Authors: Reed Sprague
Acting the part of a presidential press secretary, Dominici abruptly ended the conference. “That’s all we have time for, folks. Mr. Perez will make a statement soon enough. He will hold a news conference in Jacksonville day after tomorrow at six fifteen. Thanks for coming today.” Dominici receded into his house. One by one the reporters got into their vehicles and drove away, some laughing hysterically at what had just transpired.
Dominici wasn’t laughing because he knew exactly what he was doing. By having so many reporters at the conference at once, he had created a contest that no reporter present could afford to lose. Dominici knew from experience that the reporters risked a great deal if they wrote Perez off in favor of their chosen candidate, their messiah, Thomas W. Jennings. Their actions might bring them harsh criticism while at the same time giving Perez the coveted title of “underdog.” The reporters might also jump on board and challenge the traditional process of candidate selection, that of big–city ad–blitzing that citizens all over the country grew sick of long ago. Dominici had still gambled, though, that the media might simply ignore Perez. That would be the death of Perez’s candidacy. The most likely outcome would be a healthy competition among the members of the media to see who could be the first to bow to a new messiah.
Alex pried himself from his car and went to Dominici’s door. Dominici stood inside his home, a phone propped up on his left shoulder, held there by the downward pressure of the left side of his lower jaw bone. He was conducting yet another interview, this one with a nationwide cable news channel reporter who was doing a story about the projected balance of power in the U.S. Congress after the coming elections.
“Yes, hold on a moment. Mr. Perez is right here. Yes. I’ll put him on. I know, I know, I’ll fax his notes to you as soon as you’re done speaking with him. Okay, okay, here he is.”
Dominici placed his hand over his phone and told Alex that he was about to conduct an interview with a television news reporter. T’kina Hancock was a tough, no–nonsense reporter. He was a troublemaker. He lived to shake things up. The status quo — whoever that might be at any given time — was his enemy. Hancock relished the role. He thrived on contradictions, on surprises, and he was himself a walking contradiction. A black immigrant to the U.S. from Rwanda, who graduated from Harvard with two master’s degrees, political science and business, Hancock routinely blasted away at the status quo. He had many favorite victims, including kings and queens, modern–day messiahs, other chosen ones and various and sundry big shots from any of society’s halls of power.
No one in charge of anything escaped his wrath — the president of a particular union, the president of the U.S., the CEO of GM, the head of a college, the chairman of the board of the company that owned his cable news channel, liberal or conservative — he simply was known to go after anyone. Hancock demanded the right to be independent even to the degree that he had it written into his contract that he had the right, and the obligation as a professional journalist, to go after any person he chose. The clause even permitted him to go after anyone in the corporation he worked for.
Hancock’s viewers loved him. They watched his nightly show in droves. They were loyal, and most were, like Hancock, fiercely independent. They looked to him for solid information that was reliable and truthful.
As for now Jennings was the status quo. Perez was the challenger to the status quo, so he was automatically Hancock’s friend. At least for now. Hancock did not believe in political messiahship, either the media–made variety or those messiahs produced in the backrooms of the offices of the political parties, then packaged and sold as–is to the media. Hancock loathed the media and he worshiped the limited opportunities to expose them as lazy, incompetent and biased. Perez’s campaign just might have the potential to turn into one of those opportunities.
“What am I supposed to say?” Alex whispered to Dominici.
“Be yourself, but be damn smart. This guy will sense in a heartbeat if you’re weak. He’ll eat you alive if you are. But if you’re smart, and if you’re taking on the status quo, he might prove to be your best friend. Where are your notes?”
“What notes?”
“You told me the other day that you had taken notes from your talks with the people you met during your campaign. Where are they? I hope you’ve got them and I hope you’ve got page after page of them because I told Hancock that I would fax them to him.”
“They’re in my car, on the passenger seat.”
“Here, he’s waiting. Do the interview. I’ll go get your notes.”
Alex was indeed naive. He didn’t realize it, but he had a treasure trove. His notes were meticulous. Page after page. Very exact. He had talked with a broad and diverse group—housewives, widows, retirees, small business owners, mechanics, school teachers, farmers, farm workers, students, dock workers, college professors. He had dates and times and names and nicknames. He had recorded their exact requests for their next congressman. It was perfect for Dominici, both to demonstrate his candidate’s real motives to represent the people and their needs, and as a contrast to the huge amounts of money spent by Jennings for impersonal television ads and billboard space. The contrast would provide the drama needed to attract media attention.
Dominici returned to his house with the notes. Six legal pads—full. He carefully detached all the pages, placed them in the document feeder, dialed Hancock’s fax number, and pressed the Send button.
Alex did well in the interview. He didn’t say a bad word about Jennings, and yet he presented a clear alternative to Jennings. The interview was short, which was an absolute necessity. Alex answered all questions directly and honestly. Hancock received Alex’s notes on his fax machine. He was impressed. It was still three hours before he went on the air nationwide — his show was live from New York City at eight o’clock each weeknight — so he had plenty of time to research his subject for this night’s broadcast. And so he did.
Google, background checks for credit, criminal, sexual offender registry, alias names; all clear. Military service record, education & FBI employment checks. Everything verified. Then the show’s producers made phone calls to a random sample of those citizens written in Perez’s notes. The producers were impressed. It all checked out. Perez was the real deal.
For a rabble rouser like Hancock, the story was pure gold. Tonight’s broadcast would not only knock a messiah off a throne, but also expose the media for its woeful incompetence, laziness and bias. This candidate had been under their noses, and they hadn’t done a thing about it. Hancock’s producers were ecstatic. They could barely contain themselves as they waited for the show to begin.
Hancock knew that it had to go down tonight, though. He had to beat the news reporters who were at Dominici’s news conference that day to the punch. Dominici knew that Hancock would feel that way. Undoubtedly at least one of the reporters present that day would cover Dominici’s news conference on their station’s eleven o’clock news broadcast. At least one would run the story in the next day’s paper. Hancock would move to beat them to it.
Hancock decided to pull out all the stops to beat the other reporters. He decided to lead his program with the story and devote a full fifteen minutes to it. His coverage was more than Dominici could have hoped for. It was positive, all positive for Perez. Hancock bashed Jennings so that Dominici and Perez didn’t have to. He hammered the local Florida media for ignoring a “fully–qualified candidate” in favor of their “pre–determined person of royalty.” Dominici was still a political genius, and he still knew how to use the media and beat them at their own game.
The fact that Perez was unknown was the media’s fault, Hancock said. They were too lazy to get out from behind their desks and do the hard work necessary to find out about other candidates because “it’s easier for them to remain in their comfy air conditioned offices, sipping champagne with their gourmet lunches, and gobbling up every bit of dessert spoon fed to them by their anointed and adored candidate, His Holiness, Thomas W. Jennings.”
At one point, Hancock juxtaposed on a split screen giant expensive billboard ads posted all over Jacksonville proclaiming: “Jennings, Your Next Congressman,” with footage of the well–organized and meticulously hand–written notes taken by Perez during his door–to–door campaigning throughout the rural areas of the state’s third congressional district.
Hancock looked directly into the camera, “I’m speaking now to the people of the third congressional district of Florida, but I’m also talking to the entire country about how our political process should work throughout the U.S. On the left of your television screen you will see an example of the blatant arrogance of presumption on the part of Jennings—the presumption that people are stupid and will vote for him just because he announces that it is so, and just because his subjects in the media say that it’s so.
“On the right side of your screen you will see the results of the hard work of a person who wants to serve the needs of people. Perez is not being presumptuous, and he is not treating people as if they’re stupid. He is, instead, taking the time to do the hard work necessary to find out what their needs are, and he’s asking them if he can serve them rather than announcing to them that they may enjoy the privilege of his representation. You make the choice, because, now, as a result of tonight’s broadcast, you have seen that you do have a choice.”
As a result of Hancock’s broadcast, the television reporters who attended Dominici’s news conference earlier that day were forced to lead their eleven o’clock news broadcasts with a profile of “this fully–qualified candidate for Florida’s third congressional district.” To anyone who paid attention to such things, their reports came across as thinly–veiled attempts to thwart Hancock’s stinging rebuke. To the majority of voters, though, Perez was, quite simply, big news. He was a legitimate candidate.
Several reporters had planned to portray Dominici as a bitter has–been who was trying to mount an undeserved comeback and who was taking his wrath out on Litten and the boys to settle an old grudge. Those plans were scrapped. The reporters had no choice but to present Dominici as a viable campaign manager for a person who had every right to be considered a true challenge for Jennings. Not one broadcast mentioned that Perez was unknown.
Newspapers the next morning in Jacksonville and Gainesville contained stories about Perez on the front page. Jennings was old news. Either he was not mentioned or he was a footnote on the back pages. Perez was hot news now, and no reporter worth ten cents wanted to fit the profile given him or her by Hancock in his previous night’s broadcast.
“You have got to get over here. The phone will ring off the hook today, probably beginning at sunrise. We have to meet for at least an hour to talk about what you’re going to say. Then, we’ve got to plan for the news conference at six fifteen tomorrow night,” Dominici said to Alex.
“Dom, have you lost it? Do you know what time it is? It’s three fifteen in the morning. I liked you better before, when you were bitter and wanted to be buried face down so everyone could k—”
“That’s right. It’s three fifteen,” Dominici said, interrupting Alex in mid–sentence. “It’s time for you to hang up the phone, crawl into the shower, get dressed, grab a bite and get here no later than five.”
Alex arrived in Dominici’s living room at five o’clock. “Alright, here’s today’s drill. Yesterday at this time you were nothing. Today you’re hot news. The phones will go crazy. You will take or return all calls, but — do not forget this — you will save really important announcements for Hancock. He’s first. The others get crumbs when they call; Hancock gets full meals. Don’t forget that. You have to play his game. He single handedly brought you up from the mire, literally out of nowhere, in fifteen minutes last night. Make no mistake about it, though, he’s smart and he knows that you owe him,” Dominici instructed.
“Just leave out the other reporters?” Alex asked.
“They will eat the crumbs out of your hand like grateful little birds. Hancock has created incompetent media minions out of them. They hate you and Hancock for it, but they know the game. They lost a major round and they know it. So, as long as we can feed them crumbs while feeding Hancock full meals, we’ll do that. Don’t forget, Hancock’s show is seen each night by forty–two percent of cable and satellite dish viewers in this congressional district. Most of them believe in him and have no use for the established media here.”
“How did you figure all of this out so quickly?”
“I knew it all along. Get this straight, Alex: You will either use the media or they will use you. It’s that simple. Don’t worry, as long as I’m your campaign manager, we’ll use them. But you’ve got to listen to me. We can’t make a mistake.”
“By the way, Mr. Dominici, exactly when did you become my campaign manager? Who paid for the banner and the other expenses you’ve incurred? Who’s paying your salary?”
“You paid for the banner. Or, should I say, your campaign fund paid for it.”
“What campaign fund?”
“The one I established at the bank.”
“Where did you get the money to put into this account of mine?”
“Okay, look here, at the computer screen. Here is a list of your donors. It began small, but grew astronomically overnight.”
“Where did that initial deposit of twenty–five thousand dollars come from? There’s no name next to that donation,” Alex said.
“Never mind that. Look at the list of donors. Look at the broad support you’re receiving. It’s phenomenal. Look, this one’s for ten dollars. There’s one for twelve, fifteen, five, a hundred. We’re on our way.”
“How did you know how to do that? They didn’t do things that way twenty years ago.”
“You don’t survive fifteen minutes in politics unless you keep up with changes. I intend to last longer than fifteen minutes. I have to last at least until November 11,” Dominici said, as he coughed and hacked for several seconds before finally stopping.
“That cough is horrible,” Alex said, deeply concerned at the sound of Dominici’s respiratory system as it fought hard to expel one thing or another. “You need to get that checked.”