We got into some incredibly personal details that afternoon. Do you do drugs? Have you done drugs? What types? When? Why did you stop? Have you ever hired a prostitute? Have you ever had a homosexual experience? Are you cheating on your wife? Have you ever had an affair? Has your wife ever had an affair? Do you have any movies or pictures of you or your wife naked?
Miller got into religion again. Where did I go to church? Nowhere. Marilyn and the kids were Catholic, and I was Lutheran. I would take them to Mass a few times a year, but I wouldn’t join a separate church. He grimaced at that, but a few looks from the others kept him under control.
Nobody seemed happy that I had joined a fraternity in college. All fraternities are sources of drunkenness and moral depravity. (’Hey guys, that was why I joined!’ — I was admonished that I wasn’t being helpful.) When they got my transcripts they would be examined. My military service record was ripped apart. I refused to explain what happened on the final mission in Nicaragua, and simply cited national security and the top secret classification. Still, I had to come up with the names of any commanding officers I could remember. When we got to my time with the Buckman Group, my tax records were demanded. I had known that would happen, but I balked at releasing the corporate records.
Marilyn’s family was probed, too. I had to provide names and addresses for their home and business. Had any of them been to jail? (Not a problem — Harriet would kill them when they got out!) I didn’t have addresses for the brothers, but private investigators would find them and check on them.
I didn’t remember huge numbers of answers. Some of the questions related to events from my teens. Not to worry, they would have private investigators pick through my life.
Through all of this, I was repeatedly informed that if I thought this was bad, wait until Andy Stewart started doing it. Forget about privacy. Sealed records would be unsealed, personal records would be opened, my garbage would be examined, my phone records would be pulled, my credit cards would be fair game, my driving and police records would be looked into and published. If I had a speeding ticket, it would be front page news. Forget about any promises of privacy, they were meaningless. Any government records might as well be sent directly to Stewart headquarters.
Of course we would return the favor, but Andy had been in the business for a long time. He knew how to hide things he wanted hidden.
Is it any wonder nobody wants to run for office?
We worked until dinner and beyond, and I was told this was just the start. Nobody had found anything that seemed to invalidate me as a candidate. That obviously meant they had to search some more. However, it would be a few more days before they could ask me some more questions, and I was to use that time to get in touch with my sister.
Everybody but John left, and he stayed behind in my office. “Welcome to public life,” he said to me. “Do you really want to do this, Carl? You were right the other day. This will get ugly at some point. Andy Stewart is not going to go gently into that good night. It will be more like being dragged kicking and screaming through a septic system. He will play dirty.”
I dug out the whiskey and poured us a couple of glasses. I slid one across the coffee table to him and then sat down and sipped my own. “John, I have been dancing around my family for over twenty years now. At what point am I allowed to live my life without giving two shits about them? They disowned me for Christ’s sake! I have spent most of my life trying to make my family proud of me. Everything I’ve ever done — valedictorian, getting a doctorate, the military, the medal, starting a company — none of it was ever good enough! Screw it; I’m going to do this for me!”
He just hung his head and shook it. “I’m sorry about this, Carl. I never understood them. How did it ever come to this? I just don’t know them anymore.” It was his turn to drink.
“They did it to themselves, John. I am washing my hands of them.”
“I’m sorry, Carl.”
I met McRiley in my office the next day, to go over some of the legal and paperwork aspects of my running for Congress. My first question was whether this meant that the others had approved my running for Congress. He waved this off as a given. In some ways, my ability to pay for the campaign on my own meant that I actually had a chance. It wasn’t going to be cheap, and Republicans had never been able to raise much money in the district.
I asked him if he had ever done this before, because he sure seemed damn young to me. It turned out this was his second Congressional campaign, but the first he had been an assistant on, last year down in the Maryland Eighth, Connie Morella’s seat. “So, now you’re shooting to do this on your own?”
“Something like that.”
“Listen, nothing personal, but do I have to use you? Don’t get me wrong, but are there rules on these things? Am I required to use the campaign manager assigned to me?” I asked.
He snorted at that. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the corner of my desk. “No, you can use whoever you want for that. And just to be clear on this, I am not doing this out of the goodness of my heart, either. I will be a paid employee of the campaign.” He named a figure which made my eyes water, but on reflection, I realized it was not unreasonable for an essentially mercenary figure whose job could disappear at any time.
“I’m curious. How does somebody go about becoming a campaign manager? I’ve never met one before.”
He shrugged. “I’ve always been interested in politics and the law. I was in the Young Republicans Club at Harvard, where I did my pre-law. I’m actually from Hagerstown, if you can believe it. I studied political science at Harvard. Then I went to Yale, and was active in Republican politics again. At that level it’s all unpaid volunteer work. When I graduated I clerked for a judge in Towson, and got involved with the local party groups, again, unpaid. Two years ago I managed to work my way up to assistant manager, and that I got paid for. When Miller started looking around, he asked me to look into you and I tagged along. So far I’m doing this on my own dime, but that is going to have to change at some point.”
He outlined the plan he had come up with. The filing deadline was in January, and we wouldn’t file until that time. The primary would be in April. Nobody else was planning on running, at least as far as anybody knew, although it was theoretically possible somebody else could decide to run. Certainly there had been nobody nosing around any of the party big wigs. The issues with both Tim Jenkins and Ted Blusinski happened too late in the game for anybody else to start thinking about them. Their problems weren’t even widely known yet.
Another paid position was going to be the campaign finance manager, an accountant who would oversee all expenses and contributions. Again, it’s a bit of a specialized field, and a good one wouldn’t be cheap, but could be paid out of the campaign budget. We would also have a variety of lawyer types as counsels, also paid professionals. Then there was the matter of finding a campaign headquarters. The perfect spot might be an unused section of a strip mall on a short term lease. I gave him Andrea’s phone number, since she would be the best to handle that.