Did we get everything we wanted? No. And while I would, of course, have preferred that we had, I take my lead on these matters from the fortieth president of the United States. Ronald Reagan struck many deals throughout his career and often said that getting 80 percent was good enough. He knew when to hold firm, and when it was time to forge a compromise. In this moment, given the government we had—the Democrat-controlled government the American people had elected—we had done very well.
But it’s not possible to please everyone. Some people were not happy with what I had achieved in the deal, or with me. My 2014 campaign for reelection was on the horizon, and within days of striking this deal, an ad appeared on Kentucky television, urging voters to help unseat me in 2014. Soon after, a political action committee announced they were willing to spend seven figures to ensure my defeat. I had no doubt: I was going to enter the race with a bull’s-eye on my back.
What was most unsettling about these efforts was that this bull’s-eye was drawn not by Democrats, but by some members of my own party.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Courage
If the elections of 2010 and 2012 taught Republicans anything, it was that no challenge should be discounted. In each of these cycles, we’d made the grave mistake of following the strategy championed by many political consultants: to ignore primary challenges by inexperienced and seemingly weak candidates championed by groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund. When you poll a primary between an incumbent everyone knows and a candidate nobody knows, the incumbent is inevitably going to poll way ahead. So candidates were advised to lie back and not engage, to trust the poll numbers, let the primary take care of itself, and stay focused on the general election. And again and again—in Nevada, Colorado, and Delaware in 2010, in Indiana and Missouri in 2012—the candidates who followed this advice lost. From the beginning, I had argued this was a false premise and the wrong strategy. Come 2014, I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again, because this year, we were going to do things my way. In my race, and in every Republican race across the nation—in Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi—we were going to be supremely prepared for every fight.
I’d been preparing for my own race in 2014 for the last few years, tapping the best people to come on board and building a war chest for what I anticipated would be the toughest fight of my career. Never one to start late or agonize publicly about running, I never pretended I had any other intention. In December of 2010, I gave an interview to Politico to address any questions about whether I’d run again. “I’m not planning on running,” I said. “I am running.” And from day one, my campaign staff had a clear mandate: we were going to run the best campaign for the US Senate in the history of our country.
By the time I opened my campaign headquarters in February of 2013, in the same building I’d used in every Senate race since my first in 1984, I was ready. I would rely heavily on Josh Holmes, who I think has one of the greatest political minds of his generation. He’d been working for me since I’d become leader, helping to build a top-notch communications center that was considered a large part of our success, and was also key to my 2008 race. To manage the campaign in Kentucky, I hired Jesse Benton, who had managed Rand Paul’s 2010 Senate race.
Before I even had a declared opponent, the fight was on. A few names were floated as to who the Democrats were thinking of recruiting to run against me, and we were primed for every one of them. Once you become an incumbent, everybody who challenges you thinks you’re going to be the issue, but every potential candidate has a record. One of the earliest names being considered was Ashley Judd, the Hollywood actress, and there were just a few things one needed to know about her: she had extremely far-left views, her own grandmother, a Kentuckian, had called her a Hollywood liberal (and had also said I’d done a good job as senator), and she lived in Tennessee. In other words, some on my staff said, she would be a dream candidate. But I wasn’t totally sure.
My friend Woody, who works at the local Kroger in Louisville, and who I see almost every weekend, couldn’t wait to talk about Ashley Judd. I relish the fact that Woody and I talk about almost everything other than politics, but this weekend he traded the sports page for politics. He knew everything that was written about our potential race. Good lord, I thought, if Woody is talking about Ashley Judd, maybe she will be tougher to beat than people thought. I didn’t like the idea of running against somebody as unpredictable as a Hollywood star. I knew if we ran a good campaign I could beat a Democratic politician, but what the heck happens when TMZ shows up on the campaign trail? My team assembled a research document on Ms. Judd’s public statements, which quickly put my mind at ease. Hollywood star power or not, Ashley Judd was not a serious candidate for office in Kentucky.
In March, Judd announced she wouldn’t be running, and soon after, Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, announced she would. She had been heavily recruited by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and their choice made sense. Grimes was just thirty-four years old, and as the daughter of the state’s former Democratic Party chairman, Jerry Lundergan, she had deep ties to Democratic politics. Her announcement brought quick endorsements and contributions from Hollywood’s liberal elite, and not long after, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation, hosted a fund-raiser for her in Los Angeles. Her donors read like the guest list at the Academy Awards: Barbra Streisand, Jerry Seinfeld, Woody Allen, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
But I was well aware that efforts from the Left would very well be the least of my problems. The cottage industry of so-called professional conservatives that had sprouted a few years earlier had by this time taken full bloom. Prior to 2010, the energy of the grassroots conservative movement was entirely focused on unseating Democrats, but now certain so-called conservative groups were determined to unseat Republicans they deemed insufficiently conservative. With the “true conservative” facade in full effect, I had become their main target.
The kindling these groups used to fuel their operation was the discontent of conservatives across the country over the deal we’d struck on the fiscal cliff. These groups convinced people that the only acceptable outcome was getting exactly what they wanted, when those things were, at a time when Democrats held the White House and at least one house of Congress, impossible to get. The divide that was growing between grassroots and conservative lawmakers was not a question of beliefs, because in the end, we were all for the same things. But when the American public chooses divided government, a purely conservative agenda is impossible to enact into law. Suggesting otherwise amounts to making a promise that can’t possibly be kept. Barack Obama wields an important instrument—the veto pen. So telling Republican primary voters they should settle for nothing less than ensuring that Obamacare is repealed was selling an impossible idea. He was not going to allow it to happen. I was reminded of something Phil Gramm said after I’d invited him to address a GOP lunch after our vote on the Budget Control Act of 2011: “My daddy always told me when you’re hitchhiking, that you go as far as the first car that picks you up will take you. Take this victory and pocket it.”
Given how draining it was to be fighting a battle from both sides, I tried to look for good news wherever I could find it, and the very best news at the time was that on April 8, 2013, I was there in Atlanta when the University of Louisville men’s basketball team took home the NCAA championship. This was just the day before U of L’s women’s basketball team became the lowest-seeded team ever to make it to the NCAA title game. It had been an exciting few weeks and a welcome respite from my work of trying to lead my conference while dealing with the intensity of the campaign. The morning after the men’s win, I arrived at the office feeling pretty good about things. Until Josh Holmes walked into my office.
“Boss,” he said. “We gotta talk.”
Someone on our communications team had spoken with a reporter from Mother Jones magazine, Josh informed me. “He was asking a lot of
questions about a meeting we held at headquarters the day it opened two months ago,” Josh said. “The details he has about what we talked about are striking.”
“What do you make of it?”
“I’m not sure. But it’s enough to concern me.”
“Is it possible somebody in the room talked to the reporter?”
“I would trust everyone in that room with my life.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I’ll call counsel. If they have a recording we may have legal recourse and at that point this would be a legal story, not a political one.”
Josh was right to be concerned. The next day, Mother Jones published a story on its website, alongside audio of a secret recording that had been made of a meeting we’d held two months earlier. It appeared to have been recorded by someone standing in the hallway, outside the door of our headquarters. Not only was this a dirty trick, it was also arguably illegal. Kentucky is a one-party consent state, which means that conversations can be recorded only if at least one person in the room agrees to it. This clearly hadn’t happened. The FBI got involved and later found the guys who’d done it—members of a left-wing group out of Louisville. The Department of Justice would decline to prosecute, a decision it never bothered to explain. My staff was quite upset, but frankly, I thought these shenanigans were just more of the same, highlighting the level of scrutiny I was under—a level one might be more inclined to expect in a presidential campaign than a run for the Senate in Kentucky.
And it certainly wouldn’t stop there. In March, members of the same group connected to the secret recording sent out racist tweets about Elaine, suggesting the fact that she had been born in Taiwan dictated my stance on China’s trade policy. This infuriated me. The Democrats have long accused us of being the party of intolerance, and here they were, attacking my wife for the supposed crime of being born in another country.
It’s hard to underestimate just how ruthless the attacks were, and as they escalated from both sides, my staff dubbed this race the Paint Shaker—like the machine that mixes paint at thousands of bangs per minute. If it weren’t so exhausting, it would almost be funny: those on the Left and many in the mainstream media were calling me the Senate’s chief obstructionist—claiming I was solely responsible for orchestrating 442 filibusters since Obama took office—at the same time a coalition of Kentucky Tea Party groups were lambasting me for my apparent liberal voting record and my willingness to roll over and cede power to Obama. Both sides were going to stop at nothing to force me out, to convince voters that this race was one race too many.
And I have to admit, I was beginning to wonder if they had a point.
Winston Churchill once said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” In the three decades I’ve spent in the Senate, I’ve learned the value of patient listening. When looking to achieve an outcome from a group, you’re more likely to identify the solution by hearing others’ points of view than in reiterating your own position. My tendency to prefer listening to talking is one of the things Elaine loves about me. It’s also something that has, on more than one occasion, caused a bit of discomfort to members of my staff.
I know it caused discomfort at the beginning of a meeting I had with Bill Gates. I like Bill. He devotes most of his time to giving away billions of dollars (which makes me think he would make a good Democratic senator), and I, of course, greatly admire his very worthy goal to rid the earth of polio. I was eager to hear why he’d requested the meeting, and so when it began, I waited for him to speak. It took a few long minutes of complete silence between us, but I was fine with that, and he seemed to be as well. But the members of my staff were not. I know these experiences make those around me who are forced to endure them uncomfortable. I can sense them squirming, and sometimes, if I am quiet for too long, others will fill the space with chatter. But I’m perfectly fine with the silence because in the end, I know that listening is far more valuable than speaking.
Well, these months, as the campaign wore on, I was listening as well, and by the summer of 2013, it had become clear to me that two story lines were forming. One was that Republicans had a good shot at taking over the Senate in the final two years of the Obama presidency. With the number of seats at play in red and swing states, and the fact we were running the best slate of candidates we’d had in years, there was a very good chance we’d pick up the six seats we needed to regain the majority.
And the second was that the reason we might not make it was because of a particularly weak incumbent running for office: me. In June of 2013, my poll numbers were looking dismal and I was acutely aware of the drag I might represent for my own party. What if I lost and kept us from taking the majority? My first obligation has always been to help the party succeed, and while I never expressed my doubts publicly, I had begun to seriously consider if it was in fact time to find a better candidate.
Three years had passed since Kyle resigned from my staff, but I still relied on his counsel from time to time. This was one of them. Back in 1994, when I first ran into him in that elevator, he didn’t have any connections. He didn’t have an Ivy League degree. But he sure had a lot of talent. Asking him to join my team was one of the best decisions I ever made. He was always thinking of the one thing that no one else had thought of and was often the calm navigator in the middle of the storm—the one person in the office who never took his eye off the destination we had set. I knew I needed his counsel on this, and on a warm Friday afternoon in July, after Elaine had gone out for the day, I called Kyle at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, and asked if he’d come over.
“Let me tell you what I’m thinking,” I said, as we sat in my living room, the house so quiet we could hear the clock ticking. “I’ve been taking a pounding, and it’s taken a real toll on my standing. I’m the number one target of the DSCC, and the top target of the professional right. It could go either way at this point. What if, irony of all ironies, the only thing that keeps us from getting the majority in the Senate is if I lose?” Kyle was silent. “I have spent the last several years preparing us to take back the majority. But what happens if everything works exactly to plan and I lose, thus denying us the majority. It would certainly be an embarrassing conclusion to a long run.”
Kyle’s gaze met mine straight on. “What are you asking?”
“I have an obligation to my party. Do you think it’s time for me to go?”
One of the great things about Kyle is that nothing rattles him. After taking a few minutes to collect his thoughts, Kyle spoke with his trademark calmness.
“First off, I don’t think you’re going to lose,” he said. “Given what you’ve built in the state, it’s not going to be easy for any liberal Democrat to win. And second, name me someone else who at this stage of the game can withstand the same storm. If you step out, the DSCC won’t lose interest in Kentucky. They’ll just focus on this seat even more, because without you, it’ll be easier for them to win. They’re trying to spook you.” He leaned forward. “Look, I understand how hard this has been, but not making the race now doesn’t put the party in a better position to get the majority. You have been working your whole life to become majority leader, and now, finally, it’s within reach. Now is not the time to bow out.”
After Kyle left, I took a few moments to sit in the quiet, thinking of what he had said. I was facing a very difficult fight, yes. But I’d been fighting my whole life.
When I was diagnosed with polio at the age of two, the chances I could beat it were slim, at least according to what the doctors told my mother. The disease was paralyzing or killing more than half a million people around the world every year, and nobody had any reason to believe I wouldn’t be among them. But I beat it. Well, no, my mother beat it, as determined as she was to do so. Not only did I survive it, but here I was at seventy-one years of age, walking without a limp, keeping regular fourteen-hour d
ays, feeling far more robust than most my age. In Louisville at fourteen, a stranger in a new city and the odd kid out at a new school, I never thought I’d make a friend, let alone become the president of the student body. Even I doubted the next goal I set for myself—becoming a student body president at college, and then again at law school. I then worked my way to Washington, DC, where, in Senator John Sherman Cooper, I saw greatness for the first time. When President Andrew Jackson reputedly said, “One man with courage makes a majority,” he was talking about people like Senator Cooper. But did I have enough courage to keep going, to live up to what I had seen in Cooper?
It was a question I had been grappling with since that summer, even after being elected county judge in the largest county in Kentucky, and especially during my first run for Senate, when every odd was stacked against me, and most were rooting for my loss. The papers, the unions, my well-funded opponent. Ronald Reagan called me Mitch O’Donnell just as Roger Ailes admitted he’d never seen anyone come from as far behind as I was to win. Then, even my win was considered some sort of political mistake, and sitting in that back corner of the Senate Chamber, the last among my colleagues, I wondered if they were right.
Yet I kept at it, spending years paying attention, practicing patience, learning everything I could about the institution of the Senate, an institution I deeply revered. And I’d reached my goal. I’d become the leader of Senate Republicans. I felt nothing but an enormous sense of gratitude that I’d been fortunate enough to make it this far. It had not come quick or easy. I’d hung in there, dealing with the inevitable bumps in the road. And not only had I survived, but I’d excelled.
I walked into the silent kitchen, and as I looked toward the backyard, I thought about all of the people who were, at that moment, once again longing for my defeat. Those who had banged their drums on my front lawn, the constant stream of television ads calling me soulless, dishonest, conniving, ads paid for by people from across the nation, who’d never set foot in Kentucky. They were all gleefully predicting, and cheering for, my demise, praying for me to fail.
The Long Game Page 23