Picking a Fight (WiP): Chapters 1-2

Picking a Fight will be published late summer/early fall. It's the third book in a series that started with Stumbling Forward and continued with A Referendum on Conscience.

We're still in draft form, but I'm ready to leak a little out. Will continue to do so over the course of the next few months.

(Updated on June 3, 2011.)

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Chapter 1



Friday, Nov. 17


Clarissa Jennings hated airports. She hated the noise, the smell, the commotion, the goodbyes and the travelling—unless she was with her family and they were heading off to a vacation destination of her choosing.

Today, however, she hated Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for another reason. It was the first stop in what promised to be an absolutely terrible day. Walking through the Lindbergh Terminal’s baggage claim area, looking for passengers inbound from Duluth, she was ready to go home, crawl into bed and skip Friday, Nov. 17 altogether.

As she passed through a group of high school students, returning from a trip to France, she thought she heard her name called. She paused for a moment, looked around and then continued for another couple seconds.

“Senator Jennings!”

She stopped again, saw nothing and continued, slowly looking around until she heard her name called one more time.

“Clarissa!”

Finally she spotted 92-year-old Andro Bebic sitting on an unused baggage carousel, holding his cane in one hand and a travel bag in the other.

“There you are, sir,” she said with a smile. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

“Only 10 minutes, but I never lost faith in you,” he said as he slowly made it to his feet. It was 11:06 a.m. and his flight had arrived early. “And don’t call me sir. Even if I have been chairing the Commerce Committee since before you were born, I’m not old.”

“Young at heart, I understand, senator.”

“The name’s Andro.”

“Yes, sir.”

Their alliance and friendship was unlikely. Bebic, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, was a 64-year veteran of the Minnesota Senate. He had represented the Duluth area in the Legislature since before Clarissa’s parents were even born. He loved the Senate, its traditions and its process. Yes, he was fiercely liberal, but he was committed to getting things done the old-fashioned way—through personal relationships, calling in favors and deft legislative maneuvering.

Bebic regularly made the 150-mile drive south to St. Paul from Duluth up until a couple years ago. Now, with his night vision failing, he relied on the 50-minute Central Airlines flight to get from the biggest city in northeast Minnesota to the Twin Cities metro area. A widower for the past 20 years, he spent about half his time at home near Lake Superior and the other half in a tiny apartment near the state Capitol he had rented since his second decade serving in the Legislature.

Clarissa was nearing the end of her first year representing a downtown Minneapolis district in the Senate. The 33-year-old was just as liberal as Bebic, but didn’t share his patience for the legislative process. She wanted to get everything done 15 minutes ago and was willing to use any political tool available to advance her sweeping agenda. Most Capitol observers had her pegged as someone to watch—a woman whose ambitions went well beyond co-sponsoring resolutions congratulating a local high school for winning the state’s football championship.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Bebic said as they walked back toward the parking garage. “I’m willing to help you in any way I can because I believe you’re right, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it.”

“If we can only make those people sweat a little, that’s fine with me. Someone should and if Washington won’t, we will.”

“Sure,” he said. “We can do that, but I am glad you’re willing to do this meeting.”

“Why do we have to? Remind me of that again.”

“Because the man could be the next governor, Clarissa, so you do this as a courtesy before you go making trouble.”

“The man’s an asshole,” she said as she ran her fingers through her shoulder-length, reddish-blonde hair. At 5-foot-2, she was still at least nine inches shorter than Bebic, despite the toll age had taken on his posture.

“I know he is.”

“And I’m not making trouble. I’m legislating, just like you told me to do when I got elected.”

“If I recall, I told you to keep your head down during the first year and not to make any trouble for anyone.”

“I did exactly that—”

“You ran radio ads shaming Republican senators for supporting the governor’s budget.”

“You told me to limit my speaking on the floor, Andro. If you had said, ‘Clarissa, don’t run radio ads against colleagues who screw over the poor,’ I would’ve reflected carefully on that advice, of course. But you didn’t say that.”

“You still would’ve run the ads, though.”

“Of course I would’ve. I was right to do it.”

The old man laughed. Despite her periodic contempt for the Senate he loved, Bebic adored Clarissa. He saw her as one of the few politicians under the age of 60 who was worth a damn. She was smart and brave—two qualities that had become increasingly rare in modern politics.

“Hold on for a second,” he said as he stopped at a newsstand near the elevator leading up to the garage. “There’s something I need to get.”

“Please, God, no,” she whispered while doing her best to smile.

“Here it is!” He held up the latest edition of the Twin Cities Monthly magazine. The feature story was on Minnesota’s rising stars under the age of 40. Clarissa was right there on the cover, standing alongside a physicist from the University of Minnesota, a vice president at MinnAg and a world-renowned painter who worked out of a studio in Minneapolis.

“Please, God, no,” she repeated to herself as Bebic paid for the magazine, pointed Clarissa out to the clerk and smiled.

*****

Alex Hogan had every reason to be confident as he spoke at a noontime fundraiser at Ingrid Martin’s stately mansion on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. The 48-year-old third-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives was unopposed for the DFL’s nomination for governor in next year’s election and he had the good fortune to be running against Republican Lt. Gov. Scott Benson.

“He’s been in this race for six months and he hasn’t done one thing to prove he’s not simply running for Phil Taylor’s third term. No thank you to that! I think unemployment’s high enough. I think property taxes are high enough. And I think our state’s been gutted enough. We don’t need four more years of the Taylor brand of mismanagement.”

The audience of about 75 wealthy retirees laughed and then applauded. Hogan was a dud and had been neglecting his job in Washington since entering this race in June, but he was also the DFL’s best chance at electing a governor for the first time in more than two decades. People were willing to overlook a lot as the overweight and balding candidate continued.

“I think the question Minnesotans have to ask themselves before voting next November is who has the best professional and political resume needed to be the leader of this state and move our state in a bold, new, inspirational direction. That’s what I’m offering. That’s why I’m in this race. I am that candidate.”

His marginal public speaking skills didn’t matter. Hogan was in this position because he served on the U.S. House Financial Services Committee and had no qualms about taking big checks from the industry he was supposed to regulate. His fundraising team helped him scare off several well-liked party rivals and had Democrats feeling optimistic about their chances of finally winning the state’s highest office.

“We’re going to win next November. We’re going to win. We’re going to stand up and do what’s right. And we’re going to put Minnesota back to work for all of us. That’s why I’m running and that’s why I need your support.”

*****

Andy Walsh, Alex Hogan’s top political aide, did his best to smile as Clarissa and Bebic finished their presentation in his office at Hogan campaign headquarters on University Avenue in St. Paul. This is the dumbest idea in the world, he thought, and he knew it was all Clarissa’s work.

“So you want to investigate North Star Global Security Services. Are you serious?”

“We are,” Bebic said. “We don’t have a lot of power over them, but they do take advantage of a bunch of tax breaks under my committee’s purview and—at the very least—we can make them come in and answer some questions.”

North Star Global Security Services was one of the most controversial companies in America. Based in Jefferson County, 45 minutes west of Minneapolis, the company did security work on contract for the U.S. military. It had made billions of dollars guarding diplomats and bases in the war zones of Azizistan and Iran.

“We’ve spent four years trying to prove Democrats aren’t weak on security and you guys want to do this?” Walsh was trying to keep his cool as he glanced at his watch. It was 4 p.m. and he had a 5 p.m. dinner meeting in Minneapolis. “Why don’t you just hold a press conference—”

“Because these people are war profiteers, Andy,” Clarissa snapped. “Almost 2,500 dead Americans in Azizistan and another 3,300 dead in Iran. These guys are making money off stupid policy and they’re making things worse because—”

A year earlier, North Star guards opened fire on a van in Aziz City that came too close to an American convoy. Eight people, including two children, were killed. Six months later, two North Star employees were accused in the rape and murder of an Iranian girl near a U.S. base on the outskirts of Tehran. Both incidents generated widespread public outrage abroad and increased the hostility toward American forces in Iran and Azizistan. The locals made no distinction between private contractors and actual military personnel. Americans were Americans, period.

“I understand it’s bad,” Walsh said. “I do. It’s just, you know, this isn’t—”

“If it’s so bad, why hasn’t your boss called for an investigation?” Clarissa hated Hogan, despite having managed his first campaign to an upset victory five years earlier. “I realize that would mean going to Washington and doing what the voters of the 7th Congressional District elected him to do—”

“Andy, we’re not looking to make national policy,” Andro said, calmly interrupting Clarissa. He had flown in from Duluth to be the cooler head in this meeting. “But we do have a forum we can use to ask tough questions that aren’t getting asked in Washington. I think when we’re talking about billions of dollars and actions that are making the situation more difficult for our troops—that’s something we shouldn’t back away from doing.”

The Republican-controlled Congress had no interest in investigating a company owned by Paul Nelson, one of the party’s biggest donors. Democratic President Bill Harrison wasn’t interested in rocking the boat, either. He had been elected a year earlier with a 301-237 majority in the Electoral College, but he lost the nationwide popular vote by more than a million and his job approval ratings hovered around 45 percent in most recent opinion polls.

“I understand that,” Walsh said. “I really do, but we’re all here in this room as state politicians and political people. We have a chance to win the governor’s race next year and the last thing we need to do is hand the Republicans an issue. They’ve screwed everything up and this gives them something they can use to change the subject.”

“The problem is that people don’t see any difference between Democrats and Republicans,” Clarissa said. “This doesn’t hurt us. It shows we aren’t cowards. I’m not asking Hogan to get on board. I actually don’t even know why we’re here.”

Walsh, a heavy-set 41-year-old, leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his Diet Dr. Pepper.

“Senator Bebic, would you mind if I talked to Senator Jennings alone for a few minutes?”

Bebic looked at Clarissa and she nodded her head that it was OK. The older man slowly rose from his chair and walked out. When the door shut behind him, Walsh grabbed a stack of papers from the shelf behind his desk.

“Interesting that you’re now an expert in winning elections,” he said as he thumbed through documents. “How many Republicans did you have to meet while knocking on doors in Minneapolis last year?”

After wrestling the DFL Party’s endorsement away from an incumbent Democrat, Clarissa cruised to victory in the general election with 84 percent of the vote in her liberal Minneapolis district.

“Talked to enough,” she said. “It’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing—”

In addition to managing Hogan’s first campaign, Clarissa had led U.S. Sen. Rebecca McElroy to re-election three years ago. The improbable victory came despite the incumbent’s staunch opposition to invading Azizistan after deadly terrorist attacks in Washington a year before the election and her vote against going to war with Iran just a month before the election.

“Whatever,” Walsh said as he flung a couple sheets of paper at her. “Look at these numbers. We can win this race if we don’t go wasting time on Lunatic Lane and focus instead on the economy and jobs.”

Clarissa glanced over the polling data. Sure, Hogan was well-positioned, but even her 9-month-old daughter could get elected governor after the way everything fell apart under the Taylor administration.

“Where is Hogan anyway?”

“Meetings like this are beneath the congressman,” Walsh said.

“Talking about issues? I can see how he doesn’t like doing that since he has an IQ of 50.”

Walsh took another sip of soda and pondered his response.

“I show this to you for a reason,” he said as he leaned over and snatched the papers back. “You may stick your tits out at the old man, spread your legs for Carter and do whatever it is you do for McElroy, but you’re still a zero—a fringe-left zero. I know what I’m doing. We’re going to win, so stop trying to fuck that up and maybe Alex Hogan will make you a deputy commissioner of something nobody cares about.”

Clarissa stood, gathered her purse and turned to leave. She was about halfway to the door when she stopped and looked back at Walsh with a smile.

“We went on a date six years ago. Remember that?”

“Barely. I go on lots of dates.”

“Whatever,” she said, knowing the repulsive man went on very few dates. “This issue—North Star—won’t be like that date. This time you’re getting screwed. Your boss is a coward, you are pathetic and there’s no way I’m letting you guys stop me on this.”

Walsh was speechless as Clarissa made her way out the door and met Bebic in the lobby.

“Andro, would you let a lady take you to dinner?”

“It would be a distinct honor and privilege, senator.”

The two left headquarters as Walsh screamed at his secretary—demanding that she get Hogan on the phone immediately.


Chapter 2


Monday, Nov. 27

“That’s right! It is a cat. Can you say Tornado?”

Amelia Eleanor Jennings stared at her father, Carter, and then pointed again at the orange tabby sitting under her high chair. At 9 months old, her vocabulary was limited to “cat,” “dada” and “issa,” which everyone assumed was short for Clarissa. The pediatrician said the baby’s verbal skills were progressing well, but her parents didn’t care. The little girl, named for an aviator and a first lady, was adorable, healthy and happy. That’s all that mattered to them.

“That’s Tornado,” Carter said as he took a warm croissant out of the oven and set it on a plate alongside four strawberries and a sliced banana. “Say hi to Tornado. He’s a nice cat.”

He poured coffee from a French press and picked up the plate.

“You take care of Tornado and I’ll be right back.”

He walked quickly into the living room, where Clarissa was set up on the couch with two laptops, three daily newspapers and her BlackBerry. It was 6:12 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 27, and she was scheduled to appear at an 11 a.m. press conference at the state Capitol. She and Andro Bebic were ready to announce their plans regarding North Star Global Security Services.

Carter paused for a moment and watched his wife of three years work. He loved life. One of the most successful political operatives in the country, and a leading architect of President Bill Harrison’s surprising victory last year over an incumbent war-time president, Carter was more than content to be a stay-at-home parent now. He had spent the first two years of his marriage to Clarissa bouncing around the country with the circus that is a modern presidential campaign—each day eagerly awaiting his retirement. Now he had tens of millions of dollars in the bank, a Porsche in the garage and a 4,500-square-foot vacation house on a lake near the U.S.-Canada border. All of that, however, paled in comparison to daily life in his 12th-floor condo in downtown Minneapolis.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Clarissa said after Carter set breakfast on the coffee table, as he did almost every morning. “But I’m glad you did.”

He leaned down and kissed her and then went back to the kitchen. He returned a few seconds later carrying the baby.

“Carter, it’s my birthday,” Holly Schaffer announced as she walked through the unlocked front door and into the living room. “I’m a year away from being more-or-less dead and I need breakfast.”

“You’re a year away from being 30,” Clarissa said without looking up from an article on the Azizistan war. “If anyone should be worried about being old—”

“If anyone should be worried about being old, it’s not me,” Carter said as he handed Amelia to Holly and walked toward the kitchen. “40 is the new 30.”

“That makes you 33 then. Congratulations, you’re only as old as Clarissa—”

“Totally unfair,” Clarissa said as she set down the newspaper and turned toward Holly, who had managed her campaign for the state Senate and still handled a number of political duties the senator’s government-paid legislative assistant wasn’t allowed to touch because of state laws designed to separate campaigning from governing.

“I’m sorry,” Holly said as she sat down, still holding Amelia in her arms. “I just had a weird night. Peter loves me.”

“And do you know Peter’s last name?”

“Something that begins with a vowel, I think, but that’s not important. We’ve been out twice. Sure, last night I made him see Jesus—”

“Sweetie, you realize you’re still holding my impressionable little girl and she’s going to learn more words at some point, right?”

“Sorry,” Holly said, turning her attention to the baby. “When you’re 21, Amelia, I’ll be a cougar and we’ll go out together—just me and you. Can you say cougar?”

Carter returned and traded Holly a breakfast tray for the baby.

“She can say cat and that’s enough,” he said, laughing as he carried his daughter back to the kitchen.

“It was a weird night,” Holly finally continued. “I snuck out, went home, couldn’t sleep and came here.”

“Having someone love you isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

“You did train Carter well.”

“I didn’t train him to do anything—”

“No, you broke him and domesticated him. Think about how many women tried to do that and failed miserably. You hit the lottery.”

“I’d rather not,” Clarissa said, laughing a bit. She wouldn’t admit it, and didn’t think of it often, but she knew there was some truth to what Holly said. Carter had been a legendary womanizer before meeting Clarissa. It took him a while to get comfortable with the idea of having a girlfriend, but it was all over once she got him fully hooked. “We have to talk about College Democrats—”

“Right. We’ll be at Hamline University tonight.”

“Any idea what they might want me to talk about?”

Since her election a year ago, Clarissa had stayed busy travelling across Minnesota and speaking to Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party groups, primarily on college campuses and in areas of the state where there weren’t any Democrats holding elected office. It was Holly’s job to keep the calendar full and handle logistics.

“My guess is North Star will come up,” Holly said. “I assume you’re going to make some news today.”

“Yeah,” Clarissa said, distracted for a moment by the enormity of the challenge in front of her. “Do you think it’s a good idea? Going after these people?”

“It’s a big fight, but it’s the right thing to do.”

“Suicide mission?”

“What do you care about that? You named your daughter after Amelia Earhart.”

*****

“This is really baseless bullshit, Paul. Let’s file a lawsuit once the hearing is scheduled and it won’t happen. The state of Minnesota doesn’t have any right to get into this kind of thing.”

Paul Nelson leaned forward in his chair at Mike’s Steakhouse in Minneapolis as he listened to Larry Chesney, the chairman of the state Republican Party, complain about the hearings Clarissa and Bebic were planning on holding as soon as the Legislature reconvenes in the first week of January.

“I believe you’re right, Larry, but I refuse to back away from this fight.” Nelson, a Marine combat veteran born and raised in Minnesota, was very proud of North Star Global Security Services. He had founded the company 20 years earlier and now had eight offices across the United States and clients all over the world.

“Paul—”

“I run a good company and if they want to fight me on this—that’s a fight I’m willing to have.”

“This won’t be about your company,” Chesney said firmly. “They’re going to use this to re-litigate the wars. Bebic is old as hell, but he’s not stupid and Jennings is very ambitious. This isn’t about your company. She’s looking for TV cameras and headlines, period. You’re getting suckered into a fight that even you can’t win. If you show up, she’ll destroy you.”

Nelson liked keeping a low profile. Aside from the big checks he wrote to Republican candidates all over the country, he was a mystery to most people, even Chesney. The divorced, 56-year-old father of four devoted almost every minute of every day to his company. He didn’t like North Star coming under attack in the national media, as it had recently, or from liberal politicians in his own home state.

“I’ve been in tough fights,” Nelson said. “I think I can handle this prom queen and her grandfather.”

“I know you can, Paul. I know it, but this isn’t just about you. The story will blow over if we let it. If we don’t, it turns into a field day for Democrats and that’s the last thing we need. We have enough problems as it is.”

Nelson took a sip of water and another bite of his steak before responding.

“So what do you advise I do?”

“Easier said than done, but I think you need to sit this one out,” Chesney said. “We’ll get an injunction in January and tie this thing up in the courts until the legislative session ends in April. Makes it a minor and boring story, as opposed to you giving Jennings what she wants—”

“Which is me?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck, Larry, you know I don’t like walking away from crap like this.”

Chesney hated this. He admired Nelson greatly and absolutely loathed what Clarissa and Bebic were cooking up, but it was his job to manage the Republican Party’s image. He simply couldn’t let the party’s biggest donor get into a fight like this one.

“I know, Paul, but let’s stay focused on the end game. We have elections to win next fall and we can’t let this get in the way.”

“OK,” Nelson said as he pushed his plate away. “OK, you’re right on this—I hope.”

*****

At 7:30 p.m., Clarissa finished her short speech before a crowd of about 50 young Democrats in a meeting room of the student center at Hamline University. “Get involved,” she had said. “Stand up for the things you believe in and never let anybody tell you great things can’t be done. The future belongs to those who show up and I like our chances with you on our team.”

The kids were captivated by the first guest speaker of the semester who wasn’t as old as their parents, but youth was only part of her appeal. She remembered names, recited stories, told jokes well, involved the audience in her examples and never failed to radiate warmth and confidence.

“You guys have been in class all day, so the last thing you need is another lecture,” she said as she reached for a bottle of water. “So ask me anything.”

“Will you go out with me Friday?” a sophomore called out from the back of the room, drawing a big laugh, especially from the other guys who liked the tan skirt and black sweater, but weren’t brash enough to say anything about it.

“I’m married,” she said. “But ask Holly over there. She’s single and not even 30—yet.”

“What’s the hardest part of your job?”

“The hardest part? I think it’s that the Legislature moves slowly. There are 201 people, thousands of different ideas and only a few months a year to get things done. That’s frustrating. I’d like things to move a lot quicker—a whole lot quicker. I guess I haven’t really settled into accepting incremental progress on important issues as a victory and I hope I never do, to be quite honest. There’s so much that must be done. We’re falling behind and incremental progress isn’t good enough. That’s the hardest part.”

“What’s the most important issue to you?”

“Jobs. We have to put people to work. Getting good jobs to our state solves lots of problems. If we don’t do that, we really can’t do anything else other than tread water and that’s what we’re doing now. I think we need to be much more aggressive as a state in recruiting employers, helping kids pay for college so we have the talent employers need—and, quite frankly, our governor doesn’t believe in the power of dreaming big. Conservative means playing it safe, defending the status quo. That’s what he’s done for eight years and it’s what Scott Benson is promising to do if he’s elected governor next year. I really do believe we can do so much better than that.”

“Would you be Alex Hogan’s running mate if he asked?”

“I don’t think I have the temperament to be running mate,” she said, laughing. “I’ll certainly work hard for him if he’s elected, but I don’t think I can really do what it takes to be lieutenant governor—to say nothing; to go unseen. If I have something on my mind, I just say it and let everything else take care of itself. Usually that means making trouble for Holly, but that was an assumed risk when she started working for me.”

She spent another 15 minutes taking questions like these before finally getting the one she really wanted to answer.

“Tell us about the press conference you did today—this thing about the security company.”

Clarissa briefly summarized North Star Global Security Services’ background, the problems in Iran and Azizistan and the billions of dollars in no-bid contracts. Then she smiled and waited for a follow-up question. It came quickly.

“What can the state of Minnesota do about that?”

“Well, not much, to be fully honest with you. There’s not much we can do, but I think we can drag people before the Commerce Committee and make them answer the tough questions that nobody in Washington wants to ask at all.”

“I read your husband got the president elected. Why doesn’t he just call the president?”

Clarissa glanced at the kid with the video camera before speaking. She hoped he’d get her answer and then post it on the Internet.

“The president is a big part of the problem,” she said. “He ran a really brave campaign, like he was this tough guy from Texas, but then he got elected and immediately wimped out. I voted for the cowboy, but instead we got this cowardly, Judas-like figure and I don’t like that at all.”

A few students at the Methodist university had to look up the Judas reference on their handhelds. After a couple seconds, though, Clarissa could see everyone got the message clearly.

“I think when you see these terrible things happening—these people getting killed and populations in Iran and Azizistan turning against our troops—it’s a sin to sit on your hands and do nothing. I may not have a lot of power here, but I’m going to use what I have to try and make things right. The odds are against me on this, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t try.”

The question-and-answer session continued for another 20 minutes and then Clarissa spent half an hour talking with students one-on-one before she and Holly walked out into the cold November night.

“Judas Iscariot?” Holly whispered as they passed by a couple of kids heading to the library. “A bit much, don’t you think?”

“True, don’t you think?”

“Actually, yes, it’s very true.”

“I just hope that kid with the camera gets the video loaded onto the Internet soon. Once it’s up, use your anonymous e-mail to send it to Red State Minnesota and they’ll take care of the rest.”

It took a few days, but on Friday afternoon the well-read Republican blog had the video posted under the headline: “EXTREME LEFT-WING SENATOR COMPARES PRESIDENT’S WAR POLICIES TO JESUS’ MURDER.”