This year I was running against a woman named Catherine Hartwick, who was on the Board of Education for Carroll County. Bud Hawley and Tommy Hoffman had been the best candidates two years ago, and they had spent all their time destroying each other. The Democrats decided to avoid a primary fight this time, and were betting that a woman could beat me. On the surface she had a fair number of things going for her. The Democrats were big favorites of the education business and the unions, and they figured a woman would play better with the woman's vote, where I had historically done well. She was a MILF, too, which would do well with the men.
Under the surface they had a problem, in that she was a lousy candidate. She had maxed out her capabilities running for the Board of Education, and it must have been a weak slate that year. So far she had managed to piss off the Carroll County Board of Education by telling them they were too weak on the teachers' union, along with the teacher's union when she told them they were greedy. Both statements were true, but not exactly helpful. She had a truly God given talent for sticking her feet, both of them, in her mouth, and usually at the worst possible moment.
My job, as the incumbent, was to let her sink herself, without fucking myself over in the process. I needed to concentrate on constituent services back home, let Ms. Hartwick piss off the voters, and make the Contract with America the centerpiece of the national Republican agenda.
If anything, this time around the Contract with America seemed to be an even bigger deal than before, but that was probably because I was involved with it now and it just seemed bigger. I had prevailed upon Newt to bring the Senate in on things, which before he hadn't. The Senate had weighed in and quite a few Republican Senators were going along with it. Newt had lined up a bunch of Republican Senators who would sponsor the Senate versions of our ten bills. If we took both houses, we could slam all ten through and dare Bill Clinton to veto them all. He would veto some of them, but if we had enough votes, we could override him.
Don Nickles, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, had volunteered to sponsor the Senate version of the Defending the Second Amendment Act. He was definitely to the right of me on a bunch of issues, and this was one of my more right wing stands. John Danforth of Missouri was writing the Senate version of the Rebuilding America Act; he had been the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation prior to the Democrats taking the Senate in the '86 elections. He was actually a fairly moderate Republican, and although he was happy enough to go along with infrastructure improvements, he told me privately that some of what we were trying to do he didn't like. He wouldn't be voting for some of the bills in the Contract. He also warned me that this bill was going to be a major magnet for every Congressman and Senator with a taste for pork in his budget.
Maybe if we passed a line item veto, we could shave some of that pork out. That was up to John Boehner in his bill. We'd have to see.
To a certain extent, the Democrats knew we were up to something, and that Newt and the Gang of Eight were up to their ears in it. On the other hand, there wasn't much they could do about it. For one thing, one really gigantic thing, they were still being hammered by the House Bank scandal and the House Post Office scandal. The Postmaster for the House Post Office, Robert Rota, had pled guilty to three separate felonies. In turn, he had tattled on several Democratic Congressman, including the Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski. Ways and Means was probably the single most important committee in the House, and 'Rosty' was probably one of the three most powerful Congressmen in the country. Now, even though he was still around, he was a dead man walking.
As a result, the House Democrats were running scared. They were keeping their heads down and desperately trying to raise funds for re-election. Quite a few had announced their retirements, rather than lose in the general election. Mike Synar, of Oklahoma had already lost his seat in a contested primary, a practically unheard of event for a sitting Congressman! Newt actually had a white board up in the clubhouse with a running count of where he was expecting Congress to be at after November, and was practically gleeful at the prospect. The times, they were a-changing!
The girls turned ten that year, which they seemed to think was a big deal. We had to have a big pool party at the house, to which all boys were explicitly excluded! I rolled my eyes and laughed, and told Marilyn that I would take Charlie somewhere for the day. I told the girls, on the other hand, that I was going to bring over Charlie's old Cub Scout Pack and his new Boy Scout Troop, so that lots of boys would be around. They ran shrieking off to Mom, and she threw a dish towel at me. I told Charlie I'd rather face a House full of Democrats than a house full of little girls, which earned me a second dish towel. He laughed and agreed.
Charlie was growing up, too. He hadn't hit his growth yet, but I knew it would kick in sometime in the next year or so. He wasn't thirteen until October, and girls weren't on his radar yet. When they did come to his attention, though, Heaven help them! Charlie was a good looking kid, and while my tastes don't run towards men, I can tell if a fellow is good looking or not. I wasn't sure where his height would pan out, whether he would be taller or shorter than me (there's a big range in the Lefleurs, from about 5'8" to about 6'2" for the men) but he was blond, blue-eyed, and handsome. His build was fairly square and stocky, not at all like my slim and wiry frame. Now that he was getting older, he had taken to working out with me some mornings, and was doing a lot heavier weights than when I started out at thirteen. Whereas I had been a runner in high school, although not on the team, Charlie looked a lot more like a football player.
In fact, that was a real interest to him. Charlie was going into his first year at Hereford High School, which had football. Hereford Middle School hadn't. They also had basketball and wrestling and lacrosse. Much as I had discussed with my wife earlier, Charlie was showing signs of being a jock, not a nerd. In addition, Charlie was really getting big into the motocross events. When he had turned twelve, he had applied to and gotten his AMA (American Motorcyclist Association, the sport's governing body) card as a junior rider. Any victories he got were now going against an official scorecard, and earned him points in national standings.
It was kind of strange, but our little boy was becoming nationally ranked at this insane sport! Tusk Cycles had signed on as a sponsor and was now supplying his racing leathers and helmet (all festooned with their logo). He was still too young to race pro and earn money, but he could go to big league AMA affiliated tracks and race. He had moved up to an 85 cc bike now, which made an appalling racket and scared both his mother and me, but he loved it. He was really dominating the Maryland tracks he had been competing in, and we were now talking about trips to other areas. How we would schedule that, I had no idea. I assigned that task to him and Tusker.
Part of the reason we went along with this was a conversation I had had with my namesake, Bucky, last summer shortly after Carter died. Bucky was 15 at the time, and he told me he was giving up racing.
"You don't like it anymore?", I asked.
Bucky smiled and shrugged. "I like it, but I'm never going to be a real winner."
"What do you mean? You're just going to give up?" That didn't sound like the Buckman Tusk I knew.