting up the so-called “Fort Gringo Line” along the Mexican-American border was beginning to rebound on him in the Southwest, where he had imagined he was unbeatable.

  Edward and his team were now working several primaries ahead as they criss-crossed the country back and forth; Florentyna thanked heaven for her ample campaign funds as the Lear jet touched down in state after state. Her energy remained boundless and if anything it was the Vice President who began to stammer and sound tired and hoarse at the end of each day. Both candidates had to fit in trips to San Juan, and when Puerto Rico held its primary in mid-March, 25 of the 41 delegates favored Florentyna. Two days later, she arrived back in her home state for the Illinois primary, trailing Parkin 164 to 194.

  The Windy City came to a standstill as its inhabitants welcomed their favorite daughter, giving her every one of the 179 Illinois delegates so that she went back into the lead with 343 committed delegates. However, when they moved on to New York, Connecticut, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Vice President eroded the lead until he arrived in Texas trailing by only 591 to Florentyna’s 655.

  No one was surprised when Pete Parkin took 100 percent of the delegates in his home state; they hadn’t had a President since Lyndon Baines Johnson and the male half of Texas believed that while J. R. Ewing might have had his faults, he had been right about a woman’s place being in the home. The Vice President left his ranch outside Houston with a lead of 743 to Florentyna’s 655.

  Traveling around the country under such tremendous daily pressure, both candidates found an off-the-cuff remark or an unwary comment could easily turn out to be tomorrow’s headline. Pete Parkin was the first to make a gaffe when he got Peru mixed up with Paraguay, and the photographers went wild when he rode through Flint in a chauffeured Mercedes on one of his motorcades. Nor was Florentyna without her mishaps. In Alabama, when asked if she would consider a black running mate as Vice President, she replied, “Of course, I’ve already considered the idea.” It took repeated statements to persuade the press that she had not already invited one of America’s black leaders to join her ticket.

  Her biggest mistake, however, was in Virginia. She addressed the University of Virginia Law School on the parole system and the changes she would like to make if she became President. The speech had been written and researched for her by one of the staffers in Washington who had been with Florentyna in her days as a congresswoman. She read the text through carefully the night before, making only a few minor changes, admiring the way the piece had been put together, and delivered the speech to a crowded hall of law students who received it enthusiastically. When she left for an evening meeting of the Charlottesville Rotary Club to talk on the problems facing cattle farmers, she dismissed all thought of the earlier speech until she read the local paper the next morning during breakfast at the Boar’s Head Inn.

  The Richmond News-Leader came out with a story that all the national papers picked up immediately. A local journalist covering the biggest scoop of his life suggested that Florentyna’s speech was outstanding because it had been written by one of Senator Kane’s most trusted staff members, Allen Clarence, who was an ex-convict himself, having been given a six-month jail sentence with a year’s probation before going to work for Florentyna. Few of the papers pointed out that the offense had been drunken driving without a license and that Clarence had been released on appeal after three months. When questioned by the press on what she intended to do about Clarence, she said, “Nothing.”

  Edward told her that she must fire him immediately, however unfair it might seem, because those sections of the press who were against her—not to mention Pete Parkin—were having a field day repeating that one of her most trusted staff members was an ex-con. “Can you imagine who will be running the jails in this country if that woman is elected?” became Parkin’s hourly off-the-cuff remark. Eventually, Allen Clarence voluntarily resigned, but by then the damage had been done. By the time the two candidates reached California, Pete Parkin had increased his lead, with 991 delegates to Florentyna’s 883.

  When Florentyna arrived in San Francisco, Bella was there to meet her at the airport. She might have put on thirty years, but she still hadn’t lost any pounds. By her side stood Claude, one enormous son and one skinny daughter. Bella ran toward Florentyna the moment she saw her, only to be blocked by burly Secret Service agents. She was rescued by a hug from the candidate. “I’ve never seen anything like her,” said one of the Secret Service men. “She could kickstart a Jumbo.” Hundreds of people stood at the perimeter of the tarmac chanting “President Kane” and Florentyna, accompanied by Bella, walked straight over to them. Hands flew in Florentyna’s direction, a reaction that never failed to lift her spirits. The placards read “California for Kane” and for the first time the majority of the crowd was made up of men. When she turned to leave them and go into the terminal she saw scrawled all over the side of a wall in red, “Do you want a Polack bitch for President?” and underneath, in white, “Yes.”

  Bella, now the headmistress of one of the largest schools in California, had also, after Florentyna had won a seat in the Senate, become the city’s Democratic committee chairwoman.

  “I always knew you would run for President, so I thought I had better make certain of San Francisco.”

  Bella did make certain, with her 1,000 so-called volunteers banging on every door. California’s split personality—conservative in the south, liberal in the north—made it difficult to be the kind of centrist candidate Florentyna wanted to be. But her efficiency, compassion and intelligence converted even some of the most hardened Marin County left-wingers and Orange County Birchers. San Francisco’s turnout was second only to Chicago’s. Florentyna wished she had fifty-one Bellas because the vote in San Francisco was enough to give her 69 percent of the state. It had been Bella who had made it possible for Florentyna to look forward to arriving in Detroit for the convention with 128 more delegates than Parkin.

  Over a celebration dinner, Bella warned Florentyna that the biggest problem she was facing was not “I’ll never vote for a woman” but “She has too much money.”

  “Not that old chestnut. I can’t do any more about that,” said Florentyna. “I’ve already put my own Baron stock into the foundation.”

  “That’s the point—no one knows what the foundation does. I realize it helps children in some way, but how many children, and how much money is involved?”

  “The trust last year spent over three million dollars on three thousand one hundred and twelve immigrants from underprivileged backgrounds. Added to that, four hundred and two gifted children won Remagen scholarships to American universities and one went on to be the foundation’s first Rhodes Scholar and will soon be on his way to Oxford.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that,” said Bella, “but I’m continually reminded that Pete Parkin built a feeble little library for the University of Texas at Austin. And he’s made sure the building is as well known as the Widener Library at Harvard.”

  “So what do you feel Florentyna should be doing?” asked Edward.

  “Why don’t you let Professor Ferpozzi hold his own press conference? He’s a man the public will take notice of. After that everyone will know that Florentyna Kane cares about other people and spends her own money on them to prove it.�
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  The next day, Edward worked on placing articles in selected publications and organized a press conference. They resulted in a small piece in most journals and newspapers, but People magazine did a cover picture of Florentyna with Albert Schmidt, the Remagen Rhodes Scholar. When it was discovered that Albert was a German immigrant whose grandparents had fled from Europe after escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp, David Hartman interviewed Albert the next day on “Good Morning, America.” After that he seemed to be getting more publicity than Florentyna.

  On her way back to Washington that weekend, Florentyna heard that the governor of Colorado, whom she had never particularly considered a friend or political ally, had endorsed her without advance warning at a solar-energy symposium in Boulder. Her approach to industry and conservation, he told the convention, offered the resource-rich western states their best hope for the future.

  That day ended on an even brighter note when Reuters tapped out the news right across America that the Welfare Department had delivered its first major report since the implementation of the Kane Act. For the first time since Florentyna’s overhaul of the social service system, the welfare recipients leaving the register in a given year had surpassed the number of new applicants coming on.

  Florentyna’s financial backing was always a problem as even the most ardent supporters assumed she could foot her own campaign bills. Parkin, with the backing of the oil tycoons led by Marvin Snyder of Blade Oil, had never had to face the same problem. But during the next few days campaign contributions flowed into Florentyna’s office, along with telegrams of support and good wishes.

  Influential journalists in London, Paris, Bonn and Tokyo began to tell their readers that if America wanted a President of international status and credibility there was no contest between Florentyna Kane and the cattle farmer from Texas.