Chapter Eighteen

Bijal pushed open the door to Denton Campaign Headquarters and hobbled inside. She tried to brush aside the muscle aches, but her thighs and calves burned as though she’d hauled a sack of bricks across the Himalayas, and her back twinged whenever she twisted. Dumping her bag at her desk, she booted up her PC and, rather than wait for it, headed directly for the coffeemaker.

She grabbed the mug that said “2008 Republican National Convention—St. Paul, Minn.” and emptied the hot carafe into it.

“Good morning, Bijal,” Kristin said from the break-room doorway. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Bijal replied, tearing open a packet of sweetener and fumbling for a spoon. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason—just that you’re walking like a sunburned nudist.”

Bijal turned to face her and shifted her weight against the counter behind her. “Yeah, I went hiking yesterday. This is my post-exercise healthy glow.”

Kristin looked horrified. “Oh, my God. Really?”

“Mmm-hmm. I thought it sucked while I was doing it, but now the pain has reached a new apex. It’s like the Cadillac of physical anguish.”

“That’s how you chose to spend your day off? Hiking your way to paralysis?”

Bijal took a sip of her coffee and happily let the elixir slide down her throat. “Admittedly, I did it more for the company and less for the gnarled hamstrings.”

“Ooh, you mean it was a date?”

“Sort of.”

“Tell me all about him,” Kristin said eagerly. “I’m so ready for some good news.”

This was not a conversation Bijal was either prepared for or remotely interested in having. “Maybe a little later. I don’t want to jinx it.”

“It’s that new?”

Bijal nodded and took another swallow of java.

Suddenly, Dan, the office manager, poked his head into the break room. “Ah, you are here. Eliot’s calling an emergency meeting in his office.”

“What time?” Kristin asked.

“Right now,” he replied. “And he wants you both there.”

Kristin’s expression was grim. “Maybe you were wrong and you haven’t reached the apex of your pain yet.”

“Well, I’m sure he’s not calling us into his office to talk about how awesome the debate went.”

They both started the slow death march to see Eliot. “Did you look at the editorials and blogs?” Kristin asked quietly.

“Yeah, they were merciless. I couldn’t find a single positive analysis, unless you count the crazy guy who said eleven different times throughout the course of his secessionist rant that he wanted to ‘do’ Janet.”

“Eww, I don’t think we can count that, can we?”

“I doubt it, because I’m pretty sure what he wants to do to Margaret Thatcher is a felony.”

They arrived at Eliot’s open door and were hastily ushered inside, where most of the campaign workers were already sitting, standing, or leaning. Janet was noticeably absent, which made Bijal wonder if this might be a meeting to talk about her dropping out of the race entirely.

“Dan, shut the door, please,” Eliot said.

Dan stepped inside, pulling it closed behind him.

“No,” Eliot amended in irritation. “I mean from the outside. ”

“Oh,” Dan replied dejectedly. He shuffled awkwardly out of the room.

“I have a few announcements,” he said. “First, I want everyone to know that I’ve fired Paige for her reckless behavior. For those of you who weren’t aware, she gave Mayor Denton mood-altering narcotics before the debate, resulting in the complete and utter shutdown of the mayor’s mental faculties.”

Eliot had apparently assumed he might hear gasps of horror or cries of anger at his rather exaggerated allegations, because he paused dramatically and eyed everyone expectantly. Instead, people just looked warily around the room at each other, as though trying to gauge what might be coming next.

“At any rate, I’m sure most of you are feeling rather disheartened today, based on our disappointing performance against O’Bannon and the slew of negative press that it generated. How many of you feel, at this point, that we should throw in the towel?”

People seemed confused. No doubt they wanted to be honest and admit that, yes, winning this campaign would now take not only a miracle from God, but perhaps also a natural disaster and/or a zombie apocalypse. But most people had already learned that when the boss asks for your honesty, he or she rarely, if ever, actually wants it. No one raised their hand, nodded in tacit agreement, or even twitched an eyebrow.

Eliot pursed his lips. “None of you? Nobody in here feels like we should just accept the fact that we’re down too far in the polls to come back in just five weeks?”

Ted, who had recently been moved to oversee the phone bank, bravely held up his hand.

“Aha!” Eliot asserted, his finger extended in accusation. “Then you can go right ahead and leave, Ted.”

Ted appeared stunned. “What?”

“We don’t need your negativity,” Eliot explained. “And anyone else who agrees with Ted can go right along with him.”

Ted’s brow furrowed and he walked with conviction, stopping only a few inches from Eliot. Ted was tall and imposing in stature. Bijal had little doubt that Eliot was probably very close to his threshold of wetting himself, right there in front of all his direct reports. “You’re an idiot,” Ted growled. “Maybe not as big an idiot as Donna, but still an idiot.” Just when it looked like he might take a swing at Eliot, Ted stomped out of the office and slammed the door.

Eliot sagged in obvious relief. “So can I assume that all we have left in the room are people with positive, can-do attitudes?” People nodded dumbly, having seen the repercussions of answering to the contrary. “Good. Because we need that kind of energy to turn this race around! This meeting is to announce a new beginning for the Denton for Congress campaign. We have a new focus, a new direction, and a new message that’s being broadcast to the public starting today in our latest ads. Kristin, hit the lights.”

Kristin flipped the switch and the room went dark except for the illumination from Eliot’s flat-screen monitor. He turned it slightly so everyone could see and clicked his mouse twice, prompting the ad to start playing.

The ad showed Colleen speaking in slow motion, a popular technique that viewers found subconsciously unsettling and tended to make the speaker look awkward and unattractive. The voiceover sounded menacing.

“Congressman Colleen O’Bannon, radical liberal, is running for your vote. But do you really know everything she stands for? O’Bannon wants gay marriage legalized in Virginia, which mandates teaching our second-graders about things like same-sex marriage, sex education, and transgendered people and their sex-change operations. If you agree that these aren’t the values you want forced on our young children, then reconsider your vote for Congresswoman O’Bannon. Does she really represent you? Or is she just another permissive Washington deviant trying to push her liberal agenda? I’m Janet Denton, and I approve this message.”

Eliot paused the video at the end and signaled Kristin to turn the lights back on. Bijal stood speechless as the blood rushed to her face.

“This is what I’m talking about,” Eliot said. “We’re going for broke now, folks. The gloves are off, and we’re hitting O’Bannon with both barrels.”

“Can I ask a question?” Bijal said, surprised by the sound of her own voice.

“Sure.”

“The claim about what would be taught to second-graders—”

Eliot ran his hand through his hair idly. “We lifted that from the ads for Prop 8 in California and Prop 1 in Maine.”

“But it’s not true,” Bijal replied.

“Look, it’s a hot-button issue that motivated voters. Everywhere that it’s been tried it’s been successful.”

“Is Janet okay with this tack? I mean, she supports gay marriage too.”

A couple people in the office nodded in agreement, but said nothing to back Bijal. Eliot began to glance around the room defensively. “I understand what you’re saying. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And, quite frankly, with only a handful of weeks left before the election, things simply can’t be more desperate for us. So everyone needs to decide if they’re ready and willing to do what needs to be done to get the mayor into Congress, where she can really make a difference.”

“So the end justifies the means,” someone said from the back, less of a question and more of a statement.

“Yes,” Eliot replied. “Because if she’s not elected, she won’t be able to do any of the things that you believed in enough to motivate you to join her campaign in the first place. Until now, we’ve enjoyed the fact that O’Bannon has run TV and radio spots that are almost entirely positive and about what she’s already done and what she wants to do. Our ads before this wasted too much time branding O’Bannon as ‘fiscally irresponsible.’ We just talked about her raising taxes. It was practically Sunday school! Everyone needs to understand that every seat in Congress that we lose is an obstacle to the entire party and our ideals, as well as a setback to us doing everything we’ve promised the public. If we don’t fight back in the war against a crippling national debt and massive government expansion, we’re just as culpable as the people perpetrating it, are we not?”

The campaign workers all seemed genuinely encouraged now, so Eliot continued with his pep rally.

“This election isn’t some piddly little thing, people. This impacts every piece of legislation that comes through the House of Representatives for the next two years. So if you believe in your candidate and what she stands for, you’re either here to win or you’re just passing time. I’m telling you that from this moment on, we’re here to win!”

Everyone responded by either clapping or audibly agreeing.

“Shit,” Bijal whispered.

Bijal sat in her car and anguished over her next move. She glanced at her watch and saw that she had only another eight minutes left of her lunch break. She picked up her phone for the eleventh time and studied it with an uncertainty so powerful that she was nauseous and had sweaty palms.

She took a deep breath and typed a message to Colleen.
Please know that I had nothing to do with our latest campaign ad, and I’m very sorry.
She pressed Send before she could possibly second-guess herself further.

How had she ended up here? She’d originally gotten interested in politics because of the low caliber of elected officials, both local and federal. Every other week someone was getting caught stealing, taking a bribe to do something utterly reprehensible, or cheating on their spouse with a staffer/paid escort/gay prostitute. Politics didn’t have to be like that. If we just worked hard enough to remove the corrupt officials, we could replace them with ethical people who would neither compromise nor sell out their principles.

Now here she was working for a candidate who’d allowed herself to be scared into doing those very things.

Her phone vibrated suddenly, startling her in multiple ways. Did she really want to see the response?
Already saw it. I’d like to say it didn’t faze me, but I can’t. It’s loathsome and irresponsible.
Bijal quickly entered a reply.
I tried to argue against it, but the ads were already distributed by the time I saw it this morning. They’re desperate and see this as their last chance.
It took less than a minute this time to receive Colleen’s response.
That doesn’t justify incendiary lies. So your strategy has become “If we can’t win on merit, just make shit up that will get people angry enough to vote for us”?
Bijal was becoming more despondent as she feverishly pressed the keys to answer.
They feel threatened enough to take a page right out of the Proposition 8 handbook.
Bijal’s lunch break was now almost over. Though she desperately wanted to see how Colleen would respond, she was so upset and patently embarrassed by betraying her principles that she didn’t think she could withstand any more terse text messages. Then it arrived.
Even more reprehensible to use propaganda that was used to discriminate against your own community in an attack against me. How do you sleep at night?
Bijal turned her phone off and got out of her car. As she walked back to her desk, she couldn’t blame Colleen for being angry. This campaign had become exactly what Fran had predicted. Anyone with an ounce of integrity would march right in to Eliot’s office and tell him to fuck off. But Bijal couldn’t do that—not without at least speaking to Janet first.

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