I realize my mouth is open and I shut it. I guess I expected there to be some sort of cover story, but Corey has just stated plainly that the Republican elites’ strategy is to deceive the base.
“Won’t voters realize Social Security is on the block whether or not we talk about it?”
“Catechism, Iz, catechism. Republican voters are really good at not knowing things they’re told not to think about. You don’t think Evangelicals, if they thought about it for even a second, would realize there’s another possible explanation for the ‘virgin birth’? And yet they don’t think about it for even a second.”
Which, oddly enough, sounds like something Imogen would say. Coming from a Republican strategist, it’s effectively a smoking gun. I’m wondering if I can get Corey to repeat all this on tape, though I’m not sure what I’d do with it. Maybe give it to the Modesto Bee or the local broadcast media?
“My advice,” says Corey, “is go with the tried and true: race. Which means security with a racial subtext. The Great DJT managed to expand race to sex and jobs, but you’re a beginner. I say stick with the traditional approach.”
“Security with a racial subtext?”
“Yeah. Welcome to Republican Messaging 101.”
It feels like I was bracing myself to force open a stuck door, only to have the door open just as I approach, sending me flying right through. I mean, race is where I want to be, but all this feels a little too easy. Clearly, some of Trump’s voters were racist; hell, some of them were white supremacists. Unsubtle race-baiting will appeal to that base. But I’m surprised Corey didn’t raise the issue of how this would play with the swing O-O-T voters, that he didn’t caution me about the need to balance the message to incite the base without turning off swing voters. Is it simply that he wants to play to the base, swingers be damned? Either way, it serves my purposes that it didn’t come up. It gives me latitude to really push the message, to cross that racial bridge-too-far.
15
Rubber Gloves
Thursday, September 6th, 61 days until the midterms
“I’m really not looking forward to heading back to Modesto tomorrow,” I say, watching the Nespresso machine turn a little aluminum capsule into a fragrant, crema-covered cup of joe.
“Yeah,” Imogen says, not even half listening, as she messes with her laptop at the kitchen island. “Come check this out. Oh, man. This is great!”
I pad over, mug in hand, to where Imogen is catching up on the news with her morning coffee. I peer over her shoulder at the laptop screen, where she has a YouTube video cued up.
She gives me the backstory, talking fast because her coffee has already kicked in. “Mike Reed and Sylvia Delgado were at the McHenry Museum at an event honoring Mamie Boyet, the Modesto philanthropist, last night. Mamie Boyet just turned eighty. Okay, there’s Mrs. Boyet at the head table, along with Mike Reed and Sylvia Delgado.”
Reed is seriously straight-arrow, white-bread. He’s a trim, early-thirties white guy with tidy brown hair, wearing a dark suit. He looks like a central casting federal agent. Delgado is a full-figured, handsome forty-something, wearing a stylish blue gown that looks good against her russet, reddish-brown skin, her dark hair swept up on the top of her head.
Imogen hits play and Sylvia Delgado ascends the podium to toast Mrs. Boyet. She’s a warm and relaxed public speaker. Her English is articulate and accent free, but she gives Spanish names the full trilled r, and the doble l’s are buoyant y’s. The message is clear: Delgado is a woman comfortable in multiple worlds. She talks about the first time she met Mrs. Boyet and about how Mrs. Boyet’s generosity changed the course of many Modesto lives, including Delgado’s own. Delgado, the daughter of a single mother who made her living cleaning other people’s homes, was able to attend Stanford University in part because of a Boyet Scholarship.
“I hope that I’ll have a new job soon, championing the needs of Modesto and California’s 10th Congressional District, as your new congresswoman. From house cleaner to the US House of Representatives, in a single generation, a dream that is possible because of the generosity of Mamie Boyet.”
It’s a slick bit of self-promotion masked as a toast to Mrs. Boyet. Delgado has the charm to pull it off. In the midst of the polite applause following the toast, a big guy with salt-and-pepper hair enters the frame, approaches the head table, and tosses a pair of yellow rubber gloves onto the podium.
He leans in to the microphone and, in a distinctive, faux South Bronx accent, says, “In case the new job doesn’t work out.”
There are audible gasps and a few sniggers from the assembled guests, but Delgado is unfazed. She picks up the gloves and puts them on, the bright yellow stark against her dark evening dress and brown skin.
“Why, thank you. I think it’s healthy that you can acknowledge the terrible mess Republicans, including your candidate Mike Reed, have made in Washington. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Fortunately, this Latina is ready to get to work cleaning up your mess and getting the country back on track.”
This earns Delgado a really healthy round of applause, and when the clip ends, Mike Reed’s face is frozen in the rictus of a fake smile.
“Look at his face!” crows Imogen. “Like, oh, this was just a joke, all in good fun. This wasn’t an attempt to delegitimize Delgado based on her ethnicity and gender. This is gonna come back to bite your candidate in the ass.”
“Reed’s not my candidate, but that was definitely my consultant, Corey Strutsky, who evidently felt no need to clear this stunt with me.”
“Seriously?”
I have her full attention now.
“Yeah,” I say, half ruefully.
“That guy is an asshole. Like grade A.”
“That’s his core competence, Imogen. And see?” I gesture at the laptop screen. “It’s already working for Delgado, and we haven’t even run our first ad yet.”
“God, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
16
It’s a Dangerous World
Friday, September 7th, 60 days until the midterms
Latest poll: Reed (R) 48%, Delgado (D) 32%, Undecided 20%
NBC/WSJ/Marist poll, conducted Sept 4–5, 2018
I’m waiting in RAPAC’s conference room for Corey to get off the phone so we can watch a draft of our first RAPAC advertisement. Given that Corey is conducting the phone call in the doorway to the conference room in his outdoor voice, as well as the fact that he is already ten minutes late to our meeting, I make no effort to disguise that I am listening to the call.
“You know what, Grady? Great political messaging needs to push the envelope. It needs to take risks to rise above the noise.”
It appears he’s talking to Dave Grady, Congressman Reed’s campaign manager, and my guess is they’re discussing the Rubber Glove Incident.
“Maybe the rubber gloves backfired. Maybe not. Maybe a lot of voters in California’s 10th Congressional District will give second thoughts to whether or not they want the kid of their cleaning lady, who barely speaks English and didn’t finish high school, running the country.”
Corey holds the phone away from his ear and the tinny outrage of Grady’s voice is audible, but I can’t make out the words.
“It’s called an independent expenditure campaign for a reason,” snarls Corey. “Being a pissy little campaign manager to a junior congressman from bumfuck gives you absolutely no power over me.”
“Yeah? Fuck you too.”
That apparently concludes Corey’s illegal coordination with Congressman Mike Reed’s campaign because he tosses his phone onto the table.
“What a self-righteous little shit,” Corey says as he throws his body into one of the conference room chairs, which creaks in protest. “I’ve known that guy nearly twenty years. We worked George W.’s re-election together in the early 2000s. Now he thinks he should be calling the shots? Says I better hope I didn’t hand Delgado’s campaign a bright yellow symbol on a silver platter. Lik
e Grady would know a symbol if it slapped him in the face.”
Seems to me Grady may have a point, but Corey’s not asking for my opinion.
“Grady likes to play all sanctimonious, but the dirt still has to get dug and the mud has to get slung. Good thing for Mike Reed we’re here to do just that. C’mon, let’s see this ad,” he says, as if he’s the one who’s been waiting to get to the matter at hand.
The ad begins with a frame of white text on a black background: “It’s a dangerous world.” The text fades into black, and a mishmash of images of terrorist attacks and the perpetrators are interspersed with images of Black Lives Matter rallies. The Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando and the mugshot of perpetrator Omar Mateen, the Boston Marathon bombing and pictures of the Tsarnaev brothers, the San Bernardino government building and pictures of Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, all with Black Lives Matter marches sprinkled throughout. The screen fades to black again with white text: “Who will keep us safe?” The ominous music changes and swells as the screen fills with images of policemen as well as members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, National Guard, and Border Patrol. All of them white, all of them men. The screen fades to text again: “Send someone to Congress who will work with President Trump to keep us safe.” And the final shot: “Vote Republican.”
I turn to gauge Corey’s reaction. He’s still staring at the screen, lips pursed in thought, although the screen has faded to black.
“Well? What do you think? Is equating Black Lives Matter with Al Qaeda too much? Is the black equals evil, white equals good too explicit?”
“What? No! I was wondering if maybe it’s too subtle, if maybe it doesn’t go far enough.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. Have you not been paying attention? The Great DJT equated Black Lives Matter with neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and his polling numbers didn’t budge. According to Steve Bannon, they tested all the racial stuff during the 2016 election, and none of it was a problem for Republicans. Seriously, none of it. So the risk isn’t that we go too far—the risk is that we don’t go far enough. If we don’t go far enough, it won’t have any impact and we’re just wasting money.”
“How much further could we go?” I ask. “I’m scrambling here. What would that look like? Like would we put the pictures of the African American kids shot by police, like Tamir Rice and Michael Brown, in with the terrorists, and the police officers who shot them in with all the other white men who will protect us?”
I realize my voice is climbing and come to an abrupt stop. Corey stares at me, and I wonder if he’s noted the outrage I couldn’t keep out of my voice at the unarmed African American children gunned down by the police. I can feel the color rising in my face.
“Huh,” he said. “Let’s get Darryl in here and run it by him.”
He doesn’t bother to get up; instead he scoots on his wheeled conference room chair until he can reach the conference room door, opens it, and bellows, “Darryl, we need your eyes on somethin’. Got a minute?”
Darryl saunters in and I start to set up the ad, but Corey interrupts. “Iz, just let Darryl watch it and form his own opinion.”
Darryl takes a seat and we roll the ad again. Darryl watches the screen, and we watch Darryl. His face is impassive throughout, though that’s not unusual. On the rare occasions when Darryl expresses emotion, it tends to be in the minor keys: faint amusement, muted disappointment, sometimes a tinge of ruefulness.
When the video ends, his eyes swing from the screen first to my face and then to Corey’s, both of us leaning towards him, searching for a reaction.
Darryl says, “Okay.”
“‘Okay’? Just ‘Okay’?” I prod him. “Was it too black and white?”
“Oh,” says Darryl, his brow knitting for a second, and then, “No. I don’t think so at all. I think the black and white really worked, made it seem serious, documentary-like. Also, everything’s color these days, so the black and white will make it stand out.”
“I didn’t mean color photos versus black and white. I meant racially, was it too minorities-versus-Caucasians?”
Darryl looks confused. “Wait, weren’t those pictures of the actual guys who committed those attacks? I definitely recognized the Tsarnaev brothers. So it was terrorists versus armed servicemen or policemen, right?”
Corey, still leaning forward, says, “Tell him your idea, Iz. See what he thinks of your idea.”
I say, “We’re thinking about adding a couple of pictures to the dangerous world part, like Tamir Rice and Michael Brown.”
Darryl says, “Who’s Tamir Rice?”
I gape at him. “Twelve-year-old African American boy shot by white policemen in Cleveland? He had a toy gun?”
“Give it up, Iz,” says Corey. “You’ve already got your answer.”
Corey levers himself out of his chair and, standing in the conference room doorway, says, “Folks won’t recognize Tamir Rice or whoever the other one was—just try it as is.”
Darryl follows him out the door, asking about deadlines for filing our next financial statements.
I put my head down on the conference room table. ‘Who’s Tamir Rice?’ I feel like weeping.
I feel like I need to take a step back. That a racist bridge-too-far will drive voters like Darryl back into the Democratic fold is still just a theory, after all. There’s no reason not to have a Plan B.
Maybe I need to take another look at jobs messaging. If the reason Darryl voted for Trump was jobs, maybe what I need to understand better is why Trump’s jobs message worked. If I understand what converted Obama voters to Trump, perhaps I can reverse engineer messaging to convert Trump voters to Democratic ticket voters. I email Corey to schedule a sit-down about jobs and open a Word document to make an agenda for the meeting.
17
Paper Targets
Saturday, September 8th, 59 days until the midterms
“You’ve never actually fired a gun?”
Darryl’s dad took him hunting when he was a kid; he’s been around guns all his life. He believes some regulations are reasonable, like limitations on people who have mental health issues. That’s as far as we get in exploring Darryl’s perspective on gun control because Darryl gets stuck on what he believes is the most basic qualification for discussing guns: my direct experience (or lack thereof) with firearms. Darryl can’t believe I’ve never fired a gun. He believes this must be remedied immediately.
We head to Central Valley Shooting Range across from the Starbucks and Outback Steakhouse on Briggsmore Avenue. It’s housed in a long single-story stucco building with a red tile roof: standard issue California strip mall. The shooting lanes are cinderblock tunnels with tracks running down the ceiling. You secure the target in a clip that runs down the track to the back of the lane.
It’s interesting to see Darryl in this context. He’s the low man on the totem pole at RAPAC, and he’s a regular at the Branding Iron. But here at the firing range? He’s an expert. The guy working at the counter treats him like a respected colleague, and I get a 50 percent discount simply for being Darryl’s friend.
A pair of teenage boys, checking out as we’re checking in, greet him in unison with a “Hey, Mr. Gniewek” and offer up their paper targets for his inspection.
Darryl offers a suggestion to one. “Have Kyle check the sight alignment on that Glock. Looks like you’re not properly zeroed.”
Turns out Darryl teaches a regular gun safety class for Modesto youth. He runs through some gun safety rules for me, his voice steady and slow, making sure I’m with him. Always keep your gun pointed down range, keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot, never cross the firing line . . . Darryl makes a good teacher. Eventually he decides we’re good to go.
Shooting guns at paper targets sounds pretty ersatz—the grownup equivalent of Battleship or cowboys and Indians. But you wouldn’t know it from the way my body reacts. As I empty the clip in Darryl’s 9mm Ruger, I can
feel the adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Nazis have teamed up and are coming over the ridge. Darryl also has an AR-15 semiauto rifle, but we agreed the Ruger is the place to start. By the time we finish, I have rings of sweat under my armpits, even though the range is air-conditioned to a chilly sixty-five degrees.
Hitting the shooting range together has broken some kind of ice. Darryl and I linger on the curb in front of the building, chatting.
It feels natural to ask, “So, Darryl, I’ve been wondering what you thought about the Access Hollywood tape?”
“The Access Hollywood tape?”
“The tape of Billy Bush and Donald Trump, where Trump says, ‘You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.’”
“I played football in high school, Iz. What do you think? I’ve heard plenty of locker room talk.”
“Guys on your team talked about ‘grabbing pussy’? That’s kind of a weird phrase.”
Darryl pauses for a second, thinking about it.
“You know, I never thought about it before, but a lot of the ribbing was about being gay.”
“Gay?”
“Yeah. Like, ‘You gonna pick up that soap?’ or ‘Stop staring at my dick. Gay.’”
“Seriously?”
Can’t say I had this sort of conversation in the Stanford gym, so maybe it’s not a Stanford thing. Course, I didn’t play football. So maybe it’s just not a golf thing. Or a Stanford golf thing. I pause for a moment myself and try to imagine Tiger Woods saying to me, ‘Stop staring at my dick. Gay.’ I can’t manage it. It’s not because there was no homophobia at Stanford in the early 2000s. It’s more like the Stanford elite take themselves way too seriously to goof around that way.
“Yeah,” says Darryl, gaze lost in the middle distance over my left shoulder, still back in high school, in the damp, smelly confines of Modesto Catholic’s locker rooms. “There was some sex talk. But that was more the black guys than the white guys. And it was different, not just how much they talked about it, but also how they talked about it. The black guys were kinda more matter-of-fact. And more funny. Like, ‘Shorty wanted this dick.’ Or ‘That Sandy Hitchens rockin’ the yoga pants. I wanna bury my face in that. Don’t act like you don’t think that way.’”
Rules of Resistance Page 6
