The Latina President...and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her

by Joe Rothstein

  But he did. “My first choice,” he said.

  “I hope you have others,” she countered. “You know the downside as well as I do. You’d be committing political suicide and setting yourself up for divorce.” Then she spent ten minutes outlining all the credible reasons to avoid walking into such a political tar pit.

  As she talked, Hal’s thoughts turned back to their first meeting in that Starbucks. He, the idealistic lawyer, practicing alone, struggling to pay his rent, for what—to do things for people he knew needed his help. And Tenny, this wildly rich heiress, with a powerful motivation to get involved, and hardly a clue as to what she’d be getting into. Those were good days and good days together. Their lives had diverged but the memory of it was not so easily erased. On a political level, Tenny was right—she should be the last person he would appoint to the open U.S. Senate seat from California. On a potential performance level, no one else was in her league.

  “Tenny,” he finally said, “I’m appointing you to the Senate seat. Will you take it?”

  The connection went silent as she took a number of deep breaths.

  “Yes, Hal. Heaven help us both. I will.”

  18

  Moving from the U.S. House to the Senate meant not just more office space, larger staff, a change of address. It would be a move from a small stage to one of the world’s largest and most significant. Now she would be representing not just the 700,000 people in her congressional district, but the nearly 40 million people living in the most populous state in the United States. There were more Californians than there were Canadians.

  California’s economy, measured in GDP, was larger than most other countries’. Significantly, and most meaningful for Tenny, she was now representing a state economy twice the size of Mexico’s. Her decision to accept the Senate seat had been tempered by personal relations, hers and Hal’s. Now she was coming to terms with how radical a scale-up this would be.

  After getting a yes from Tenny, Hal called Reed Guess, the Democratic Senate majority leader to alert him. It was the decision Guess was hoping for. Tenny’s policy views were aligned with his. She would be a strong ally, if they could get her through the next campaign without being pulverized into unrecognizable parts by what promised to be a meat grinder of an election.

  “Congratulations, I’ve just heard the news.” The call surprised her. Hal asked her to tell no one until he could set up the announcement properly. But here was Reed Guess, phoning just moments later. “I’ve got a private office in the Capitol, away from the majority office,” said Guess. “Can you meet me there in say, half an hour?”

  Senator Guess understood the importance of the California Senate seat to his reign as majority leader, and how fierce the battle would be to hold it in next year’s election. Tenny was filling an unexpired term. She would have barely more than a year to build a statewide following. If most California voters knew of Isabel Tennyson at all, they knew her for what much of the California media termed her radical ideas, her rich-girl background, her intense support for immigration reform.

  Connecticut had elected Reed Guess as a war hero, a Silver Star winner, a young Marine lieutenant who saved his unit with minimal casualties after it was surrounded in Iraq. In an act of supreme courage, he had picked up a live grenade and thrown it back just before it detonated. Many lives were saved at the cost of Reed Guess’s left hand and vision in his left eye. He entered the Senate, much like Tenny, with a progressive agenda and a fighting spirit, quickly rising to become Democratic leader. He had not only a compelling personal story, but also a strong platform presence. Marine erect and body fit, an aura of command developed in officer’s training school that didn’t fade in civilian life, a handsome family and clearly spoken ideas on what government could and should be. Guess also had designs on the White House. From the day he was sworn in as Connecticut’s U.S. senator, he began laying the groundwork for a future run for president.

  Tenny took to Reed Guess immediately. Why not? He was her kind of senator. Smart. Quick. Ideologically on the same page. And now, even before her appointment was announced, he was offering her any committee assignment she wanted and all the support he could provide to keep the seat next year.

  “OK, now that we’ve done the expected,” said Guess, “let’s get to know each other.”

  They settled in for another half hour, discovering mutual fondness for American Indian art and textiles, pre-Columbian artifacts, ancient Peruvian weavings. Guess showed her photos of his wife and daughters. He invited her to go sailing with the family. He was so personal, so genuine, so interesting. She hoped her meeting with Guess was a sample of how her life would be in the Senate environment, more collegial and congenial than in the 435-member House. That would make her new life so much more pleasant than the one she was leaving. If not, she knew how to handle herself in open combat.

  

  At 6:00 p.m. on a summer’s evening, the Big Fish restaurant on Highway 1 in Rehoboth Beach, near the southern tip of Delaware, swims with summer holiday patrons. The Big Fish is cavernous, its walls alive with huge swordfish, marlin, and tuna, none in motion, all caught close to the Delaware shore and frozen in time for restaurant patrons. The centerpiece is a 715-pound blue marlin. Each year, a few miles south in Ocean City, Maryland, millions of dollars in prize money attracts anglers who bet on an underwater lottery, that the heaviest marlin will accept their offering of a squid snack on a J hook. Through the summer, the strip of shoreline connecting Delaware and Maryland is scented by coconut body lotion and the pervasive aroma of fresh fish on hot coals.

  Lewes, Delaware is just north of Rehoboth. It’s one of the oldest settlements in the United States, once a small slice of Holland. From Washington, it’s three hours by car, an hour by Ben’s red and white Piper Cherokee 280. Lewes is Ben’s refuge. The single engine Cherokee is his preferred means of getting there. Lewes is where Ben vents to release the tensions of campaigns, where he tries to think big thoughts and avoid small thinkers. Ben has a home in Lewes, overlooking Delaware Bay, with a long stretch of unobstructed beach for walking, doing mind dumps of the present, digging deeper to bury the past, and adding words to his personal journal, one he’s been keeping for years. His early entries were about them, helping to fill the airless space he occupied without them. Now he took dictation from whatever inspiration whispered to him when he had time to open his journal. He was no longer alone when he could write notes to himself.

  In Washington, D.C., Ben maintained a studio apartment, large enough for his few changes of clothes, his computer and printer, and basic kitchen tools should he decide to eat at home and alone. He’s rarely there.

  Tonight he’s at the Big Fish with Lee Searer. They flew here earlier, above the traffic snakes that curl to summer beach weekends from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and points between.

  “Okay, now we have her. What are we going to with her?”

  Ben had just picked up their two martinis from the long bar managed tonight by Alena and Laura, two young women whose mixing and pouring skills were performance art, virtuosos of their trade, magnets for locals, welcome company for long-absent visitors.

  Ben had pushed hard for Tenny’s Senate appointment. It would be up to Ben and Lee to help her keep that seat in next year’s election. The primary election was less than a year away. The general election sixteen months. The appointment was announced earlier that Saturday morning, timed to make the Sunday papers and Sunday California talk shows.

  “This can be pretty messy,” said Lee.

  Ben grunted as he took a long first sip from his drink. “Very.”

  “You drew the big picture for both of them before they decided?”

  “Yes. And maybe a little no. I really wanted her there. She’ll be great. I may have understated how hard it’ll be to be to keep her.”

  “Understated? You wanted to make sure we got the account?”

  Yes, Ben wanted the account. Sage and Searer was a business. A very suc
cessful business in a very competitive service industry. To survive, marketing skills had to be on a par with political skills. And, often, fee collection skills from defeated candidates.

  “We’ve done worse to get accounts. Sure. Why not? It’s statewide California. You saw how much we made on Hal Thompson’s governor campaign. This could be as big or bigger. How often do Republicans get a chance to pick up a California Senate seat? They’ll be all over it. Spend their last dollar if they think they have a chance.”

  They made room on the table for the steamed shrimp.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking. She’s a natural at being a candidate. She can write a check tomorrow. Let’s start the campaign right away.”

  “Not a full-blown campaign?”

  “No, and not one that’s obviously political. Let’s buy into all the cable channels reaching places that aren’t slap-happy Democratic dependable. Statewide. Overload where they’ve never heard of her. Make her as familiar as Oprah. Get her on every day, maybe five minute blocks, same stations, same programs. Some people watch “The Price Is Right” every day of the week, like it’s their job. They’ll see her hundreds of times before we ever get to the real campaign. What is there between now and next November?”

  Ben stopped to count on his fingers.

  “Sixteen months times four weeks, what’s that? Sixty-four weeks. Times five times a week. That’s three hundred twenty time slots on each individual program. Different programs for sports shows than game shows or movies. We target her programs and messages.”

  “A lot of production. A lot of money.”

  “But not expensive production. Nothing that makes it look produced. No wild graphics or big set pieces. Just her. Sometimes in the Senate studio. Sometimes around Washington. Every time she goes to California we get a camera on her. She talks right to camera, right to the people watching.”

  “And the message?”

  “The central message is her, Tenny, her character. Someone you like and trust. Someone who’s smart and dedicated. She’s real. She meets with real people in identifiable places. Let her talk, whatever she wants to say. She’s so damn good at it. We just give her a subject that we want to hit, or one she wants to talk about, and let her run with it. So personal, it would be like getting naked in front of the camera. Over time making her unforgettable. With cable’s reach, by next November maybe 20, 25 percent feel like they’re on a first-name basis with her, thinking of her as their friend Tenny.”

  “I like it. We’d need to put on a separate crew, just for that.”

  “Right, and a million feet of videotape to index and store.”

  “And a ton of research to give her fresh material.”

  “Right.”

  “Worth it. If you think you really ‘know’ someone you’re more likely to get mad at the attacker than believe the attack.”

  “That’s my point,” said Ben. “The best way to insulate her is for Tenny to do it herself, first-person. You see enough of her and she really comes through as strong and genuine. If they don’t know her they may believe all the crap.”

  Lee nodded, finished his martini and took the last shrimp off the common plate.

  “They’ll be onto this sex thing soon,” said Lee. “How about going on offense instead of playing defense? Let’s do a big appointment ceremony. She goes to Sacramento, he hugs her, she hugs him, Hal’s wife hugs them both. The daughters hug her legs, sort of welcoming their new aunt. They all go to San Diego and L.A. and San Francisco together, get on the front pages and television news. We get some press yo-yo to ask about the sex thing and they all shut him up and make him look like an ass. Makes it harder for the political press to do it again. The Republicans would have to carry the whole load with paid commercials.”

  “I like it,” said Ben. “I’ll see if I can get Hal to sell it to his wife.”

  “If his wife buys in, it may stop her father from going crazy attacking Tenny with those newspapers of his.”

  “If we do this right we might be able to win this campaign before it even starts by convincing any Republican heavyweight he’d be toast if he challenged Tenny.”

  Ben had ordered rock fish, a local specialty. Lee had a thick slab of Alaska halibut. Both dishes came steaming. The partners’ appetites were now ready to receive them.

  “Did you know,” said Ben, “Earth is the only known planet where fire can burn. Everywhere else there’s not enough oxygen.”

  19

  For seven years as a member of the U.S. House, Tenny had aggressively tilled a small plot of ground. One congressional district, the poorest in Los Angeles, home to many jobless and with a catalog of needs beyond the resources of those living there to satisfy on their own. Tenny’s job was to help narrow the gap between need and aspiration. That job wasn’t done. It might never be. But now it was for others to try.

  As a senator she surveyed an entirely new landscape of possibilities. She was like a tiger suddenly released from a cage into new habitat. Fertile soil for ideas and attention, unlimited prey to feed her appetite for reform and retribution. She needed only a few moments to get her new bearings, and then she pounced.

  Henry Deacon was her first hire. Deacon, PhD in economics from Wharton, eight years on Wall Street, six more at the Securities and Exchange Commission, three aggressive years as staff director for the Senate Banking Committee. Deacon would be her chief of staff. She let him hand pick two legislative assistants who would specialize in bank regulations, hedge and equity fund operations, and other stops along the big money trail. She would enter combat with the money changers with claws sharp and fangs at the ready.

  Her next hire was Rita Gonzales, long-time director of Our Goal Is Justice, one of the most important groups in the immigration reform movement. This was a fight they had to win, she told Rita. Conventional, unconventional, whatever was needed. We’ll be there. She unhooked Rita from a leash with one instruction: “Get it done.”

  The close personal friendship that blossomed between Tenny and Reed Guess, her majority leader, didn’t deter her from crashing Senate tradition. Within three weeks of her appointment, Tenny gave her first major Senate floor speech, a withering attack on the U.S. financial system, the people who manage it, and the government regulators whom she accused of weak oversight and a culture of coziness with those they were responsible for monitoring. Even her fellow senators took the lash for timidity in the face of raw financial power. Prescriptions for change? She listed a dozen and promised far more. Tenny had no intention of being a back bencher. Not now. Not ever. Reed Guess more than once during those early weeks whispered private counsel of temperance. “Sorry,” she responded. “I’m a full-frontal attack person. You will just have to clean up after me.”

  Tenny’s maiden Senate speech mobilized a vast constituency of political activists and reform-minded economists and writers. Within hours she was receiving interview requests and speech invitations. She accepted all she could. Experience in Los Angeles taught her that it takes a rampaging wall of public opinion to break down barriers of financial interest.

  For a time, it seemed that Tenny’s rocketing voter approval ratings would discourage other formidable political figures from challenging her. But the lure of a full six-year U.S. Senate term representing California was too enticing. Tenny’s statewide base of support was still new, fragile, and untested.

  

  Nineteen hundred miles southwest of Washington, D.C., Javier Carmona was stunned at Tenny’s elevation to the United States Senate, a much more powerful role with infinite possibilities for dangerous mischief. Now that she had identified her targets with her first Senate speech, he knew what must be done.

  Foregoing travel on a Groupo Aragon private plane, too easy to recognize, he arranged a charter to the border city of Mexicali piloted by trusted men who were paid well to have short memories. Carmona’s long-time top security aide, Bernard Soto, waited at the ramp with a nondescript Ford SUV. The destination, a private hilltop com
pound, thirty miles south of Mexicali’s city center. There, Carmona met with a small group to plan what he would call his “Legacy Project.” Its goal would be not to create a legacy, but to end one.

  

  Kip Dowling, the Republican congressman from San Diego, had come within eight percentage points of defeating Hal Thompson in the state’s most recent campaign for governor. Eight points is not close as contested elections go, but political ambition needs little encouragement to reseed itself. Dowling’s ego was being nourished from two separate sources. The national Republican Party believed it had a chance to regain a Senate majority. A rare open seat in California could not be conceded. From the money side, Dowling was visited by a trusted long-time banking industry friend who promised that campaign money would be available, a lot of it, whatever was needed.

  A few hours before the filing deadline, Dowling showed up at the secretary of state’s office to announce he would run against Senator Tennyson. And he immediately signaled the type of campaign it would be.

  “You’ve all heard the saying that politics makes strange bedfellows,” Dowling told the media. “Well this year we’re going to test whether California voters enjoy having a governor and a senator who actually are bedfellows. I think voters will find that both strange and unacceptable.”

  It came as no surprise that Hal and Tenny’s past would be injected into their political future. But the intensity of that effort was beyond anything they had expected. Unflattering photos of Hal and Tenny in their social service days soon arrived at news desks of every publication and television station in California. YouTube and other Web sites were flooded with video clips and photos artfully Photoshopped and edited to create the impression of—whatever the viewer’s mind could imagine. Some leaving little to the imagination. One particularly popular scene was two naked bodies in bed, with Tenny and Hal’s photos attached and dialogue balloons over their heads.