by Alan Huffman
In the real world, where there is relative order to the archiving of records (even if they’re under lock and key) the challenge is most often to avoid getting lost in a documentary trance after reviewing hundreds of pages of tedious recountings while in solitary confinement. The most important details are sometimes found on antiquated, wheezing microfilm, in boring tax records, or hidden in the coded language of obscure memos. You have to really, really care what people are saying, and Michael and I do. Even so, we still find ourselves wondering, “Is anything happening here?” If the council members do something meaningful, will I even recognize it through the fog of bureaucratic language? It’s like being a reporter on the police beat, sleeping with a police scanner on your night stand; after a while, the chatter lulls you to sleep, and you wonder if you’ll even notice if something important goes down. But you always do. There’s a sudden shift in tone—in the syntax and cadence of the voices—that tells you something consequential is happening, even though the words may be generic and the tone deceptively flat. So it is with the subtly suggestive minutes.
Michael once researched a candidate whose seemingly minor legislative actions had had profound effects on his community. While serving on the city council, the candidate had voted against renewing a permit for a center that provided exercise classes for stroke victims, saying it was detrimental to the neighborhood in which it was located, despite being warned that denying the permit would violate the rights of the disabled. This, again, surfaced in the otherwise mundane minutes of the council meetings. The elected official’s response? “It looks like we’re playing favorites for some people.” Ignoring the needs of stroke victims may not seem like a significant transgression, unless you or one of your loved ones happens to be such a victim. Just because something seems uninteresting at first glance doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Sensational stories dominate the headlines, but history also unfolds on page 3B.
The New Jersey township and its mayor are uniformly bland, which puts me in good stead when it comes to forced fascination with the cop and the minute books, as well as with anyone else who might chance to walk through the door. The minutes are basically one long small-font testimonial to governmental minutiae that in all likelihood no other human being has ever read all the way through, and I alternate my bleary-eyed review with random surveys of my surroundings, which steadfastly refuse to produce anything of interest. I search, at regular intervals, for something remotely inviting to the eye, my gaze repeatedly landing on the same overwatered philodendron in the corner, its leaves wilted and edged with brown; the now-familiar plate glass windows, through which a Chevy Citation with mismatched hubcaps is partially visible; and the notices of garage sales and informational meetings about hazardous waste disposal posted by the clerk’s window. It’s like being stuck in study hall with a math textbook as a kid, staring out the window at the passing clouds with a level of interest that grows in inverse proportion to the slowly suffocating tedium of the numbers. Meteorology—now that’s interesting! Except that there are no clouds visible through the window. It’s just me, the cop, the minutes and the senseless despair of a neglected plant. There are also, I note, spiderwebs in one corner, where the walls meet the water-stained acoustic tiles of the ceiling, and at one point I realize that the Citation has inexplicably disappeared! How could I have missed its departure?
Before long, I’m spending most of my extracurricular time discreetly studying the cop, a stocky, youngish guy loaded down with crime-fighting appurtenances—a flashlight, a pistol, a radio, handcuffs and other curious, jangly things that on the occasion of our initial introduction I had been unable to adequately catalog without seeming suspiciously overinterested. I don’t know what it is about cops that makes me not want to seem suspicious when I’m doing nothing wrong. Why couldn’t I comfortably look over all the stuff hanging from his belt before we took our seats and the accoutrement disappeared beneath the table? Now I’m left only with occasional, furtive glances at his strangely placid face as he reads, at the radio mic pinned to his collar, at his name tag and his magazine, on the cover of which is a photo of a deer hunter encumbered with the gadgetry necessary for stalking and killing large herbivores.
Unlike the clerk, the policeman doesn’t seem to care what I’m up to as we while away the hours in the foyer of the township office, a place you’d not likely visit unless you had a problem with a water main or a marriage license, or were, like me, secretly researching the mayor. Owing to the circumstances, I feel obliged to limit my occasional dialogue with him to small talk, mostly about deer hunting, which isn’t easy when you have never actually hunted a deer. I strive to keep my deer anecdotes geographically nonspecific, aside from referencing the deer I’d recently encountered while jogging in a wooded preserve alongside a highway interchange. It helps that the cop seems content to keep our official hookup anonymous, too. The conversational conclusion we will reach, over the course of the day, is that there are too many deer, everywhere.
Midway through my review, after I’ve made no obvious moves to abscond with the minute books, the cop has become deeply engrossed in his latest hunting magazine and no longer looks up each time I tear tiny shreds of Post-it notes to mark pages in the record books for copying. Of particular interest to me are the notations recounting mayoral cameo appearances in the council minutes. Though the summaries are pretty general, and utterly devoid of conversational nuance, after the second reference I sense a pushiness on the mayor’s part as he urged the council to approve a contract for some infrastructure improvement. I can almost feel the electricity in the room as a certain council member, no doubt a perennial troublemaker who grows his own tomatoes, and talks about it, questioned whether the mayor’s recommended contractor was the best one for the job. I imagine the councilman raising one eyebrow as he spoke, eliciting an icy stare from the mayor, and I make a note to check the mayor’s campaign contributors to see if the contractor is listed among them.
It’s at this point, pretty late in the day, that the stasis is broken by the arrival of an interracial couple, walking hand in hand, who have come to the township office hoping to resolve a problem involving a marriage license. Finally, the township office seems poised to come to life. I listen with growing interest as they explain to the clerk the trouble they’re having in getting a marriage license, which, I should point out, does not appear to have anything to do with the fact that they are of different races. In fact, I mention their races only because by this point anything even minutely out of the ordinary is, quite simply, extraordinary. The cop, who is likewise bored, absently licking his thumb as he turns a page, also glances up at them. It becomes evident that the couple knows nothing about the process of getting married and that the license problem is bigger than the clerk is prepared to handle, so she summons the mayor, inadvertently providing me with an opportunity to observe my subject in action, unscripted and unaware.
I’ve been in the area for three days already and so far haven’t found much that’s of use for the campaign or even for my own entertainment. The former is obviously my priority, but to come up empty on both counts is hugely disappointing. There are some interesting vistas in this part of the New Jersey–Pennsylvania border country, and some cool bridges across the Delaware, and beyond the more densely populated areas the people are agreeable in an unpretentious, blue-collar way, with an obvious appreciation for bad local pizza joints where everyone knows their name. But it’s mostly miles and miles of houses clad in vinyl siding, toll roads and, in the comparatively fortunate areas that have access to on- and off-ramps, a predictable succession of chain hotels, Burger Kings and shopping malls. To give you an idea of how the locals do not spend their time, when I stopped at my hotel’s front desk one morning, dressed in my jogging togs, and asked the receptionist if she could recommend a running route, she looked at me blankly and said, “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you mean.”
All that’s left, after a long day of doing research in such a place, is either to retire to your
hotel room or drive across the eight-lane highway to the Chili’s bar to watch whatever game is on TV. I do not really follow sports, though I’m easily mesmerized by movement on the screen, and in such situations I must concentrate on keeping up with the score and the names of the teams in case someone saunters up to the bar and asks a challenging question such as, “Who’s winning?” It’s embarrassing to appear to be watching a game on TV and not even know who’s playing. Likewise, it’s humiliating to spend three days doing intensive research in a small town and come up with nothing of value or interest. You know there has to be something there. There’s almost always something there.
So when the mayor emerges from his office I’m all eyes and ears. I listen, with growing disappointment, as he responds to the couple’s interrogatories and entreaties with seeming empathy. He’s actually quite solicitous, and seems to share in the prospective groom’s bewilderment over the fact that the marriage license fee is greater than the cost of filing for divorce, which strikes the prospective groom (and me) as unreasonable and illogical. The mayor offers no explanation for the difference in fees but advises the couple to speak with the judge about the procedures for getting a license. He then gives them the judge’s name and even looks up the phone number, which seems to satisfy them. After the groom-to-be makes a few rambling closing remarks, the couple exits through the cracked plate glass door. The cop and I exchange a glance, which basically says, “I saw that, and I guess you saw that,” and return to our respective reading materials. The mayor looks at me as he leaves the room, though he doesn’t seem particularly interested. In the bound volume that lies accusingly before me, the township council adjourns for the day.
Back at my hotel room that night, I go through copies of the mayor’s campaign finance reports and find that the contractor he had pushed the council to use is there, as are numerous other contractors for whom he oversaw the awarding of comparatively lucrative contracts, which could indicate a conflict of interest. It might not have been that bad if the contractors had adequately done their jobs, but that wasn’t the case, as was evident in the notations in the minutes regarding recurring infrastructure problems that kept popping up long after the contractors had supposedly finished.
As the abuse of political power goes, what happened in the tiny township was a small thing. A few contractors contributed to the mayor’s campaign, got some work out of it and ended up doing a crappy job. But it represented a failure of government that manifested itself in the failure of concrete sidewalks. Should an old lady carrying her groceries home from the store have the misfortune to trip on a buckled sidewalk and break her collarbone, it would be possible to trace the nexus of the episode to the minute books.
The same was true of the midwestern councilman’s vote against permitting a center designed to aid stroke victims. The vote was buried in the minutiae of the minutes, and at first glance might have seemed innocuous, sandwiched between votes on unimaginably boring inside-government activities, and shrouded in sleep-inducing language about property values and the like. But if you look closely, you don’t have to be a stroke victim to recognize that the guy has his own agenda, and that, in this case, it doesn’t dovetail with the greater public good. Likewise, the congressman who worked for a business that made millions by relying on Chinese labor, rather than the employment force in his home state: Who, precisely, would such a representative represent?
Because all politics is local, the abuse of the system in the tiny Jersey township illustrates a problem we see across the nation, a problem that is cumulative in scope. The same type of systemic abuse that results in poorly built sidewalks in an out-of-the-way township resulted in the failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Small opportunities lead to larger opportunities; small abuses tend to escalate. It’s all just a matter of scale.
Chapter 8
Michael
Standing about five foot five, she’s a manly woman, troll-like in many ways. And though she might very well reside under a bridge, she works in a local government office in Missouri. From the expression on her face, we can tell this is going to be unpleasant—a trip to the dentist and a prostate exam wrapped into one.
“And what am I going to do for you today?” she asks in a voice that is irritating, frightening and tiring all at the same time.
It’s only Tuesday and it’s already been a long week of research. All I can manage is to look at the floor and whisper to Alan, “You do this, please. I just can’t.” The reason I can’t is because I know that the request we’re preparing to make is going to unleash an unpleasantness so great in scope as to leave only two options: run away or get beaten to death in front of a legion of bureaucrats who might very well join in the bloodletting.
In another situation, it could have been Alan asking me to handle the troll. But I know he’s irritated already at having earlier had lunch at a chain restaurant. Alan hates chain restaurants and has been known to drive all the way to another city to avoid them. Don’t ask me why that is, but I suspect when he leaves this Earth, his obituary will read: “In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to any restaurant that has no more than one location.” One formulated burger and he’s ready to rumble.
“Yes ma’am,” Alan says slowly. “We’re going to need to look at all the campaign finance reports for these individuals.” He slides her a piece of paper with the names we’re looking for as I stand to the side, nervously sipping a bottle of water. She stares at it for a moment and then asks how many years’ worth of reports we want.
“All of them,” Alan says, standing firm in preparation for the aftershock.
Of all the documents we examine during the course of a campaign, finance reports—the listings of the individual contributions received by a candidate and the expenses of the candidate’s campaign—are often the most voluminous. They’re important because they can unveil donors who may have questionable relationships with the candidate, or special interest groups with positions and agendas that might cause voters to question or reconsider their support for a candidate. They reveal the sources of a candidate’s money, from friends and neighbors or from giant foreign corporations that spill millions of gallons of oil into American waters. They are important and they can number in the thousands of pages.
The puckish clerk repeats Alan’s answer as if she didn’t really understand it the first time, then stares back at the names.
“We’re talking nearly twenty years’ worth,” she says as if this fact might change our minds.
“Yes, we know it’s a big request, but we’re going to need to see them,” he says.
“Well, before I can even look at this, you’re going to have to fill out this form,” she shoots back. “And then I’m going to have to talk to my supervisor.”
As she shoves the lengthy, and mostly useless, request form into Alan’s chest, her voice becomes even more agitated and strained. She tells us that we can’t just walk into her office and ask for something that might take her all day to find. After all, she says, she has work to do. And even if our request is approved by higher powers, don’t we know that she’d have to find a dolly to haul it all out here?
I manage to just keep my mouth shut this time, but Alan can’t. “Isn’t this your job?” he asks as he waves his hand in a circular motion in front of her face. “Isn’t helping people who need public records what you do? I mean, we’ll be glad to help you roll that dolly right on out here.”
I choke on the mouthful of water I’ve just sipped in my attempt to keep from laughing. The lack of air coupled with the flames shooting from our clerk’s eyes keeps me in check. Everyone has met someone like her. She’s one of those people who, out of a sense of entitlement and stubbornness, insists on driving in the left lane without passing, bottlenecking traffic because she can and always pretending she doesn’t see you. She’s the person in front of you at the Subway sandwich shop who painstakingly orders every possible extra and every possible condiment on her foot-long, all while quizzing the sandwi
ch maker about the caloric intake of each one, oblivious to the ten people waiting behind her. Yet question her actions or inconvenience her in any way and she will cut you into bite-size morsels and chew you up.
Difficult people are a big part of opposition research. Unhelpful government workers with an automatic “no” reflex are very common. Time and again, they stand in your path: people determined to avoid doing any work by thwarting your very best efforts. You enter the records office, the workers are seated at their terminals, perhaps eating pasta salad from a Tupperware container or talking on the phone to a blabby family member, and no one looks up. “Excuse me,” you say, and finally one person, likely the most recent hire, grudgingly makes eye contact. You tell her what you’re looking for. She says you’ll have to officially request that information. You’ll have to fill out the form. You say OK.
She rises slowly from her desk and shuffles to the counter. When she sees what you want she says, “That’s in the archives.” She lets you think about this. Maybe you’ll say, “Oh, OK, sorry,” and leave. When you don’t leave, when you say nothing but don’t move, she adds, “It would have to be retrieved,” as if your request is still, at this point, contingent on some as-yet unproven theory, the implication being that this would be a very big deal. You say, “OK, retrieve it.” She asks if you’re aware that there is a retrieval fee, which can be as much as twenty dollars, plus one dollar per page to copy, and that it could be hundreds of copies, and that the very retrieval process itself could take up to three days. She makes it sound like an impossibly time-consuming and expensive proposition—the public records equivalent of a manned space mission with no guarantee of a successful return to earth. “No problem,” you say. She looks at you as if you’re evil.
The only way around such difficulties, aside from finding an alternate clerk, is the seemingly useful public access computer. Such terminals have been installed in courthouses across the country, ostensibly for your convenience, but also to lessen the burden on the employees who would otherwise have to help you. Yes, they contain the information you’re likely looking to find, but be warned: Trying to operate some of them can result in intense cranial discomfort, trancelike spells, loss of hair, embarrassing crying jags and recurring nightmares. These computers are usually set off by themselves in some corner of the offices that house them, banished from normal functioning society. No matter what you do or how hard you try, you’ll likely never understand how to use them and, in the end, the clerk whose time was supposed to be saved by these technomonsters will be forced to come over and help you anyway.
