Miranda's War

by Foster, Howard;

  He walked out with the aide and the door to the Governor’s office was closed immediately behind him. The Governor pressed another button on a panel on the side of his desk facing the wall and a silk-screen image of Michael Dukakis rolled down over John Adams. He pressed a button on his phone and told his political director to come to his office immediately. Jim Estefan, a lean, worked-out twenty-nine-year-old from Miami, came in a minute later.

  “Sit down please,” said the Governor, and pointed to the sofa to his right. “Would you like a vitamin water?”

  “Yes Governor, cherry pomegranate please.”

  The Governor rotated his chair around to a small refrigerator and pulled out two plastic bottles. He tossed one at his aide.

  “Can you believe this bitch in Lincoln?” said the Governor.

  “I’d call her a cunt.”

  The Governor laughed.

  “I never understood these people. They should all be like her, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They don’t complain about the regulations, the taxes. It’s like complaining is for mere mortals,” said the Governor. “I guess something like this should have happened a long time ago.”

  “You carried those towns, Governor. They like progressive independents.”

  “I know, but deep down, aren’t they really like her, conservatives who want someone like her to come along and raise hell on their behalf?”

  “I don’t know anyone who lives there.”

  “I don’t either,” admitted the Governor. “I’ve known some WASPs, but not well enough to understand what they really think politically. They lost control of this state a long, long time ago.”

  “How would she even know about this anti-snob zoning bill?” asked Jim. “There hasn’t been a hearing.”

  “It’s very shrewd. It plays right into her agenda.”

  “Should we try and get Tom Ramirez to withdraw the bill?” Jim asked, referring to the state representative who had introduced it.

  “He’s from Lawrence, very blue-collar Hispanic city. I got killed there,” said the Governor. “I can understand why this might help him there. I asked him an hour ago how much he really cares about this bill. He said he knows it won’t pass but he likes to tell his people in Lawrence that he’s making the rich pay their fair share. He said, ‘Oh, you mean somebody read my bill?’”

  “I said, ‘Yeah, a woman in Lincoln is terrified.’ And he said, ‘Tell her thanks for paying attention to my bill. Nobody else does, and where the fuck is Lincoln?’”

  “So let’s ignore it.” Jim advised.

  “Did you see that video of the town meeting?” asked the Governor. “She’s very good. She prepared that video about her opponent, and the town ate it up. I wish I had her doing commercials for me.”

  “Governor, political people produce effective commercials all the time.”

  “You’ve got two very smart people, her and Steve Rokeby. He’s very tapped in to the municipal bond market. If he wanted to hurt the state, he could.”

  “This is a Republican primary for a Congressional seat. Leave it alone.”

  The Governor pressed a button on his panel and one of his favorite John Coltrane jazz numbers played in the background.

  “I was elected because I’m an independent. I’m supposed to lance the partisan boils.”

  “What does she want?” asked Jim.

  “She wants more than stopping this bill. It wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “We know what Rokeby wants.”

  The Governor nodded. “Find out what she wants.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  That night Stephen’s new commercial aired. The image of him and his wife taken in front of their Victorian appeared as the words “Republican primary Tuesday” flashed on the bottom of the screen like a CNN news crawl. It was only twenty-two seconds and did not mention his opponent or that he was running for Congress in the Third District. It was intentionally vague and subliminal; communicating what Miranda insisted was the key theme, the human desire of every person to fight for the territory of his or her group. It was Sociology 101, she said over and over, in his campaign office, on the phone and in emails. Nothing more was needed—no other positions on issues, no more details and absolutely no backtracking when he was under attack. He was to stand with their towns and let sociology work its will. It aired hourly on the Financial News Network at a fraction of the cost of the mainstream networks. Miranda also placed ads in the online newspapers of each of the six towns in the district that had snob zoning. The entire ad buy cost $22,000.

  “I like it a lot. I didn’t even need to raise more money,” he said over thin-crust pizza in his office.

  “It’s stealth warfare. They might not even know until it’s too late,” said Miranda.

  “People talk. Cronin-Reynolds’ campaign is going to find out tomorrow.”

  “They’ll hear about it and say, ‘So what? One thirty-second ad.’”

  But she knew it was uncertain. Was Cronin-Reynolds a worthy opponent or inept at gauging opinion, like Karl, or just too inert to act, like Archer?

  Stephen went to his computer to reread a strategy memo prepared by one of his consultants about this exact tactic: could a message be contained? He found it on the “Memo” drive, double clicked the document title, but nothing opened up. Instead, he saw a message under a red triangle: “ACCESS DENIED.” He tried opening other memos and the same message appeared.

  He went to the office where Miranda had installed herself and she waved him away. She was on the phone. He took a seat and waited. Realizing he wasn’t leaving, she wrapped up her call with a town coordinator in one of the six towns.

  “I see you’ve taken over the campaign computer network.”

  “Oh I’d hardly call it that.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I’ve walled off documents from the old regime and played around with some of the data. It’s to keep us on message.”

  “I want you to restore access to my memos. I paid for them. I want to look at them.”

  “That will only confuse matters.”

  “You can’t run this place! I’m the candidate.”

  She walked over to him and put her hands on his shoulders, looking down with the determination of Margaret Thatcher and the grip of a woman who’d done this before. “You make your choices in life and you take the consequences. There is no looking back.”

  A few minutes later she handed him a schedule of events for the next day, all in the six towns, emailed a cc to Justin and announced she had to leave shortly for a tennis game.

  “Are there any questions about tomorrow?” There were none.

  She checked her voicemail. A reporter from Boston’s Channel 3 called about their commercial, wanting to arrange an interview with the candidate for the evening news. She deleted the message and left the office.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ann Cronin-Reynolds was barely able to walk through the throng in the lobby of her Framingham campaign office. Her staffers and their volunteer assistants encircled her the moment she darkened the door. There were new endorsements, new record-setting contribution totals, events to get on the schedule, fundraisers and constituent services for people in her state Senate district that she had represented for eight years. Her gaze was like a headlock. When she turned to a questioner and looked him in the eye, a decision was going to be made. She had realized long ago that to survive as a Republican in a Democratic district, she had to do things for people and drop the party label. They came en masse and she did not disappoint. Every request was taken in, the requester, the questioner, the aggrieved person who needed her to do something, all were made to feel welcome and special. Women were always given pet names like Smiles and New Mom, and if she really liked them, “terribly skinny.” Men were always “incredibly hardworking” or “whip smart,” unless they were abusive or harassing to women, and then they would become “menacing.” There were a lot of menacing
men in the work world, and she wanted to expose every one of them.

  She remembered every name, birthday, bar mitzvah, graduation, first communion, and email greetings were constantly going out. The unemployed and underemployed came to her in droves. Her Senate office was a de facto job fair center where employers were matched with potential employees before jobs were listed on the Internet. She personally called every employer after the interviews her office had arranged and made a pitch for specific candidates and often would not take no for an answer. If they weren’t hiring her constituents, then she was going to put them on a de facto “watch list” where every move the company made was monitored by her staff for legal infractions of any sort. This was dangerously close to extortion, and some local employers had let it be known her intervention was crossing the line. But her constituents loved it. Everyone seemed to know someone who’d found a job through Ann’s heavy-handed intervention.

  She had a distinctive look framed by coiffed red hair and black half glasses, the type of Irish but assimilated face one saw all over New England’s affluent towns. She dressed well and with her own style, a mix of Max Mara and European chic that she ordered online from Ann Taylor and even Milan. Men stared at her, even some who were on her shit list, and women asked her about her clothes. She knew her way around the working-class barrooms in her district as well as the upscale wine list at the Bedford Inn, where she dined with her husband, Eric, a pediatrician, every Thursday at 7:00 at the same table. They were sometimes joined by their daughter, Jennifer, a twenty-three-year-old CVS store manager who was raped one night leaving work. A pregnancy resulted, and after the abortion, Jennifer wrote a five-part account of the crime, her treatment by local police and the decision not to have the child, for The Boston Globe. She became a local celebrity, frequently quoted on issues affecting single women, and in her blog, attacked Mitt Romney as “seemingly supportive of our lifestyle choices, but in the end, unable to accept us as part of a management team.” Republicans were furious; her mother didn’t care.

  Annie, as she was known to thousands of constituents, couldn’t walk down any busy street in her Senate district without getting stopped by supporters. Drivers honked at her, and when possible she hollered personal greetings through her open car window.

  She had faced only one opponent in a Republican primary. Two years ago an unknown tea party conservative from Southborough had drawn 30% in a dull race with a low turnout. Her four general elections had all been hotly contested, and she had never won more than 54%. The Boston Globe called her the most natural Republican politician in the state after Scott Brown. Speculation that she would run for the open Congressional seat began the day the incumbent Congressman’s health deteriorated. The Republican National Committee pressured her to give up her state Senate seat to run and poured in money.

  She actually called Stephen about three weeks into the race when it was clear he was no threat to her. She told him what he already knew, that he had no chance of beating her and if he took it all the way to the primary he’d burn a lot of bridges with the state’s small Republican base of contributors. She made him an offer: drop out and she’d endorse him in the primary for her Senate seat. He thought about it overnight and realized he had no desire to be a state legislator. Even if he did, it would be seen for what it was, a deal to get him out. There was something about her manner on the phone that annoyed him. She was too forward about her ambition and too used to getting her way.

  “Is that the iPad 2?” she asked Tim O’Brien, one of her volunteers, on returning from an appearance. He looked up at her, feeling a bit intimidated, and confessed it was a Samsung tablet.

  “My daughter has the 2, says she loves it. She’s one of those people that waits in line every time they release a new product. I guess you don’t run with the hip crowd, Tim.”

  “Guess that’s true, Senator. I can’t afford to.”

  She laughed and moved on with a quip or a question for almost every volunteer. As she walked to her campaign manager’s office, the staff stepped out of their cubicles to talk. She gave everyone her undivided but fleeting attention.

  “Did you get Jimmy Talon to fix your roof?” she asked her scheduler.

  “He wants $900,” came the response.

  “Is this a big job?”

  “He thinks it is.”

  “Get an estimate from Tony DeNapoli in Westborough. Then she pulled out her smartphone and in seconds rattled off his number.

  She sat at her cluttered desk and listened to her voicemail. There was a call from Governor Samuelson. He wanted to talk right away. She had not heard from him since last winter’s budget battle when he wanted her vote. She ended up giving it to him for a steep price—widening the access road to Saxonville Beach in Framingham. She returned the call immediately and was put through to an aide who told her the Governor would return the call within the hour. Where could she be reached? When he called back she was in the midst of talking to potential contributors on another line. Nobody was concerned about the primary. They just assumed she would beat the Rokeby kid with his infamous father.

  “Good afternoon, Governor, do you need my vote this week?”

  “I can’t afford it, but consider this, Ann. Stephen Rokeby might be a cloud no bigger than your hand, as the Bible says.”

  “Would you mind holding on so I can get my manager in here?”

  In came Bill Kaider, a thin twenty-three-year-old with bad skin but a person-by-person knowledge of every precinct captain in the Congressional district. The Democrats had dozens, the Republicans few.

  They talked about the zoning bill and how it needed to be managed.

  “Governor, am I right that it’s not even had a hearing?” she asked.

  “That’s right, Ann.”

  “I’ve never heard of it. I’ve got my ear to the ground.”

  She looked at Bill, and he shook his head.

  “It’s a whisper campaign,” the Governor continued. “The bill is just sitting there, and Rokeby’s telling them it’s about to be passed.”

  “And these people believe it?”

  “I think so.”

  “This is an educated district, Governor. I’ve represented Sherborn for eight years.”

  “How much time have you really spent there recently?”

  She looked at Bill and he held up three fingers.

  “I’ve made three appearances in Sherborn.”

  “And when was the last one?”

  “Oh I don’t know exactly, Governor. You know what it’s like. I do five towns a day. I’ve got people in every town. If this is an issue, they’re not telling me.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it’s not, Ann,” he said. His ultra-educated voice annoyed her. He sounded like a man who’d never walked a precinct. How he had pulled off his bizarre election mystified her.

  “I’m on it, Governor. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Get our Sherborn captain on the phone,” she whispered to Bill.

  Chapter Thirty

  Stephen ran the numbers from his office at Rokeby Capital. He was officially on leave until the campaign was over. But it was after 6:00 and his presence would not be noticed. In his absence, his partner Deborah Rourke was in charge. The information he needed on the firm’s volume of purchases of Massachusetts municipal bonds was still where it was when he had left. She was plowing their clients’ money into municipal bonds issued by the state and its subdivisions at a slightly increased rate, not enough to be noticed by the untutored eye, which is what he’d recommended before he took his leave. But more important, he went over the list of major bond purchasers published by the state. Knowing all the major players, he could organize a boycott in twenty-four hours and wreak havoc on the state’s ability to borrow. He printed the list and left quietly.

  Stephen started calling them from his cell phone as he drove home. They were open to a temporary boycott, at least until the November election, even if it angered the governor. He did some reading on the history
of boycotts later that night and as Miranda had said, they were tied up with the pride of social groups. Most of the fund managers didn’t live in the snob zoning towns, but they were part of the sociology of those who did.

  “What do you think?” he asked Alicia, as they sat in bed reading. “Is it extortion?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, I’m serious.”

  “You’re thinking like her now, grandiose schemes.”

  “They work. I’ve made $4 million in the last five years doing things my way.”

  “You have a good mind for analyzing P/E ratios. Let’s not get carried away.”

  “I thought the same way. You win an election by appealing to a district. And then I found out that I don’t appeal to the district.”

  “Why didn’t you know that going in?”

  “Because everyone lied to me. They told me I could do it. And I wanted to believe it. You should have told me not to do it.”

  “I did.”

  “I guess I wasn’t listening. I’m sorry.”

  He kissed her softly and played with her brown hair.

  “Go negative. Do what you have to do.”

  “I didn’t get in to lose.”

  “You thought you could beat Cronin-Reynolds by being fresh. Be fresh with a twist.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Miranda took her seat as the Chairman of the Conservation Commission. Her actual election to the position, unopposed, occurred in a quick special meeting the day after Karl’s resignation. When it was done they adjourned with nothing else on the agenda. Her first act that day was to sign the official notice of her election, by a vote of 5-0, and put it in the boxes of each of the Selectmen and the town clerk, then post it on the Commission’s page on the town’s website, and though it was not required, mail it to Karl.

  Tonight, though, was the first real meeting of the Miranda era. She savored a few minutes in the Chairman’s seat before anyone else arrived in the room, then tapped out an email to her list just minutes before the meeting began.