A Referendum on Conscience: Chapters 9-10 (work in progress)

Links to previous chapters available here.

Stumbling Forward, the first book in this series, can be downloaded free at Smashwords by entering code MB52G.

Chapter 9

Sunday, Dec. 1

It was just before midnight in Perth, Australia, on Sunday, Dec. 1, and Carter Jennings had spent a week reviewing the polling data from Minnesota. There was little in the way of good news. “What the fuck am I doing?” he whispered to himself as he labored through a memo he wanted to send to Clarissa Rogers shortly.

While Rebecca McElroy enjoyed a 65-percent favorability rating and a 57-percent job approval rating, 79 percent of registered voters polled disagreed with her opposition to the use-of-force resolution and 54 percent said they would be less likely to support her if she broke her pledge to retire after two terms. He wasn’t too worried about the term-limit pledge. It was the public’s huge support for the war that was problematic. Certainly it would decrease over time, especially if Azizistan becomes a protracted and costly conflict, but the election was just 11 months away. Under normal circumstances, this would be a fight he’d opt against waging. The better use of his time would be putting together a team for Texas Gov. Bill Harrison’s presidential campaign, which was scheduled to kick off in a year and a half, but these weren’t normal circumstances. It was time to stand up. It was time to stand for something other than simply winning and making money.

“There’s really no way to sugarcoat this,” Carter wrote in the conclusion section on page 14. “Despite success in two previous statewide elections, a third term is far from assured. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Tara Gunderson Hansen is strongly positioned to become Minnesota’s next U.S. senator and the polling data is clear on the fact that a McElroy for Senate campaign would require one of the most Herculean efforts in recent political history to even come close to victory.”

He spent the next half hour reviewing his work and then attached the document to an e-mail to Clarissa. She’d have to be the campaign manager. After Winston Marshall died last September, she was the one who stepped up from her press secretary job to carry Alex Hogan across the finish line. Their mentor had run both of Rebecca’s campaigns and would jump at this fight, too. Now it was Clarissa’s time. Yes, she liked her job in Washington, but she had to step up again. There was no way around it.

“If I thought there was a 1-percent chance Todd Owen could be a mildly courageous U.S. senator, I’d say ‘retire Rebecca, you’ve earned it,’” Carter wrote to Clarissa. “But Owen sucks. He’s a stuffed suit who can’t beat Hansen. And he’s not going to be the senator we need.”

Normally Carter didn’t even vote, but he was willing to put his 36-8 win-loss record on the line in the name of campaigning against a stupid war, a dangerous Republican candidate and a president he thought could destroy everything he loved about America. He doubted it would take much to get Clarissa on board, but he went with the hard sell just in case.

“This is going to be your campaign. You’re the heir to everything Winston taught us and everything he stood for. You have to get the senator on board, put the band back together and make this happen. Nobody else can. It’s a crappy burden to carry, but it’s your burden and you must carry it, Clarissa.”

Carter didn’t have much faith in anything and had the Nov. 18 attacks never happened, he would’ve been more than willing to cash Owen’s checks, no questions asked. But this was too important to him. He believed in Clarissa and Rebecca and would do anything to get them back into action.

He sent the e-mail and left his hotel room for the first time all day. He’d check his iPhone every five minutes, awaiting Clarissa’s response, during an hour-long walk on the beach.

*****

Clarissa stayed in Washington over the Thanksgiving holiday to get some work done and recover fully from her bout with the flu. By the time she got Carter’s e-mail, which she wasn’t ready to read, she had watched all the morning shows, read the papers and was now working her way through the conservative blogs—many of which were beginning to echo Ben Reynolds’ column on Iran being the biggest problem in the Middle East. As she scrolled through the mindless posts and idiotic ramblings in the comments section, she listened to the NFL pregame show the two guys next door were watching. Each Sunday they blared football-related programming on the big screen TV with surround-sound from mid-morning until the last game ended around 11 p.m.

This week the second-place Washington Redskins were set to take on the first-place Philadelphia Eagles at 1 p.m. Clarissa looked up from her laptop for a minute to hear the injury report. She didn’t really care too much about football—or any sports—but had a passing interest in the Redskins and her home state Minnesota Vikings. Her own TV was tuned to CNN with the volume muted.

She returned her attention to the blogs. There were a few more posts on McElroy being a traitor and many more on the non-existent link between Iran and Azizistan. She read every word, as always, and was so lost in thought that at first she didn’t notice the sound of President Wayne Fisher’s voice coming from through the wall.

“My fellow Americans, several minutes ago, on my orders, American fighter planes began striking targets in and around Aziz City in the first step of Operation Swift Justice. In these early stages of this conflict, we are targeting institutions and infrastructure that directly support terrorism and pose a grave threat to the free world and life as we know it.”

After a couple moments, Clarissa finally glanced at her own TV and saw the president speaking from the Oval Office and the CNN graphic reading “AMERICA AT WAR.” She unmuted her TV and now had two-apartment surround-sound as the president continued.

“Great effort has been taken, and will be taken always, to ensure that innocent Azizistanis are kept safe and secure and that legitimate civilian infrastructure is preserved for the reconstruction of their country and its assimilation into the peaceful community of nations—which we will proudly welcome in the coming weeks and months. This conflict will not be easy, but this administration, and the great military of the United States, will do what it takes to ensure freedom is defended. There’s no burden we won’t bear and no price we won’t pay to ensure a peaceful world for our children.”

Clarissa could hear the guys next door cheering and high-fiving. She wanted to vomit, but there wasn’t time. She immediately began work on a press statement the senator would issue within the hour. After that, she started working on language that would be needed for other press releases—for the first American casualty, for the first mass-civilian casualty and for the fall of the regime in Azizistan. She spent the rest of the afternoon typing away while the Redskins fell to the Eagles, 13-10. She didn’t get to Carter’s e-mail until after the 11 o’clock news.

*****

When her flight landed in Washington on Sunday evening, Rebecca knew her staff had everything under control. The appropriate press releases had been sent, interviews with Minnesota media arranged and meetings with officials from the Pentagon scheduled. As she got into her car to make the hour-long drive back to Spotsylvania County, she called Todd Owen back in Minnesota. They hadn’t spoken since before the Nov. 18 attacks.

“Todd, it’s Rebecca McElroy. How are you?”

“Senator! Good to hear from you.” He was surprised she called and he didn’t want to talk with her at all.

“We need to talk about Azizistan. Where are you on this?”

“To be honest, I think we need to make sure we’re doing this right, but now that we’re committed I fully support our troops.”

He was in over his head and she knew it.

“Todd, supporting the troops and opposing a war we shouldn’t wage aren’t incompatible,” she said as she merged onto Interstate 395 southbound. “If anything, supporting the troops means opposing a pointless war.”

“Senator, we have to get the people who did this.” He desperately wanted an excuse to end the phone call, but couldn’t think of one.

“The people who did this are dead.” She wasn’t surprised he was echoing the talking points out of Washington. She knew he was close with Alex Hogan and was taking most of his cues from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which advises and supports candidates across the country.

“I’ve travelled around a state full of people who disagree with you.”

She didn’t want to argue and spent the next few minutes trying to get him to expand on his talking points. While he may know more about an initial public stock offering or building a strong corporate liability shield, he had no clue at all about global affairs.

“When this thing goes wrong, and it will, how are you going to distinguish yourself from Tara Hansen? Right now, Todd, I’m not seeing any difference between the two of you.”

The senator planned on introducing legislation over the next few days to increase veterans’ benefits and add staffing to Veterans Administration hospitals throughout the country. We’re going to be creating a lot of new veterans in the coming months and years, she knew, and many would require extensive medical care.

“I’m going to be far more willing than Hansen to ask tough questions of the administration as this war plays out. For now, we’re in a wait-and-see mode. Nobody can know how this is going to turn out.”

“The time to ask tough questions is before the war starts, not after it.”

“Respectfully, senator, people don’t agree with you. My consultants have been polling on this.”

“There’s a time for politics and this isn’t it,” the senator snapped. “This is a time to either lead or follow. Looks like you’re following.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion and I’m entitled to run a winning campaign as I see fit.”

He hung up before she could respond.

“Chicken-shit bastard,” she mumbled as she slammed her phone down on the passenger seat.

Chapter 10

Saturday, Dec. 7

Clarissa Rogers always hated leaving Washington. Among other things, getting out of town meant giving up her prized parking spot in the tiny lot behind her building. She hadn’t moved her red Saturn VUE sport utility vehicle in six weeks. Now she’d have to find a new place to park it when she got home.

Carter Jennings’ memo, which she perceived more as an emotional plea for Rebecca McElroy to seek a third term than an actual strategic document, had Clarissa thinking seriously about next year’s election. Then Todd Owen’s speech in Duluth a few nights later put her firmly in the re-elect McElroy camp. In a 26-minute address to the St. Louis County Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Owen completely avoided mentioning the war at all. She watched the speech live on the Internet on Thursday night and then read the text on a blog twice before heading into work Friday morning. It was the most cowardly thing she had ever seen, so now, on the morning of Saturday, Dec. 7, she was heading to Spotsylvania County to take a shot at convincing her boss to give up retirement plans she had long since earned.

As Clarissa drove south on Interstate 95 through Stafford County, she listened on XM Radio to CNN’s latest war reports. Over the previous six days, countless military and police buildings had been leveled in Aziz City and other major towns along the island’s coastline. Bombing raids had also been conducted over the Central Highlands, but their effect was unknown since no networks had reporters stationed outside the population centers. Pentagon spokespeople, however, assured the American people that the August 28 Revival terrorist organization was on the ropes.

“Damn.”

The gas light was flickering on her dashboard. The needle was just above the empty line. Clarissa could never remember whether the light meant there was a gallon or two left in the tank or if the engine was about to stall. She wished she had stopped for gas in D.C. It was more expensive at the full-service station by her apartment, but the 35-cent-a-gallon difference would’ve been a small price to pay to avoid getting off the highway before reaching Spotsylvania. For better or worse, she was a city girl—born and raised in south Minneapolis and educated in St. Paul. She liked to limit at all costs her exposure to suburbia and its shopping centers, golf courses and subdivisions.

A few decades earlier, Route 610 in Stafford County, 40 miles south of Washington, was a two-lane country road not dissimilar to the main thoroughfare near her grandparents’ farm in southern Minnesota. To Clarissa it now looked like a place corporate America came to vomit. As far as the eye could see, there were massive shopping centers with every national chain retailer and restaurant imaginable, a 7-Eleven convenience store at almost every intersection, and parking lots full of minivans and SUVs with bumper-stickers announcing the owners’ children were honor roll students at schools like Widewater, Drew, Brooke Point, Colonial Forge, Mountain View and Anne Moncure.

Clarissa pulled into an Exxon station near an Offices & More, the chain founded by Owen. She brought her Saturn to a stop behind a rusted-out pickup truck with a Confederate flag in the rear window and a “Fisher for President” sticker on the bumper. This kind of thing was still widespread in the outer-ring Virginia suburbs.

While she pumped gas, the skinny man outside the truck, wearing a jacket and hat displaying the number of his favorite NASCAR driver, glared back at her several times. She smiled the first time, but now it was getting creepy. Yes, she thought, it’s a Minnesota license plate. Get over it.

“What’s that thing on your coat?” he asked.

On the right lapel of her black wool coat was a small button promoting the Equal Rights Amendment, an oft-proposed constitutional amendment barring discrimination on the basis of gender. Rebecca had co-sponsored it six times. On the left lapel was a silver peace dove brooch she had bought a few days earlier at a jewelry store near her apartment building.

“A button for women’s rights and a peace dove,” she said while watching the numbers on the pump.

The man looked away for a moment and she finished pumping gas and went inside to pay. He was still there when she returned a few minutes later with a muffin and large cup of coffee.

“OK,” he said. “The women’s thing I understand, but why a peace dove now?”

“Because I don’t like war.”

“Maybe if those towel heads knew that they wouldn’t have declared war against us.”

“Maybe.” She didn’t want to talk politics with a guy who missed the day in history class in which the Battle of Appomattox and Robert E. Lee’s surrender to U.S. Grant were discussed.

She opened her door and placed the coffee in a drink holder before climbing in. The man was standing alongside her SUV now.

“So if you’re for peace, what do we do about the terrorists?”

“We go find the leaders, but we don’t try to own Azizistan,” she said, trying to keep things as simple as possible. “And we cut off terrorism at its source. Most people become terrorists because they don’t have anything else they can do—no jobs, no schools, no opportunities. Not all of them, but most of them. It really isn’t much different than why people join gangs.”

He stood there for a second considering a point of view that probably hadn’t been aired much on the talk radio stations he usually listened to.

“My little brother—he’s 19—he’s over there now. He’ll be in the invasion probably.”

Clarissa knew “over there” meant Kuwait, which the Army and Marine Corps were using as a staging area.

“I hope he comes back here safe and soon,” she said.

“My mom ain’t been sleeping much since he sent word about it. We’re for the troops and getting the terrorists, but you know—”

She got out of her Saturn and reached a hand out toward him. He grabbed it.

“My name’s Bobby Ray Shackelford and my brother—his name is Jimmy and he always wanted to be a Marine.”

“I’m Clarissa. You can tell your mom Jimmy’s in the best military in the world and they trained him well. Everything’s going to be OK.” She hoped that was true.

They chatted for another minute or so and then she climbed back into the Saturn and cut on the engine. He motioned for her to roll down the window, which she did.

“I hope you get your peace,” he said.

Clarissa smiled and pulled away from the pump and headed back toward Interstate 95.

*****

Holly Schaffer had avoided politics like the plague since Alex Hogan’s campaign ended 13 months ago. No meetings. No candidates. No rallies. No nothing. Aside from occasionally helping Carter with paperwork related to the New Jersey governor’s race, Holly was quite retired and had no problems with that.

When Matt Gibson, Owen’s campaign manager, called her a few days earlier she assumed he wanted advice on the 7th Congressional District. Holly agreed to meet him for lunch at the River View Bar & Grill in Minneapolis, but only because she was a bit curious to learn Owen’s position on the war.

“So, how did you all get Hogan elected to Congress?” Despite nine reasonably successful years in professional politics, Gibson couldn’t figure out how such an idiot managed to get 200,000 votes for any office.

“Honestly, I have no clue. That was really the work of Carter Jennings and Clarissa Rogers. I was just along for the ride.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Holly had a knack for planning and executing events, which helped make it look like there was a real grassroots uprising for Hogan. The tall, blonde 25-year-old had parlayed that skill into planning conferences, exhibitions and retreats for local businesses. She enjoyed the work and she was very good at it.

“Do you think they’d come work for Todd?”

“They both know Todd’s friends with Hogan and they both hate Hogan, so I don’t think they’ll help. You could ask them, but I don’t think they’ll be interested.”

“Carter already blew me off via e-mail. I haven’t called Clarissa.”

Gibson was in a tough spot. He genuinely believed Owen could be a good senator and the businessman had built a strong following with DFL activists across the state by donating large sums of money to party units from International Falls in the north to Albert Lea in the south. Now the war had thrown everything off track. Owen was scared of losing, so he chose to say nothing about Azizistan to avoid alienating anyone. Gibson was hoping to pump new life into the campaign with new staffers. This was his first race in Minnesota and he didn’t know where to start.

“Carter can work for anyone he wants and Clarissa’s really special,” Holly said. “My advice is to find your own team. There’s no rhyme or reason about how these come together. They just do.”

They picked at lunch for a few minutes without speaking before Gibson got his next idea.

“Why don’t you come work for me?”

She looked at him like he was crazy.

“I’ll make you deputy campaign manager,” he said, desperately.

“That’s very nice of you, Matt, but no thank you.”

“Seriously?”

“I really hope you all get things together because I don’t like Tara Gunderson Hansen, but I’m not getting back into politics. One election cycle was enough for a lifetime.”

*****

The senator flipped through Carter’s memo for the second time after lunch while Zach and Clarissa watched silently. After a couple minutes she stood up, tossed the papers down on the coffee table and walked over to the window.

“It doesn’t look very good,” she said as she watched a deer run through the backyard.

Zach thumbed through his copy again. He had looked forward to Rebecca’s retirement, selling the Spotsylvania County house and settling into permanent residence back in Bloomington for the first time in more than a decade. But Nov. 18 changed everything for him.

“Clarissa, would you run the campaign?” he asked.

“Absolutely.” She always assumed her days of campaigning had ended after coming to Washington following last year’s election. The original plan was to stay with Rebecca until she retired and then go work for someone else on Capitol Hill, but she never thought twice after reading Carter’s e-mail. She knew right then and there that she’d go back to Minnesota and lead the campaign.

“And we’ll have Carter, too?” Zach was beginning to fill out the roster. “Who else?”

“We’ll have Carter for sure and there are a few other people I definitely want.”

“Clarissa, if I do this, what are the rules?” Rebecca didn’t want to be a slave to public opinion polls and didn’t want to take a lot of flak from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

“Honestly, senator, I think we just go for it. We’re putting your record on the line and that’s what we campaign on. We’ll get the party’s endorsement over Owen, definitely. I don’t see any problems there. Then we’ll let it fly against Hansen. There’s no way to mask where you stand and we shouldn’t even try to.”

“What do you think, Zach?” Rebecca knew her husband wasn’t a big fan of politics and she wanted to make sure he was on board for another campaign and possibly another six years of splitting time between Minnesota and Washington.

“These campaigns have never been easy,” he said. “Why should this one be any different?”

When she first ran for the Senate, after serving two terms on the Bloomington City Council, Rebecca was considered an afterthought by the experts. Then she surprised everyone by winning the party’s endorsement over a heavily favored candidate and crushing a two-term incumbent Republican in the general election. In her re-election bid, all the same experts said she was too liberal, but she won her second term by a comfortable margin, as well.

“You know what the crazies are going to say, right?” Rebecca said. “This one is going to be tougher than anything else.”

“Can you take it?” He didn’t really need to ask.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation.

“Then let’s do it.”

Rebecca returned to her seat and picked up Carter’s memo, flipped through it again and then tossed it back onto the coffee table.

“Clarissa, can you come into the office and clean off your desk Monday morning?”

“No problem.” She was already thinking about what needed doing for the campaign and was glad to be spared having to put in two-weeks notice before heading back to Minnesota.

“Good,” Rebecca said, smiling for the first time during this conversation. “We’ve got a re-election campaign to start and there’s not a moment to lose.”

Links to previous chapters available here.

Stumbling Forward, the first book in this series, can be downloaded free at Smashwords by entering code MB52G.