“Because they might just know somebody who is useful, like a major donor or the head of a local company. You don’t want to piss anybody off by proxy.”
I rolled my eyes at that. “Any other bees?”
“Killer bees! Those you get rid of! Killer bees are wonderful people you don’t want anywhere near you, like the paroled rapist or porn star who just happens to agree with your politics and wants to help.”
“Yikes! You get those?”
Brewster nodded and grimaced. “Scary thought, isn’t it!? Your — and my — biggest job is figuring out what category to put the volunteers. This thing is going to get very big very quickly, and the two of us won’t be able to do it all. We need some of those queen bees as quick as we can get them!”
At the end of every stump speech, I would get some questions. Some of the questions I got were pretty straightforward. How do you plan to balance the budget? (Cut expenses and require that all future programs specify how they are to be paid for as part of the legislation.) What do you feel about the defense budget? (We need to maintain a strong defense budget, but the best way to do that is by making sure our economy is strong — a weak economy will mean a weak defense.) The serious questions we worked out some answers ahead of time.
Some of the questions were trivial — Where do my kids go to school? (Fifth District Elementary.) How old am I? (Thirty-four, but I’ll be thirty-five by the election.) Is my wife here? (No, she’s at home with the children.) Some were silly — Boxers or briefs? (Only my wife gets to know that answer!) Some I could laugh off — How rich are you? (Really, really rich!)
Some were loaded guns! Pro-life or pro-choice? Do I believe in evolution? Have I been washed in the blood of the lamb? A lot of these types of questions got raised in the more conservative northwestern part of the district, although the abortion one could be anywhere. Sometimes things went well and sometimes they didn’t. A typical exchange might be one that I had with a fellow out in Thurmont. We were meeting in a hall provided by the local Chamber of Commerce. During the question and answer period, this fellow stood up and wanted to know if I was pro-life or pro-choice.
“Pro choice,” I said.
As I expected, there was a low murmur of disapproval from the crowd. Sometimes it ended at that, but in this case, the fellow wanted to argue with me. I let him ramble about a minute before I made a time-out sign and interrupted him. “Excuse me, but I know this is important to you. What’s your name?”
“Why do you need to know that?” he asked belligerently.
“Because I’m a polite guy, and it’s nicer to call you by your name than by saying ‘hey, you!’”, I replied, smiling.
That got a few chuckles around the room, and I got an answer a lot less belligerent. “Tim Timmerman.”
“Tim, I’m Carl. Nice to meet you. Okay, like I said, I know this is important to you. To you abortion is wrong. We’re ending a life. I understand that, I truly do. To me it’s a matter of women’s health and control over her own body. Now, you and I are probably never going to agree on this, am I right on that?”
“It’s wrong! Killing the unborn is a sin!”
Great, the guy is on the religious side. “Okay, Tim, I understand you, but like I said, I don’t agree with you. That leaves you with a couple of questions. Ready?”
He looked startled at that. “What?”
“First, is that the only thing you care about? And I mean the only thing at all! Because if it is, I’ll respect you, but I’ll tell you, right now, not to vote for me, because I don’t think I’m changing my mind on this one.”
That caused a stir. A politician who said not to vote for him? They must have been expecting me to say something mealy-mouthed and promise to consider it or something. I could see several people looking at each other in confusion. I just pushed on. “And here’s the second question to ask yourself. Do you think Andy Stewart is going to agree with you? You already know the answer to that one.”
I stopped talking to Tim and addressed the group as a whole. “And that is something for everybody to think about. Let’s be fair about this. There are probably going to be some things I believe in that you might disagree with. It might be the budget, or programs like Social Security or Medicare or Welfare, or defense. It might be something else, like abortion or gun control. There are probably going to be some things we are just going to have to agree to disagree on. You all have to ask yourself if you can live with that, or if you have to go with Brand X — and you know he’s going to be a lot more liberal than I am on this stuff. I’m here to tell you how I feel and plan to do the job. I am not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you something I don’t believe.”
Sometimes this defused the situation nicely. I remember after the meeting, as I was shaking hands, I met Timmerman again. He tried to convince me about the evils of abortion again, and I spoke a little more on it with him. “Tim, in some ways I agree with you. My wife and I love our kids. We have three. Last year we were in a car wreck and we lost a fourth child while Marilyn was still pregnant, and it was just devastating to us. It was simply terrible, and now we can’t have any more children. We could never do this ourselves. Marilyn agrees with you, by the way. She is totally pro-life. She and I disagree on this, and I think you and I are going to disagree as well.” He looked a bit perplexed as he realized I was missing the horns and tail, and shook my hand and departed. A few minutes later I saw him head over to the ‘tip jar’, the big jar we kept on a table for contributions, and drop a twenty in it. He saw me looking at him, and we nodded at each other.
(I dug his name out of the sign in sheets the next day and called him and thanked him and asked him to work for the campaign. He turned out to be a very useful queen bee.)
Sometimes it bombed. Somebody got up on his high horse at a meeting at the Westminster High School and demanded to know if I believed in evolution. After I said yes, I was denounced as a godless heathen who was going to burn in the fires of hell and damnation. School security had to drag him out. That made the evening news the next day. Joy!
Chapter 101: Getting Ugly
I had predicted that the race would get ugly and it did, in a hurry. Andy Stewart had a tough fight with Bill Worley, and he spent far more money than he planned to. In April he eked out a narrow 52–48 percent win, and then immediately turned his sights on me. He had neither the record to run on nor the inclination to do so. He went negative immediately.
Every political campaign has both positive and negative aspects to it. Every candidate promises to run only a positive campaign, a campaign that focuses on his or her accomplishments, and the wonders they will perform. Only their opponent will run a negative campaign, because, of course, that’s just the type of person they are! Right off the bat you are going negative! Negative campaigns focus on your opponent’s faults, either real, perceived, or made up. The theory is that if you can’t make the public love you, then you can at least get them to hate the other guy!
I tried to stay positive, but McRiley immediately began preparing ads to go after Stewart. In this we were helped by the nasty campaign between Worley and Stewart. We saw what had worked for both men and what hadn’t, and could move on from that.
Andy started low key but slimy. For Memorial Day, Andy claimed I wasn’t patriotic enough! He was one of those guys who always wears a flag lapel pin, and I wasn’t. We both went to various Memorial Day parades in the area, and we heard from some people that Andy was loudly claiming that I was disrespecting our nation by not wearing a flag pin. Brewster immediately came to me and handed me a bag of flag pins, large ones, and told me to always have one on me.