fman>«B».« BODY ■»««JJS2w■iEroSS“ as^ssssaS K — CON MAN FOR JESUS! This was critically important, as being the presidential campaign in three Iowa counties is a most destabilizing experience. I pitied the poor devil I knew who was assigned territory so hostile that no one would take him in. He had to live out of a motel room with nothing but a telephone for two months. The drive east had conditioned me to the eighteen-hour day, seven-day workweek. The Dukakis campaign demanded numbers. GIVE US YOUR NUMBERS! “ How many #1s?” (total Dukakis supporters). “ How many #2s?” (Duke leaners). “ How many precinct captains did you get?” A field staffer is the modern Willy Loman. In fact, the Iowa campaign was run on the same principles governing a crew of door-to-door Bible salesmen. In Babbitt (not Bruce), Sinclair Lewis offers a great description of a sales convention dinner. The star salesman gets the biggest, finest porterhouse steak and so on, until the worst sales guy gets just a small serving of peas on his plate. Staffers in large, liberal cities could report dozens of #1s, #2s, and precinct captains nightly. Their rewards were personal visits from the candidate, media coverage of themselves and their operations, and full-fledged campaign offices. Cherokee, Iowa was too small (pop. 6,000) to support giant numbers or campaign perks. Dukakis Central was my bedroom, and I had the finest 18th Century office technology—paper, pens and stamps. For three weeks, until I got a phone, I had to sneak campaign calls on the parsonage phone (church and state, you know). As for my army, I eventually recruited four or five good government ladies to do a little phoning. This was very humbling. At the same time, there was the manic rush of being The Representative of Someone Who Might Eventually Become the President of the United States. My first weeks in Cherokee were a single line of high energy. More people had to be recruited. More people had to be talked to. I was the only person who could convince someone that they should support Dukakis on February 8th. In Des Moines, they’d said, “ If you do illegal drugs, you are out!” In Cherokee, my response was, “Who needs drugs when you have adrenaline?!” Daily activity consisted of seeing farmers, Kiwanis, schoolchildren, meatpackers—7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. No one lived on too obscure a dirt road. No effort was spared in scheming what it might take to sit down in someone’s living room to convince one or two voters the Duke was their kind of guy. At TV news time, I ate microwaved broccoli or cottage cheese with salsa while looking for campaign news. After 6:30, there was telephoning. Finally, around 9:30,1could begin my paperwork for the late-night phone report. I fell asleep in my bedroom-office between midnight and 1:30 AM, carefully mixing varied combinations of aspirin, Excedrin PM, tryptophan, and white wine in order to avoid chemical dependency. Phone-trolling for Duke meant stopping just short of destroying my voice. Within two weeks, my body had declared war on itself. The -50°F wind-chill factor cracked the skin on my fingertips. My complexion zitted out from bad food in Lake Wobegone coffee shops. My lips were chapped. Shaving nicks would not heal from the stress! I even developed bursitis in my shoulder from scrunching my neck on the telephone—writing while I was talking. The Duke was right, as usual. Physically, this campaign job sucked. One of the few extraordinary powers I could invoke was the celebrity phone call. Des Moines had a list of people ranging from Teddy Kennedy to lesser lights who might eventually call Louis Braunschweiger if I really felt it would help. lowans were all old political hacks. It seemed everyone had been in a living room or coffee shop with Walter Mondale or Jimmy Carter. It was shocking how matter-of-factly these people treated presidential candidates and media potentates alike. One teacher casually mentioned his interviews with the Des Moines Register, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. “Oh yeah, a CBS TV crew is coming out to see me next week.” Elsewhere, the average Joe would consider an interview by Time magazine a high point of his life! One farmer was called to the phone in the middle of our three-hour political ping-pong session. He asked me how I spelled my name. A reporter from the Boston Globe was on the line. At least, the Duke knew I was on the case. Some people said they wanted Mike Dukakis to call personally. Their requests were granted. The last time I saw Dukakis in Iowa, he was spending spare moments ensconced in a senior center office on the phone, asking people for either personal support or money. Cherokee County had been Dukakis country. He had visited the Johnson’s living room a week and a half before I arrived. Despite the Siberian cold, his lead slowly melted, as other candidates paid their respects. Dick Gephardt put on a big show in an auction house three miles south of town. Paul Simon walked into the 100-watt radio station with his Secret Service escort. Jesse Jackson ate at a workingman’s restaurant, as did Bruce Babbitt. The charisma-less Gary Hart paid a visit to a steak house. Bob Dole lurked in and out of town. The Duke never came back, leaving me as the lone sniper trying to pin down everybody else’s armies. The Des Moines people frowned on our going to other people’s rallies. I was too busy making converts. I only saw Pat Robertson’s. He pulled up in the middle of a blizzard with three Greyhound buses. Large banners were taped to their sides, and one bus had a fold-out speaker system and bandstand. His campaign site, Stu’s Corner, was the only coffee shop with pictures of fetuses next to the cash register. Robertson’s rally was a curious mixture of bright TV lights and half-hearted enthusiasm generated mostly by very intense 20 year olds with bad complexions and styrofoam hats. The thirty townfolks just looked on. It was slightly more fun than going to the animal shelter to see a litter of kittens. ROBERTSON’S CAMPAIGN SITE,STU’S CORNER, WAS THE ONLY COFFEE SHOP WITH PICTURES OF FETUSES NEXT TO THE CASH REGISTER. THE RALLY WAS A CURIOUS MIXTURE OF BRIGHT TV LIGHTS, AND HALF-HEARTED ENTHUSIASM GENERATED MOSTLY BY VERY INTENSE 20 YEAR OLDS WITH BAD COMPLEXIONS AND STYROFOAM HATS. A CAVALCADE OF MEAT BUENAVISTA COUNTY STORMLAKE, IOWA Near Buena (rhymes with tuna) Vista College in part of my territory was a clean, white metal building emanating an industrial hum—Iowa Beef Packing Co. Even in winter, Storm Lake’s air was permeated with the smell of blood from the canned ham and hot dog factory. But IBP’s offal smell harbored human blood as well. The IBP plant had belonged to Hy- Grade Ball Park Franks, but cholesterol mania had made the packing business a dog-eat-dog industry. Union wage concessions didn’t prevent the slaughterhouse from going under. Iowa Beef came to the “ rescue.” In return for hefty property tax and sewer/water rate exemptions, IBP brought jobs back to Storm Lake. They even promised to be environmental with their sewerage, long discharged raw into the nearby lake. Because IBP is a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, deep pockets were assumed. IBP, it turned out, wanted nothing more than to monopolize the packing business. It cut wages so severely the unions had no choice but to strike. IBP hired $4 to $6-an-hour scabs, breaking the union after eighteen months. Organizing was met with goon squads, and shotgun blasts ripped through windows of local union leaders. The scabs were treated like the animals they slaughtered. IBP sped the production line up from 25 to 50 kills an hour. More than one animal killer ended up in the state mental hospital in Cherokee. IBP’s full-page, multi-color ads bought off the local papers while telling people what a great place it was to work—$10 an 10 Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall/Winter 1988
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