Vote for Larry

by Janet Tashjian

  “Hey, Mark.” She extended her hand as if we were barely acquaintances. “I guess I should call you Larry now.”

  “Janine, I called you ten times before we went public, but you were still away. I am so sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. You tried to tell me how much you hated those shopping trips, and I wouldn’t listen. You were right; it was such a waste of time.” She gestured at the flurry of activity around us. “You obviously had much bigger plans.”

  Brady continued to roll around on the floor. “This was actually a spur-of-the-moment thing,” I answered.

  She let out one of her giant laughs. “No one runs for president on impulse.”

  I shrugged. “Why not? I do most everything else that way”

  “Like leave? I should’ve known something was up with that dying grandmother story.”

  I tried to explain about being kidnapped and coming back east, but even to me the excuse sounded pathetic.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We just flew out to congratulate you and see if I could help you back in Boulder.”

  “Absolutely We’re building a network of people out west. I’d love to have someone I trust there.” I introduced her to Greg, our western states coordinator, then left for a meeting with Peter.

  Beth caught up with me as I headed toward the stage.

  “I haven’t seen a get-up like that since your mom was the cafeteria monitor in junior high. She always wore the wackiest outfits, God bless her.”

  I nodded, knowing if I didn’t dole out information, Beth would go crazy.

  “Did she fly in from Colorado? I recognize her from when the investigator and I tracked you down.”

  “Then you know her name is Janine,” I said. “Not ‘she.’”

  Beth did her usual routine, running to catch up to me then blocking my path. “Are she and Lassie here to volunteer?”

  “Yes. I set her up with Greg. We’ll be seeing a lot more of her.”

  I resisted the temptation to turn around and check out the expression on Beth’s face as I walked away.

  This could actually be interesting.

  Even with Simon hanging around 24/7,51 Beth assumed she would continue to be the only woman I could possibly be interested in. For a brief moment, I even thought about asking Janine to stay in Boston just to see what kind of reaction I could eke from Beth over an extended period of time. I dispensed with the idea, however, as being unfair to everyone involved.

  Peter paced the theater office, sloshing his cup of coffee each time he turned. He’d been holed up here with the graphics people for the past several days.

  “Tell me what you think.” He pulled me over to the back wall, which was filled with several glossy photos. One was a picture of my gravestone, with JOSH SWENSEN engraved in large letters. Underneath the photo, the caption read, A VOTE FOR JOSH IS A VOTE FOR LARRY. HE’S LESS DEAD THAN MOST OF THESE OTHER STIFFS.

  I spit my coffee across the room.

  “I’m kidding!” Peter said. “We’re getting a little punchy after working twenty hours straight.”

  The guy was killing me.52

  We brainstormed about other slogans and graphics for several hours before Janine came knocking on the door looking for me. I introduced her to Peter, who gave her a quick hug. Janine and I planted ourselves on the stairs leading to the stage.

  Her hair was now black with streaks of purple. I asked her where she was staying. She pulled out the Lonely Planet guide to Boston from her pack. “There’s a hostel near B.U. that takes dogs. I’ll just grab the T.”

  I told her I wouldn’t hear of it, that she and Brady could stay with Peter and me back at the house. She wove her arm through mine. “Maybe you’ll come back to Boulder—to campaign, I mean.”

  I told her we’d be out there next month.

  “Good,” she said. “We’ll have the best rally the town’s ever seen.”

  “I’ll make sure we don’t schedule it on a Monday so you can introduce us.” I leaned over and kissed her, unfazed by Beth now standing in front of me waving a piece of paper.

  “You better see this, Josh.” She handed me the paper, a printout from the Larry Web site. It was an entry dated just minutes before.

  I didn’t need to read the entire message to figure out who’d sent it.

  Betagold.

  WELL, JOSH. I HATE TO SAY “I TOLD YOU SO” BUT I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG, WASN’T I? RIGHT ABOUT YOU NOT BEING DEAD, RIGHT ABOUT YOU LYING TO THE WORLD, BUT MOST OF ALL, RIGHT ABOUT YOU BEING A COWARD. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? HAPPY TO BE BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT, THE SPOTLIGHT I PUT ON YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE? WOULDN’T BE WHERE YOU ARE NOW IF IT WEREN’T FOR ME, ISN’T THAT SO? AND RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT? I THINK RUNNING IS THE OPERATIVE WORD HERE, JOSH, DON’T YOU? YOU SHOULD RUN-ALL THE WAY BACK TO WHERE YOU’VE BEEN HIDING. YOU DON’T THINK YOU HAVE A CHANCE OF FINISHING THIS CAMPAIGN, DO YOU? I USED TO GIVE YOU (A LITTLE) MORE CREDIT THAN THAT. SEE YOU SOON. YOUR PAL, BETAGOLD

  “She’s sick,” Beth said. “I told Charlene to delete the message off the board.”

  “It was just a matter of time before she started up again,” I said.

  Janine shoved her hand toward Beth. “I’m Janine. Congratulations.”

  “On?”

  Janine looked puzzled. “On running for vice president, on being the first teenage girl to have a voice in a national election.”

  “Oh, is that what I am now? Some kind of national voice?”

  I pulled Beth aside. “Stop being such a bitch—don’t you think we have bigger problems right now? She’s on our side.”

  “She? I thought her name was Janine.” Beth headed toward the kitchen without looking back.

  Janine put on her fake fur jacket.53 “I hope I didn’t cause any—”

  “No, it’s nothing. She’s just worried about betagold. Last time she saw her, it was an ugly scene.” Visions of Tracy Hawthorne in my living room, Beth screaming, and whirring cameras flooded back to me.

  “I know. I went to the library and did some research on your past life. You two have been through a lot together.”

  Janine looked so sweet and uncomplicated, I suddenly felt stupid for comparing her to Beth while we were going out. I gave her my key and address and told her I’d meet her back at the house later.

  I took a long walk through town to shake off the stench of betagold.

  What was her problem? Why couldn’t some people let others voice their opinions without getting so bent out of shape? Why couldn’t we agree to disagree? I didn’t know what to do—set up a meeting with betagold and defuse the situation or just ignore her and continue to run an honest and respectful campaign. I had to fight the urge to bike over to Bloomingdale’s and seek my mother’s counsel. Instead, I met with our logistics and security teams. I couldn’t obsess about betagold; there were too many other things that needed my attention.

  Lisa had convinced me that we needed to bring in an outside media consultant to meet with us. I nixed his ideas for phone canvassing, polls, and direct mail in favor of old-fashioned rallies. I wanted to spread the word without bothering people. He called me naive and left in a huff.

  Simon stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Personal appearances are great, but it’s a damn big country.”

  I’d just spent the past two years traveling the back roads coast to coast. Did Simon think he was telling me something I didn’t know?

  “Look,” I said. “It’s the only way I’m going to do this—meet people, listen to them, look them in the eye. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to win. I just want to get people to vote.”

  I could tell by his face this disappointed Simon. He had garnered every activist accolade there was; he didn’t like to lose.

  Lisa couldn’t wait to introduce me to an MIT freshman she’d found to run our Internet operations. His name was Tim, and he could code HTML and Java faster than most people could boot their computers.

  “I’m warning you, though—he’s Mr. Techspeak,” Lisa whispered. />
  My second language. I followed Lisa to the computer room and shook Tim’s hand.

  He buzzed around the room with so much energy, it was as if he were the one plugged into the wall, not the computer.

  “I grok the vibes here,” he said.

  “Yeah, but can you grep the system by the end of the week?” I asked.

  When he told me no sweat, I welcomed him aboard.

  Beth dragged me outside and said Peter wanted to see us.

  We exited the theater, but couldn’t find him until a bright yellow school bus pulled up to the curb and opened its doors, revealing Peter in the driver’s seat.

  I couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Katherine found it on eBay for two thousand dollars,” he said. “I had Billy drive me out to Andover to pick it up.”

  “So much of our platform is education,” I said. “This is perfect.”

  High in the driver’s seat, Peter looked like a five-year-old eating chocolate for the first time. “Katherine really wanted to help. She wishes you the best.”

  I nodded, still unsure of the people I’d grown up with playing new roles in my life. Had everyone else changed or was it me?

  I went back in and called the volunteers over for a quick ride. They ran to the back of the bus as if they were still in junior high.54 We hooted and hollered our way through town, the first real blowing-off-steam session of our fledgling campaign. I tried not to dwell on the political consultant’s words. Was my head buried in the sand on this one? Was I wasting the time and energy of these chanting volunteers who filled the bus beside me?

  It was a fine line to walk between being idealistic and practical; I hoped I was smart enough to balance the two this time.

  ELECTION COUNTDOWN

  FEBRUARY: ON THE ROAD

  The experience of traveling cross-country now was diametrically opposed to my last trip. First off, this one was voluntary. Secondly, I was surrounded by friends, and as much as I am someone who is happiest alone, I enjoyed having people around for a change.

  Every consultant we had talked to said the real clout was in fund-raisers and photo ops. But rallies still seemed like the best way to get in close with people, the country’s real natural resource.

  We tried to make our rallies as original as possible. At one bowling alley in Baltimore, we staged an opera with Beth and me wearing Viking helmets and singing.55 We did a whole game show spoof in Ohio giving answers to questions shouted out from the audience. All this gave our opponents more ammunition, of course. If we got any press at all, it was to vilify us. I was crucified for not taking the role of president seriously.

  This criticism kept me staring at the ceiling into the wee hours; I didn’t care what anyone said, I was not being cynical about the office of the president. On the contrary, I was so optimistic that things could be better in this country that I was willing to work around the clock to contribute to such a goal. Americans were generous and open and ambitious; I believed that in my bones. But how could you justify such goodness with the rising climate of inequality and fear?

  In every part of the country, I began our sessions not by talking but by listening. I spent hours at each campaign stop hearing the stories of people who had lost their jobs or couldn’t pay their bills. I listened to their ideas for solutions instead of spewing forth my own canned answers. Their suggestions fueled us with an urgency that kept our campaign vital.

  On the bus, we listened to music and sang. The girls on the staff would howl with laughter at Simon’s mangled lyrics.

  “‘She’s got a chicken to ride’?” Susie, our travel coordinator, asked. “Talk about butchering a Beatles song … .”

  At each rest area, Simon surrounded himself with a crowd of admirers while Beth and I edited speeches. But as each night rolled around and some people paired off, Simon and Beth continued to be together. Unfortunately, I was always odd man out.56

  In every town we hit, our first stop was usually a school. And what Beth brought to these rallies was invaluable. When she went into a classroom, it wasn’t just to pose for pictures, reading books to a group of kindergarteners while the cameras clicked away. Instead she set up assemblies with seniors and registered them to vote. She ran mock debates in the middle schools, discussing such topics as gun legislation and human rights.57

  Only I could tell the grip of exhaustion that began to take hold. After weeks of speeches, meetings, and little sleep, Beth started to snap at things that never before would’ve dented her consciousness. I kept trying to talk her into joining me for yoga, but she wouldn’t. Simon tried to get her to slow down, bringing her miso soup between meetings, urging her to eat. She often responded with increasing annoyance and impatience. I almost felt bad for the guy, his love for her so obvious to anyone who saw them together.

  Not that I intervened on his behalf; I let him suffer.

  I wondered if some of her annoyance hinged on the fact that our next stop was Boulder. But as usual, my telepathic connection with Beth ended at trying to figure out how she felt about me.

  The first thing I did when we got to Boulder was run up Mount Sanitas full-out. I’d missed the view and the crisp air slapping my lungs as the altitude changed. I stood on the ledge overlooking the town for almost an hour. I caught sight of a deer, which only made me feel worse about neglecting my animal studies. But the quick jaunt into nature temporarily quenched my desire to connect with the earth.

  Janine had assembled almost seven hundred people for the rally at the university and another nine hundred at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. She wore pants with leather patches that looked like the inside of a Mustang convertible. Her hair was braided on the top of her head; tiny rubber monkeys adorned her earrings. Beth rolled her eyes when she saw her, but I thought Janine looked great.

  “I know you didn’t want to do the whole one-thousand-dollars-a-plate fund-raiser thing, so I thought of something better.” Janine held up a poster. BAKED BEAN SUPPER WITH LARRY, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE—THREE DOLLARS A PLATE.

  Simon looked as if he’d collapse in laughter. “Well, that should cover our gas money for getting out here.”

  Janine looked him dead-on. She no longer seemed the same carefree girl from a few months before. “We’ve got almost twenty-five thousand people coming,” she said. “Seventy-five thousand dollars.”

  “That’s almost a third of the people in Boulder!” I was shocked at Janine’s transformation.

  “Lots of them are from Denver,” Janine answered. “I was actually aiming for more, but I’m happy with this.”

  The logistics were staggering. How do you feed twenty-five thousand people, let alone meet some of them and get your message across? But Janine had every angle covered, taking advantage of local arenas and theaters. Using a staggered schedule, Beth and I would be able to have several rallies throughout the day. Even Beth had to admit Janine had organized something on a whole different scale than the other state organizers had.58 The CD compilation Janine had put together had the young crowd stomping its feet before I took the stage.

  Be Radical—Vote!

  Watch TV.

  Consume.

  Don’t make waves.

  Work.

  Die.

  Is this the American Dream?

  No, but it’s the way most of us live our lives these days.

  Notice that voting is not on this list. That’s because only a minority of people vote in this country. The media love to use such words as landslide and trend when they describe elections, but when you break it down, it’s only a small percentage of the population that decides the fate of our country.

  Only 39 percent of all registered voters bothered to vote in the 2002 midterm elections; about half—17 percent—voted Republican. The media called the event a mandate of the people. Since when is 17 percent a mandate of anything? This small percentage of the American population decided who now controls our House and Senate.

  You want to know government’s dirty little secret? It’s more
outrageous than any other conspiracy in our history, more telling than the Pentagon Papers or Watergate.

  POLITICIANS DON’T WANT YOU TO VOTE. Voting means you’re passionate about the issues, enough to get out and do something about it. Voting challenges the status quo. But the politicians in Washington don’t want you to do that. They want you to sit back and enjoy the ride while they drive our country down the path of Big-Business handouts, which in turn, increases their own campaign war chests. They love low voter turnout; it means the stalwarts will be the only ones out there carrying the party torches while the rest of us scratch our heads and wonder why our voices aren’t being heard.

  People think by not voting they’re casting a vote against the system. WRONG! By not voting you’re letting a small minority determine the policy for the rest of us. WE CAN’T SIT BACK ANYMORE! The most radical thing we can do is actually something as pedestrian as voting.

  News flash—decisions are made by the people who show up!

  If 90 percent of the people in this country actually cast their ballots on election day, the Administration would head for the hills! How about this for a crazy idea? Instead of sitting at home on your couch watching reality TV, you invest in your OWN reality and vote. I don’t even care who you vote for! Whatever we do, we have to stop the hijacking of our government; it’s OURS; let’s take it back.

  We don’t need to bomb a country halfway around the world in the name of democracy.

  We can fight for it right here.

  That’s how important your ballot is in November.

  Be a rebel, be a radical—vote!

  The country needs YOUR input.

  ARE YOU LETTING YOUR VOICE BE HEARD?

  When I walked off the stage, the students were applauding in a slow, steady beat. I actually felt the energy shift in the room. We were making a difference. That is, until Beth pulled me into the hall.