She looked down at the Google Alert on her BlackBerry, savoring the moment. “Taylor taps Greenley for Fundraising Role.” Sure, her mom didn’t know what Politico was, but her colleagues did. She did. And even her mother would understand the significance of a news organization writing about her getting a job. Ben Smith was reporting on her. Sam Stein and Chris Cillizza, too. She warranted her own Google Alert. At twenty-seven she had made it to the top of her profession. She had flown through the lower ranks of fundraising teams in just three campaigns. Being put in charge of Adams’s campaign was a fluke, but she had done well. Now she was changing the world at one of the highest levels. She should write an email to her political science professor and tell him. He’d be so happy for her. She scribbled down the idea in the new notebook she had spent three days picking out. The perfect notebook for the perfect job. Then a wave of panic hit as she remembered she had to actually do the job.
She opened her laptop to a blank Excel file and stared down at the paper next to her computer with the big number written on top of her to-do list. The one right above “write Professor Eigen a note.”
Five million dollars.
Five million dollars and write a note. Spectacular to-do list, Olivia. Perhaps we should start with the money. She underlined “five million dollars.” That’s what they needed to collect before the Iowa Caucus in nine months.
She wasn’t sure who had decided on that number. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t really her concern. She just had to hit that mark, and in the course of three quarterly filings. She made a chart on her scrap paper. Half a million already in the bank. She would need to bring in another half a million before July 30. Another two million in September and then the final two million in January.
Olivia stared at the Excel sheet and thought about the numbers. This was her favorite part of the process—imagining the budget. Really it was just a theoretical list of numbers, but to her it was where she could do anything, raise any amount. Breaking it out gave her the road map to get to impossible numbers in impossible time. Down the first column she began typing in “New York,” “Texas,” “Florida . . .” and the cities she thought they could work in. She added in prospective hosts and within an hour she had the start to a road map.
As she began turning to her calls, her BlackBerry buzzed.
“Hey, Jacob.”
“Livster! How’s the first day?”
“It would probably be better if I had slept at all this weekend!”
“Oh, please. Your ability to operate well without sleep was one of the key reasons I hired you.”
Olivia laughed, knowing that was actually probably true and wondering how she might phrase her unique abilities in the “Special Skills” section of her résumé.
“So what’s up?”
“We need to talk about the budget.”
“Okay.” Olivia looked at the sheet, not quite prepared to go through the numbers, but at least having an idea of how she would get to five. Jacob paused a bit.
“So remember when we talked about raising five million before Iowa?”
“Ummm, yeah, my goal hadn’t escaped my mind just yet. I’m not that sleep deprived.”
“Yeah, actually we need it to be seven.”
“What?!” Olivia shook her head and realized it was one of Jacob’s jokes. “Very funny, Jacob.” She imitated him making fun of her: “And I should wear my sequins when I raise it, right?”
Jacob’s voice didn’t waver. “You shouldn’t really wear sequins when you do anything, Liv.”
She stopped laughing as he continued on.
“This one’s for real. We just met with the pollsters. If we can’t run an extended media buy in Iowa, we can’t move Kramer’s negatives, and ours, the way we need to.” Olivia looked into the phone as if she might be able to find a dose of reality there.
“Jacob, that’s insane.”
“I know, but we can do it. We have to.”
“Jacob.” She didn’t even know what to say. How could they change her budget by so much in one day? Her first day no less. “Two million dollars is a lot of money.”
“Yeah, the pollster thinks so too.”
“Stop it. Stop joking around.” Olivia stammered, more scared than angry, “Okay, I . . . I mean . . . I don’t know if I would’ve even taken this job with that goal.” She knew it wasn’t true but changing the goal line by this much, this early, all just seemed so unfair. She had to protest.
“Really?” He sounded sincerely skeptical.
“No,” she replied, “of course not. But it sucks! How often is this going to happen?”
“It won’t anymore. I promise.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She rolled her eyes, knowing every minute she spent talking about the goal was one more minute she was psyching herself out and one more minute that she needed to spend working. “Okay, better get started.” She hung her head backward over her chair and closed her eyes.
“That’s the spirit!” Jacob yelled with sarcastic motivation.
“You’re a pain in my ass, Jacob.”
“You love me for it.”
“Like a mailman loves a pit bull.”
She hung up the phone and threw her head down on her folded arms. Fifteen minutes ago I wasn’t sure five was possible. How the heck am I going to get to seven? A hopeless ache started to grow in her stomach.
“Hard first day?”
She opened her eyes and picked up her head to see James peering in the door. She rubbed at one of her eyes, remembering she was neither alone nor in the world she had just created for herself.
“Oh, hi. Sorry. No, not so bad at all! All good.” She added in a thumbs-up. “All good” was such a useful phrase. People rarely pressed for further information after it was said. She wondered when she had started saying it. Probably in high school, she thought. It was so much easier to use those two words than explain all her protests and rallies to friends, who really didn’t want to hear about global warming or Iraq anyway.
“Glad to hear it! Have some coffee! We have great coffee here.”
“Will do. Thanks so much.” She turned back to the Excel file and added ten more blank lines. That was her sole accomplishment for a solid hour. She simply couldn’t get her head around the challenge.
By six that evening she still wasn’t sure seven million was humanly possible, much less probable. The buzz of a private number calling on her phone was a welcome distraction. Adams, she thought with a smile. He had been calling all day with things he had “forgotten” to ask her before she left. The familiarity of his voice was a comfort. Plus the questions were easy.
But when she picked up the private number this time there was a silent pause on the other end of the line.
“Hello?”
“Hey, babe.”
Olivia smiled, recognizing the governor’s voice but not the familiarity, as embarrassment caused her face to flush.
“Hi.” Silence filled the line as she sat nervously awaiting her boss’s words. Just the sound of his accent excited her in a way she couldn’t help but admit was more than professional.
“So.” He paused. “Jacob thought I should call and make sure we hadn’t scared you off this weekend.”
Olivia made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh or a snort.
“I know.”
He seemed to have a bizarre understanding of the sound she didn’t comprehend herself. Did that mean there really was something odd to what had happened?
“Wait. Did you—?” She wasn’t even sure what she was asking him. “Did he—?” Stop it. Nothing happened, she repeated to herself again, annoyed that she needed so much reminding of such a simple fact.
“He was worried Yanni and the party did it.”
“Oh, no. I wasn’t. It was fine.” She laughed awkwardly, wishing she had a clue what he was thinking. And wishing, a little bit, that she hadn’t been totally off base. That there was something more meaningful to his coming into her room than a casual accident.
&n
bsp; “It probably should have,” he said with a touch of introspective humor. “So we’re still okay? You’re not scared off?”
“I’m not scared off. I mean the numbers are a little scary, but when it comes to you guys, I’m good.” She tried to lighten her tone.
“Are they realistic?” Word of the budget had swerved him immediately into business mode.
“Well, yes,” she said, a bit unsure and unprepared to talk about it. “I mean, they’re high. Really high. But campaigns know no other way I guess. I think if they were too realistic I’d be more worried. We need to make a splash, right?”
“We need to show massive numbers for this to work, but more than that we need to not be surprised. If you can’t get them, I need you to speak up.”
Olivia thought about speaking up right then and there and then quickly thought better of it. The force of his voice jarred her into a memory of being in school and needing to have the right answer. “Okay. I know.”
“Look, this campaign is about to expand by the minute,” he said. “We’re making decisions now based on the budget. Huge decisions—media-buy projections, consultants. Once we go down this road, there’s no turning back. We can’t change the budget halfway through.”
Suddenly the numbers in front of Olivia that she had stared at all day became objects of even more intense trepidation. She was responsible for people’s salaries and, more importantly, for whether or not those people would be able to do what they needed to win Iowa. Iowa. A huge national event that could determine the presidency was suddenly a tangible item on her scribbled to-do list.
“I put together the start of a plan today.” She didn’t tell him it was for two million off his goal. It was a big exaggeration. A lie maybe. But how could she not? “We can get there. I know we can. I can do this.” The last sentence fell out of her mouth, but she said it more to herself than to him.
“You can do this, Olivia. It’s going to be harder and bigger than anything you’ve done before and I’m going to push you more than you think I should sometimes. But it’s because I know you can do this. You know, when I played football in college, there were a bunch of different trainers and everyone avoided this one guy, Barry. Barry always put twenty more pounds of weight on you than you could handle. He was tough and he made you feel like you were at the bottom of a ditch. But he was always my favorite. It’s the guy who adds twenty pounds to your bar who really believes in you, who pushes you to be not the best you think you can be, but to be even better. That’s who you want setting your goals.”
Olivia exhaled, a bit speechless, as he continued on. Her inappropriate thoughts seemed to slip away. This was Landon Taylor—the governor she’d studied, the politician she idolized. And he believed in her. Not because he thought she was pretty or because he liked her smile. Because he knew she could do the job.
“That’s who I’m going to be for you. I’m going to add the weight, but only because I know you can handle it. I see something special in you. I’ll be there spotting you. But you’re not going to need me.”
“I won’t let you down,” she pledged, as if she were joining the army.
“I know you won’t.” His words carried a sweet confidence. “What I do need though is for you to tell me if we’re not on track. I need to know you are on the numbers, that you’re keeping us on track to get to where we need to be. I need to trust you to be the person who will give it to me straight. It’s an unfortunate truth, but money is the gas of this campaign. We need good parts and a good body, sure, but without gas we won’t go.”
“Okay.” Olivia spoke with apprehension. For the first time since the Hamptons she was concerned only with the job at hand.
“And hear me when I say this, please.” His “please” sounded like more of an order than a nicety. “I can change the budget early in the game, but I can’t change it last-minute, so if we’re not hitting our numbers, you have to tell me as early as possible.”
“Okay.” She was responsible for the numbers. She would have other superiors, but at the end of the day, she was reporting to Governor Taylor.
“We’re going to do a finance committee meeting soon, right?”
“Yes, sir. Two weeks from tomorrow.”
“Two weeks? That’s soon.”
Way too soon, Olivia wanted to scream. She had begged Jacob for more time to get herself organized, but he had put it in motion before she filled out her W-9 and refused to change it. It. A national finance committee meeting. Most campaigns did two, maybe three, of these in an entire election cycle. They were gatherings set up to woo and motivate the most important donors. For the Taylor campaign, it would be a day in Georgia, complete with a full briefing on the campaign budget, run by Olivia. There would be presentations by Billy and Jacob, as well as their pollster, Richard. Aubrey would be organizing a lunch at one of the Habitat sites.
Terrible reasoning, Olivia had told Jacob when he explained that they had to have a finance committee meeting early because the ball was already rolling. Still, she couldn’t argue too hard about the schedule before she even had a desk. She had planned to bring it up with him again this very day but then had gotten sidetracked with the goal change.
“Yes, it is.” She spoke without a hint of the concern she felt. “But Jacob and I talked in depth about it. We already have good people confirmed to attend, and I’ll be on the phones to get everyone else we need there. We need to hit the ground running anyway, and it gives me a good excuse to introduce myself to people and get to know the group. I always like an extra reason to call and harass people.”
She regurgitated all the reasons Jacob had given her when she had argued against the time crunch. As she spoke, she found herself becoming more and more committed to making it work.
“Yeah,” the governor said in agreement. “That sounds smart.” He left an awkward silence on the phone. She tried to think of something intelligent to say, but he continued on. “You’ll be ready?”
“I’ll be ready.” By the time they hung up the phone, Olivia had taken full responsibility for the meeting in her own mind. She could do this. It didn’t matter that she had never done anything so big before. Nor did it matter that she wasn’t sure how to do it. She was never the smartest kid in the class, never the most talented on the soccer field, but she could always come out on top. Sure, she wasn’t the very best at anything, but she could work hard enough at anything to be damn good at it. Her talents, as she saw them, weren’t innate. They were earned.
“You just set your mind to it.” She heard her mom’s voice in her head. The same voice that encouraged her to try out for soccer in high school even though she had never played in any organized fashion. “Keep your eye on the ball. With your determination, the sky’s the limit.” The coaches had called Olivia the “Rudy” of the team, letting her join not because she could play (they told her in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t very good), but because she had more heart than they’d seen in years. Sure enough, two years later Olivia had made varsity and all-county. The sky’s the limit, she repeated in her head. I can do this.
EIGHT
The morning of the finance committee meeting, Jacob sprang out of bed at five fifteen a.m. He had never been an early riser, but the hours of sleep he needed seemed to lessen with the campaign’s every passing day. He opened his laptop and began reading over the briefing Olivia had sent two days before. He scrolled down the list of expected attendees. All of their major players were coming as well as a handful of people Olivia was bringing into the campaign. He had worked the phones hard getting people committed to attend, all with a lingering feeling that he shouldn’t have pushed this meeting on Olivia so soon. The meeting needed to run smoothly. They would all be there—the BSDs, the DFTLs, even a few of the SWs, or Starving Wives, all of whom were starving for something, mostly money and food.
In all aspects of campaigns, but especially with fundraising, Jacob had learned, spin and momentum were the name of the game. Their poll numbers were starting t
o gel in Iowa and New Hampshire. He knew if he could get the influx of money he needed into Iowa early, they would win the caucus. It had become, to him, as simple as a mathematical equation. The best county captains and enough field organizers, fed sufficiently well and hanging up the right number of signs, would equal a win. He knew the data and the people. His candidate was hitting his stride. Now all he needed was the money to make it happen. If only the rest of his life could be this straightforward.
He scrolled down the pages to Olivia’s plan. She was about to tell all their biggest donors that her goal was for them to raise one million dollars by June 30. He shook his head with fear. She’s not going to be able to do that. She’s too young. The number is too high. They’re not going to take her seriously. The number was higher than he had even set out in his original budget. One million dollars in five-thousand-dollar checks in two months. She’s insane. Which is a problem since she was my idea. I should’ve never agreed to the seven.
His head immediately rushed to the worst-case scenario of their coming in under a goal they set out loud to a room full of people. And not just any people, their top donors. Even if they had raised a significant amount, a dollar less than the goal would signal something was wrong and could offset the race’s momentum. He was so lost in thought he didn’t even notice it was only five forty-five when he dialed Olivia’s number. Fortunately she didn’t notice either.
She answered with a chipper, “Morning, Jacob.”
He looked at his clock. “Ah! I didn’t realize it was so early. Sorry.”
“Totally fine, I haven’t been able to sleep a wink. They were kind enough to let me into the hotel restaurant even though it doesn’t open until six. They said I had to wait till six for coffee, but maybe they just thought they should slow me down because they saw my knee jittering already!”
Domestic Affairs Page 14
