Heinlein to File for Assembly. Robert A. Heinlein, a member of the Beverly Hills–Carthay Circle Young Democratic Club, has announced himself as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the State Assembly in the 59th District. If he receives the nomination he will probably oppose the Republican incumbent, Charles W. Lyon of Beverly Hills, long-time corporation attorney with one of the worst records in the California Legislature.
Candidate Heinlein gives the following as his platform:
Security from waste.
Security from disaster by flood, fire and earthquakes.
Security in our homes and persons, from persecution, crime and police brutality.
Security in our old age.
Security for our children.
Security from lobby-control.
Security of our natural resources for posterity.
Security from war.
Security from unjust taxation.
Security in our jobs.12
By this time, Heinlein probably knew too much about managing campaigns in Los Angeles for his own good: he might be tempted to micromanage his campaign instead of behaving like a candidate. But political campaigns in the post-Sinclair era were a new problem, and two heads are in fact better than one in some cases.
Heinlein and Wentz had learned a lot of tricks to run a campaign. Printing is usually the largest cost item for a campaign—campaign flyers and billboards and posters—followed closely by getting the material distributed. Billboards were costly, so there was little point in employing them—except, of course, for offices that had some regulatory power over billboards. On the other hand, there were lots of ways to get the small community newspapers to cover your campaigns. A little “grease” sometimes went a long way; the campaign managers could place an ad accompanied by a check and a press release, dangling the prospect of future ad placements. Then you were “in the family” and the paper—even the neighborhood throwaway papers—would continue to give you press.
At every election, professional fund-raisers called on all the candidates, offering their services. Typically, they skimmed half the “take.” In addition, there were paid vote-getters who supervised a corps of volunteers. Heinlein’s campaign was too small to support paid fund-raisers; he had to rely on his own seed capital and whatever his “circle of influence” could raise. Among his campaign contributors, he noted a check from “Lloyd Wright, Sr.”—the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who was at that time living in the district, on Doheny near Sunset, while working on one of his Hollywood projects.13 He drew a lot of help from his Young Democrats—a young volunteer named Bill Corson came to know him in this campaign and became a lifelong friend, based at least partly on Corson’s passion for guns and shooting.14
It was going to be a tough campaign. Lyon had the incumbent’s advantage in a conservative and traditionally Republican district—and he didn’t have a split party to deal with. Lyon was confident that he would win: he took a gigantic gamble and cross-filed, having himself, a Republican, put on the Democratic primary ballot. If he won more votes from Democrats than Heinlein, the Democratic candidate in his district,15 he would automatically win the election, running unopposed. He was confident of his Republican support—and he gambled that mainstream Democrats in his district wouldn’t support a Sinclair Democrat.
On top of everything else, everybody was still jittery over the prospect of war. In Congress, isolationism was becoming a strong political force, and Senator Truman had even raised the specter of “preparedness”: “[C]onditions in Europe have developed to a point likely to cause an explosion any time.”16 Everybody was Germany-watching when the Nazis’ Gauleiter for the Sudetenland started making international headlines: Konrad Henlein—only one letter difference in the names. Heinlein’s district was heavily Jewish. They noticed these things. It was one more hurdle to overcome—for a district the party didn’t think it could win at all. But more distressing, the local Communist Party endorsed him, and he had a hard time fending off doubtless sincere, but still deadly, offers of help.17
But he knew he had a magic weapon that could crank out votes like magic: he had diamonds on the soles of his shoes. Walking the precincts would do it for him, one handshake at a time and one vote at a time.
The Grass-Roots Campaign has gone out of style in most parts of the country … . But the people, the individual Americans, are still interested in their candidates; to have one show up at the front door is as delightful a novelty to most of them as would be a chance to ride a circus elephant. That unreality, the candidate on the platform, on the billboard, or in the newspaper, suddenly becomes warmly human and a little more than life size.18
Issues count, certainly—but there is magic in direct personal contact of the candidate with the voter. And to this general lever-that-could-move-the-world was added his personal assets: an extraordinary memory for names and faces—a natural gift developed by cultivating it.19
Precinct walking was his key strategy, and it was in his blood from his earliest political days in Kansas City’s Pendergast ward system. Already the big parties were backing away from the local person-to-person contact that is the real fundamental in politics. By concentrating on the basics, Heinlein would win this election. He got a copy of the voter rolls for his district from the registrar of voters and cut them into individual names and addresses, which he then pasted on three-by-five-inch cards—six thousand index cards in sorting trays he kept in his home office (a deal table in a corner of the living room). During the months of the campaign, he personally visited every house.
Beverly Hills was in his district, and that sometimes posed a problem: the wealthy Hollywood types were almost all rock-ribbed Republicans. On the other hand, the mansions employed fleets of servants, busing in every day along Santa Monica Boulevard, and they were probably not rock-ribbed Republicans. Those were back-door houses. Going from back door to back door, he talked to the servants, rather than the house owners, because they were more likely to be Democrats. It does not seem to have occurred to him that they also probably did not live and vote in his district.20
And he kept records of his visits on his three-by-five-inch file cards—just bare notes of when he had been there and whether he had found anyone at home, and anything unusual. At each address, he left a calling card printed with his picture and name: “Robert A. Heinlein—the only Democratic Candidate for Assembly, 59th Dist.”
He rang doorbells for three months before the primary, forty hours a week. Personal calls on registered voters were the top priority. Everybody in Heinlein’s campaign who could walked the precinct, rang doorbells, and made personal contact with the voters, following the candidate’s lead. Everything else was scheduled around the precinct walk. Leslyn—and even his now eighteen-year-old baby sister, Mary Jean—helped out in the campaign.
After the daily precinct walk, Heinlein attended political events, rallies, club meetings. For every political meeting, he led his volunteers in greeting each person who came to the meeting and made sure to get a three-by-five-inch card with at least basic contact information. The cards were piled by the door—ideally they were printed or mimeographed with blanks for the information, though plain blank cards would do in a pinch.
Robert led his volunteer campaign workers by example. He knew exactly what he wanted:
… the best way is to fill out [the cards] yourself … while asking them the necessary questions and keeping up a running fire of conversation. Don’t say “Name? Address? Any other adults in family? Telephone? Occupation?” Such an approach acts like a cold shower. Say, “Glad to know you, Mr. Brewster. Half a minute and let me get that down in writing. My wife says I can’t be trusted to buy a pound of butter unless she writes it down. I wouldn’t want you to miss getting an invitation to the Spring Dance through my poor memory. That’s ‘James A. Brewster,’ isn’t it? Mrs. Brewster come with you tonight? So? My wife’s doing the same thing—we’ve got two kids, both in grammar school, and they have to be in bed by nine. Ho
w old are your youngsters? Maybe some day we can arrange a sort of game room or nursery for the kids and get a lot of folks out who are otherwise chained down. Do you think it would help if we moved up the meeting time half an hour? Is that address right? That’s your home address, isn’t it? Business address, you say? Oh, of course—that’s the same block the Safeway Market is in. It’s not the same address is it? Oh—I think that’s the same block of offices Dr. Boyer is in. Hey—Fred! Doc! Want you to meet a neighbor of yours—Dr. Boyer, Mr. James Brewster. You know each other already—fine. Doc, see that Mr. Brewster meets some of the folks, will you?”
Sounds corny? it is corny—but it works, and it’s not hard to do. You have recorded:
Brewster, James A.
June 8, 1946—mtg.
1232 Oak St. r. tel. Br 4395
1010 Tenth Ave. b. tel. Cl 8482
Insurance business, Bedlow Bldg.
Married, 3 chil. 13 junior 11 Alice, 2 (?)
Masonic pin in lapel, and VFW. Heavy set, bald, well dressed, manner of a professional man.
Assign to Doc Boyer? Follow up. Mr. S. Check registration.21
This description of the process he used was written eight years later,22 when he was a practiced writer, and it shows a perfect data capture from what seems like nothing more than a warmly human personal contact. His skill as a writer makes it seem easy, and it is anything but.
Show warmth and welcoming. Establish a connection between your life and his. Offer him an extended contact that will bind him into your group. Introduce him to someone who has something else in common they can chat about and let him become more comfortable with your group. Collect the information you can use to follow up the initial contact and cement the relationship.
Here is a network of personal relationships, not a sociology of ideology, not a brilliant intellect performing a demonstration. Heinlein obviously needed to meet people as a human being in a social network, and that is the reason he believed this strategy would work for him. And it works because it is not a technique divorced from its human context. No doubt it was in just this way that Heinlein became friends with Bill Corson—discovering in the very first interview that Corson was a rifle enthusiast. They had something in common to talk about, and it led, not just to a vote, but to a campaign worker, and ultimately to a lifelong, close friendship.
Meetings, stumping, ringing doorbells, and rallies. Heinlein talked with thousands of individuals in the months before the primary. The nervous strain began to tell on him, and he found himself exhibiting symptoms he knew too well from having managed candidates in the past four years.
Candidates are subject to a nervous disorder which I choose to term “Candidatitis” … something like measles; persons almost always catch it when first exposed; one seizure usually gives lifetime immunity; and it is best experienced early in life for the mildest symptoms and the least disastrous side-effects.
The usual symptoms are these: Extreme nervousness and irritability, suspiciousness raised almost to the persecution-complex level and usually directed toward the wrong people, a tendency for the tongue to work independently of the brain, especially in public where it can do the most harm, and a positively childish aversion to accepting advice and management. 23
But the momentum was up; the juggernaut was rolling. Sometimes he felt as though he was the one under the wheel.
It is a condition of almost insupportable nervous excitement in the face of this utterly new and tremendously stimulating experience. The candidate talks too loudly, too much, and too loosely, and is constantly amazed at his own brilliance. In fact it is intoxication, auto-intoxication brought on by excessive adrenalin stimulation. The victim is stubborn, sure of himself, and contemptuous of advice—just like a drunk. It has a hangover phase, too, in which the candidate in a frenzy of nervous reaction tries to explain the mistakes of yesterday.
Most public figures run the course of the disease and acquire immunity the first time they run for office, as young men running for the legislature or city council. Their asinine mistakes are seen by few and remembered by no one except themselves. (I still have nightmares over mine!)24
The big issue of the campaign was a new old-age pension scheme nicknamed “Ham and Eggs.” Various kinds of old-age pensions were proposed in the days before Social Security. The Townsend Plan for an old-age pension of $200 a month was making some headway nationally in 1938. The Ham and Eggs plan was a local variation on the Townsend Plan—it would provide retirees $30 a week, an amount that could be supported by a more manageable tax. The name was a colorful PR gimmick to replace its more descriptive (but also more cumbersome) initial slogan of “Thirty Dollars Every Thursday.”
Heinlein didn’t think much of the Ham and Eggs plan, but his district had a lot of elderly people in it, and he could pick up a lot of votes if he endorsed Ham and Eggs. An endorsement was meaningless, of course—the promise of a politician—but Heinlein stuck to his guns: he was in it to change all that and he wanted at least one politician’s campaign promises to mean something. But he also knew it would count against him. He had prior experience canvassing the elderly, and no amount of economic reality meant a thing with that constituency:
I was covering a district which lay, half and half, on the right side and the wrong side of the tracks. I interviewed young and old, rich and poor, men and women. I expected and found certain differences in viewpoint on the two sides of the track, but I was surprised to find an amazing and almost unanimous similarity in viewpoint on the part of the elderly rich and the elderly poor … . The elderly poor wanted $200 every month, or some other pension which would pay them more income than they had ever earned while working, and they didn’t give a hoot what it did to the country ! The elderly rich wanted the highest possible return from mortgages, rents, dividends, or other investment income, and they didn’t give a hoot what it did to the country … blind and narrow selfishness, short range in nature and quite unconcerned with the welfare and future of their children and their country.25
And the welfare and future of the country was all he was interested in: sometimes you just have to take the hit in order to live with your conscience. He didn’t endorse Ham and Eggs.
As the campaign came down to the primary on August 25, 1938, Heinlein’s already tight schedule got even more intense. His big rally was two weeks before the primary—on August 12—in his Beverly Hills Young Democrat territory, at the Legion Hall at 164 North Robertson Avenue. The program for the rally showed the forces backing him:
This meeting is sponsored by the 59th Assembly District Council of Democratic Clubs composed of the following clubs: Beverly-Wilshire Young Democratic Club, Gus S. Childress, Pres. United Democratic Precinct Workers Club, Tom Sawyer, Pres. 59th AD Democratic club, Leonard H. Bachelis, Pres. Beverly Hills Democratic and Civil Club, Judge Lee Champion, Pres. West Hollywood Democratic Club, Jack Clifford Pres. Motion Picture em. Committee, 59th District, Chas. Page, pres.26
Heinlein opened the rally with a brief speech and introduced the candidates for the Sixteenth [U.S.] Congressional District (in which the California 59th Assembly District lay). If his experience was at all typical, by this time he was keyed up and his nerves were singing with exhaustion. In the last weeks of a campaign, after three months of unremitting work, the candidate is not quite sane—but that’s all right; his moves are by now ingrained, and nobody really notices.
Just before the primary, Heinlein’s campaign organization sent out a postcard to every voter, following up his visits to the household:
I trust you will remember that I called at your home recently to present myself as a candidate for State Assemblyman, 59th District. The Republican incumbent has filed on both tickets in an attempt to capture our Democratic nomination for the Republican party. I need your vote next Tuesday. May I count on it? Sincerely Yours Robert Heinlein.27
On the day of the primary, the whole organization got on the streets and spent every last ounce of energy on getting people to vote.<
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In the Democratic primary, Lyon polled 5,241 to Heinlein’s 4,791, having virtually ignored Heinlein throughout the campaign.28 Heinlein lost by not quite one vote per precinct. Lyon also won the Republican primary, running uncontested, and the Assembly District 59 seat would not even be listed on the November general election ballot. “I once lost an election by less than 400 votes,” Heinlein said.
In the post-mortem I was able to tabulate names of more people than that who were personal acquaintances of mine, had promised me support—but did not vote … Forty election-day volunteers could have swung the district. 29
The party had written off that assembly district, but this loss was especially galling for Heinlein: a reactionary Republican had picked up more votes from his fellow Democrats than he had, even with the most intense, personal, hands-on work.
He turned over the problem with Roby and Cleve Cartmill and his other campaign staff in a postmortem. Maybe Ham and Eggs defeated him; maybe it was the phony Nazi connection with Konrad Henlein.30
But maybe he was sunk by hewing too close to the EPIC line. EPIC’s strength was waning—EPIC News had just ceased publication for lack of support, and the party had never been able to elect a full EPIC slate in any district. Maybe the New Deal was as radical as the Democratic Party would get. Mainstream Democrats wanted to take back control of their party apparatus.
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 26