Before heading to my law office each morning, I would detour to New Democracy’s headquarters intent on making some acquaintances.
At first I would simply stand outside and greet a few people as they arrived at work. Eventually some folks recognized me and would stop to chat. My strategy was this: If I met ten people maybe a couple of them would prove sympathetic when I shared my goals. And all I required was a few sympathetic people. If I met a secretary willing to help she might invite me inside. Once inside, I might be introduced to a more important secretary who might usher me into the inner sanctum. There I might meet an assistant to the party leader. If he or she liked me I might be ushered along to a more important assistant … and onward and upward. It didn’t always happen quickly or smoothly. But I was always confident that if I kept showing up, I would, in the end, reach the right people. And if I reached those “right people,” they would undoubtedly recognize how much I had to offer the party. At New Democracy, I thought I had an additional advantage. The party leader, Constantinos Mitsotakis, was a Cretan, as were many important people on his political team—and that is a tie that binds. Throughout my adult life, island bonds would prove critical in bolstering many of my most critical initiatives.
Eventually my persistence paid off and—thanks to the ministrations of his trusted assistant Saki Kypraiou—I was invited for a sit-down with Mitsotakis. A forty-year veteran of the Greek political arena, he was a formidable man. He had been first elected to Parliament as a liberal member of the centrist party. But in 1965 he was among a small group of dissidents who broke with that centrist government, leading to the downfall of the government and earning him the eternal enmity of the other political parties. When the junta seized power, Mitsotakis escaped arrest and fled to Turkey before moving on to Paris, where he remained in exile for six years. Upon his return to Greece, he founded a small centrist political party that eventually merged with New Democracy. He had already served as a key Minister in two governments, and in 1985, at the age of sixty-seven, he had his eye on the Prime Minister’s office.
Mitsotakis was not a man who suffered fools gladly. And after all the effort I had invested in securing the meeting, my very first move was a gaffe. When I passed him my CV, which I had placed inside a plastic folder, he literally cringed at my offering. “Take it away,” he said with as much distaste as if I had handed him a Socialist manifesto. “I don’t like plastic folders. It looks like something you bought in a supermarket.” He told me I should present my résumé as if it were an important document prepared expressly for that purpose. (It wasn’t my only gaffe in trying to build a bridge to the party leader. Three years later, when I wanted to secure my name as a parliamentarian candidate, I was waiting outside his office and said, “I want to wish him a happy birthday.” A woman nearby shook her head. “That would be a foolish move. He is turning seventy and is not yet Prime Minister. This is not a happy thing.”)
To my surprise, after he chided me about the plastic folder, Mitsotakis quickly became warm and sympathetic. “You are from Crete like me. And very young,” he said. “A year younger than my Doraki.” (His daughter, Dora Bakoyannis, then his Chief of Staff, would become the first woman elected Mayor of Athens, and she held that position during the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics.)
Mitsotakis regretted, however, that he wasn’t in a position to make any promises about the municipal election. “But you are the party leader,” I protested. He told me that Miltiadis Evert, the man who would top the New Democracy ticket as its mayoral candidate, had very strong opinions and was very stubborn. He would likely balk at including a candidate whom he felt was forced upon him. Later I would discover that Evert was frequently trying to undermine Mitsotakis, hoping to eventually become party leader himself. (He would attain that goal in 1993.) It would be better, Mitsotakis counseled, if I could win Evert over first, and he promised to speak to him on my behalf. “I will tell him that he is very lucky you came along at a time when we want to include many women to show that we respect them.”
This was an attitude I detested—lip service rather than genuine commitment. Saying you respect women is hardly the same thing as respecting women. I held my tongue, nevertheless, which was a good thing because I have sharp tongue. I departed his office optimistic that I would soon get the call to action. But no call came. So I simply resumed showing up at New Democracy headquarters. I would ask a secretary or a security man when Mitsotakis was expected, and I would make sure he caught a glimpse of me so as to remind him of my aspirations. I pursued him relentlessly, and whatever sympathy I had originally detected appeared to have been replaced by irritation.
Perhaps I simply wore him down. Perhaps, fed up with my stalking him, he just wanted to pass the buck. Whatever his motive, Mitsotakis ultimately kept his promise and set up an appointment for me with the mayoral candidate. Evert was a huge, bulky man whom they called “the bulldozer.” He even used that in his campaign slogan: “The bulldozer who comes to clean up and build anew.” I handed him my résumé—this time in an attractive folder—and, to my surprise, he seemed enthusiastic about my involvement. I was only a little disappointed when I discovered why. “You are a young, beautiful girl, and this time I will include many women,” he said. “We’ll show them that we respect women.” There was that same b.s. line again. But sensing I was on the verge of a breakthrough, I once again managed to hold my tongue. I will not leave it to others to note the irony that my political career was launched when I managed to hold my tongue not only once, but twice. Some would say that is not something I have done as many times since.
True to the party’s pledge, New Democracy did include a record number of women on its ticket and, at just thirty years old, I was among them. I was excited to be making my first foray into politics. I was even more excited when I was assigned to run as a candidate from the important Athens center-city district. My bubble burst, however, when party insiders told me the real deal. While a young woman with no political experience, no money, and no powerful connections would be an excellent symbol of progressive values and change, a young woman lacking political experience, money, and powerful connections had no chance at victory in that high-profile district. I would certainly earn the party’s gratitude, respect, and, likely, future favors by running an energetic campaign, but I couldn’t possibly win a seat. I was meant to be a sacrificial lamb or, more precisely, a sacrificial woman.
ALTHOUGH I WAS YOUNG AND POLITICALLY INEXPERIENCED, I wasn’t completely naive. Greece may have seemed to be a two-party democracy to the average voter, but behind the scenes, the parties (more than two dozen of them) were interested in anything but democracy. Greek politics was all about paying dues, doing favors, and waiting one’s turn for a taste of political spoils.
I understood that the party didn’t really believe in Gianna Daskalaki. Party leaders simply viewed the candidacies of women as an easy way to demonstrate that New Democracy had truly embraced the “new” in its name—that is, despite being politically conservative, the party had progressive views and would, if it assumed power, become an agent of societal change.
But the view of New Democracy’s leadership regarding women wasn’t remotely progressive. Evert, our mayoral candidate, once offered me foolish and offensive advice that he wouldn’t have dared suggest to a man. He wanted me to undergo a makeover, warning me not to wear much makeup or any of my nice clothes or jewelry. Poor people, he insisted, would resent any display of affluence; moreover, he assured me, other women would be jealous of my youthful good looks. “Try to be humble and not show yourself to be so pretty,” he urged me. I ignored him and the other party hacks. If I had to be a symbol of anything, I wanted to be a symbol of what I was: a lawyer and an honest, hardworking woman. “I won’t play some humble, miserable person with the goal of misleading voters so as to win their trust,” I told the party pros. “I will shower each morning, wear makeup and nice, modern clothes and maybe even some little jewels. It doesn’t matter what we show them, only
what we do afterward.”
Obviously, my campaign problem wasn’t the “envious poor or jealous women.” My campaign issue was that the Athens district is one of the most challenging in Greece. Its voters were educated and informed about the issues and the candidates, while I was a virtual unknown with no public track record. From the day in September 1986 when my name was officially announced on the ticket, I had only about six weeks to make a favorable impression on voters.
It was one thing to buck the party establishment about wearing makeup. It was another to come up with a viable alternative strategy that, in such a short time, could give me a chance to contend. I wasn’t even an official member of my own political party yet. I had no powerful connections. I didn’t belong to any political family; I didn’t have family money and lacked any financial backers. I couldn’t afford to flood the district with banners or to pay to get my picture in the newspaper. My face never showed up on TV like other candidates’ did so that people who went to the polls might say: “Ah, I recognize her. I will vote for her.”
Some rival candidates boasted multiple campaign centers around the district, staffed by supporters in spiffy uniforms. I had solely one office, generously provided to me at no rent by a supporter and run by my friend Lena Zachopoulou. She had recently closed her cosmetics shop and was looking for something to occupy her time. It was a perfect fit since I was always so busy out campaigning. I just handed her the key to the office, told her where it was located, and three days later she had it up and running. Besides Lena, whom I paid a very modest salary (she works with me still, twenty-six years later), I depended on a staff of devoted volunteers. These were mostly ladies I had met from nearby neighborhoods. I would come in early—before hitting the streets—and deliver the day’s marching orders. In the early days, I would bark, “Call him and her and him and her”—and, though Lena and the ladies might not have even known who “him” or “her” was or have had a clue how to reach that person, they managed to get the job done.
The only thing I knew how to do was to get out on the streets and introduce myself to people. I asked an actress friend for some tips. She told me it was important when I arrived at a campaign stop to identify the people who seemed genuinely interested and to aim my efforts at them, not to waste time forcing my attentions on those who weren’t engaged. When I talked to voters, it was vital to remain focused on them—never to be caught scanning the room for others or to appear impatient to move on.
I quickly learned the art of what they call in America “retail politics.” Each morning I ventured out to the markets, to the cafés, to the taxi stands—anywhere and everywhere that people congregated. And I didn’t return to the office until it was dark outside. When I talked to people, I made no big promises. I didn’t b.s. them. I simply told them I believed that I could be useful in Athens, and all I could absolutely promise was that I would work hard on their behalf to earn their trust. I listened to everyone, including Communists and Socialists that others told me were a waste of my time. It wasn’t a waste. While I didn’t always like what they said, I did get a sense of what the voters were concerned about: smog, a deteriorating infrastructure, and a decline in the quality of life in Athens. And compounding these concerns was a distance between the politicians and the people. Everyone understood the problems, but it seemed to the voters that the politicians were indifferent and more interested in their own careers than in improving life for the Athenian electorate.
At night when I got back to the office, I’d regale my “staff” with tales from my day on the campaign trail. We’d keep a count, estimating how many people I met each day and how that might add up. “If maybe I met a thousand today, how many might vote for me? You think maybe a hundred? Maybe fifty? If I can do that every day, who knows?” Quite honestly, I had no clue. I was a complete novice. One knowledgeable election veteran, however, wasn’t nearly as impressed with my efforts as were the ladies in my office. He told me that while I was demonstrating great energy and almost certainly connecting with some voters, effort alone wouldn’t enable me to pull off an upset. “You have to reach more people,” he said, “and to do that you need some tricks.” I didn’t really know any tricks. And even if I could think of some, how—lacking money—could I afford to deploy a trick or a gimmick?
I clearly needed professional counsel, so I fell back on the one tried-and-true tactic I knew, the same one I had used to get my law internship as well as to land a spot on the New Democracy ticket. I would show up at the right office, talk my way in to see the right man, and then make my earnest plea. So I made an appointment with Thalis Koutoupis, a top election strategist who had a reputation for being very savvy—he had done campaign work in the United States—and very pricey. The moment I sat down in his office I confessed that I didn’t have any money to pay his fee. I was counting on three things: that my honesty might disarm him; that I was already sitting in his office and he had set aside time for me; and that I was young, attractive, and charming. Just as I had hoped, I was able to coax a minimum consultation out of him.
I impressed him enough so that he made a small investment in my future. That investment paid off. Years later, I heard him boast, “I was there in the beginning for Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki when she really needed help.”
What he told me was a more sophisticated version of the earlier advice I’d received about using some “tricks.” Greece, he said, was way behind the times in campaign strategies. In America, campaigns were all about marketing, finding slogans and messages that were easily digested by the public. The challenge was to penetrate the clutter surrounding elections and to get your message through to voters. That couldn’t be accomplished through random one-on-one encounters. I left his office with my brain on fire, mentally juggling some vague notions of how I might meld traditional Greek values with cutting-edge American campaign techniques.
Then it came to me: the basil plant! Basil is essentially the national plant of Greece. It is one of our simplest yet most powerful symbols. In the summertime, every household grows at least one basil plant. The churches put it in the holy water. The ancient Greeks believed basil would open the gates of heaven for a person passing on. The smell of basil is the smell of summer, of the Greek home, and of the holy church. That makes it one very powerful fragrance.
When I told my supporters about my basil idea, they joked: “So what do we do? Send everybody a plant?” We all started laughing hysterically as we imagined dead plants arriving at people’s doors. (Basil needs a lot of care; it cannot survive for a day without water.) Wouldn’t that be the perfect metaphor for my first campaign?
But when we all stopped laughing, I realized it was the seed of a great idea—literally. We wouldn’t send a plant. We would send the seeds instead. Seeds had the added virtue of being just about what our budget could handle. We raced out and bought them by the kilo. We sealed a few seeds in little plastic pouches and stapled the pouches onto campaign mailers, which a fellow Cretan had printed for me at no charge. The flier had room for only the most basic campaign pitch along with—most critically, we realized—a picture of a basil plant. Otherwise, people might have no idea what the seeds were. My message became crystal clear: Basil represents hope and new beginnings, and it is synonymous with a better quality of life. If everyone planted the seeds it would not only mean sweeter-smelling homes but also a sweeter and greener future for Athens.
I mailed the seeds to thousands of Athenians. When we ran out of addresses, we went into stores and shops and began handing them out. Our effort made a huge impression. This was long before the environmental movement had taken hold, particularly in Greece, so it came across as a very fresh idea. The basil resonated with Athenians who were sick of the ugly smog that blanketed our city. Even the media was taken with my simple, fragrant campaign symbol. All of a sudden I had a public identity in the minds of voters and in the press: I was the young female attorney, the young mother, who wanted to make Athens greener. I reached out with a touch of b
asil. I would run more campaigns and accomplish much for my country, but to many Greeks I will always be remembered as the woman with a touch of basil. Even today, people approach me to tell me about how surprised they were to receive those seeds—and how the basil plants have endured.
Some political pros would later tell me that even I might not have recognized what a novelty act I was in the city’s political landscape: a slim, elegant woman with a distinctively vibrant personality and the high energy—they described me as a perpetual motion machine—of youth. As my profile rose in the city, even Evert took notice. He suddenly wanted to schedule campaign events at which we both made appearances. Though I could feel the tide turning my way, I never took a day off the campaign trail. Some people counseled me that champions always rested on the last day, that voters had already made up their mind and you didn’t want to appear desperate.
But resting has never been one of my talents. On the day of the election, I went out just as early as I always did and made the circuit of all the polling places. I was convinced that if I could just meet a few more voters, it might mean the difference between victory and defeat. It was nighttime when I arrived at the election center in Neos Kosmos and I was still going full steam. A policeman recognized me and, in a polite way, said: “Mrs. Daskalaki, you are not allowed here any more. We are closed. The election is over.”
I went back to my campaign headquarters and closeted myself in my office. I wanted to make an honest assessment of my campaign—one that wouldn’t be colored by the results. I concluded: “Gianna, you cannot be unhappy or worry about what might have been. You’ve done absolutely everything humanly possible to get a favorable outcome. So no looking back. No regrets.” That has been the way I have confronted challenges all my life. No half measures. Once I decide to go in, I am in all the way. I do everything possible to achieve the desired result and then, whatever that result, I don’t waste time on regrets or second-guessing myself. If there were mistakes—and there always are—you make sure you learn the lesson for next time.
My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country Page 6