“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 retur
ned. 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 t
hat 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.”
The Latina President...and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her Page 9