Domestic Affairs (3 page)

“Done. I will be there. Jacob, let's make sure that's on my calendar. I'm shocked that Henley hasn't mentioned it already.”

Dikembe looked a bit confused. He said, “Oh, I thought he was going to tell you about it, Governor.”

“I bet he's already emailed me and I missed it,” Jacob said, falling on his sword as all good staffers reflexively do. “Let me get the details from you.” He smiled.

Olivia knew exactly what Jacob was thinking. She was thoroughly aware that he knew full well that the governor would not be going to that event. A good deal of staffers' time was spent “getting things on the calendar” and then breaking the news to people when they didn't stay on or, more likely, had never gotten on in the first place. Politicians had an uncanny ability to cancel and move things without reprimand. If Olivia or Jacob had gone into film or finance or anything else after college, either one of them would probably have given life and limb for a meeting with Jamie Dimon, Orin Kramer, Harvey Weinstein, or even Dikembe Mutombo. Olivia would have probably have shown up an hour early to any of those meetings.

Instead, Olivia knew that Jacob, at the age of twenty-nine, was as accustomed as she was to calling his financial idol to tell them that his candidate wasn't going to make it to the lunch that started in twenty minutes, but they could squeeze the financier in later in the day for a forty-five-minute coffee (to which Taylor would undoubtedly be fifteen minutes late). If that had been a business meeting of the highest importance, a call like that would have been answered with a dial tone and a cancellation of all future business. But this was politics, so the response usually sounded something more like, “Perfect, see you soon.”

“I have all the paperwork with my staffers over there,” Dikembe said, pointing toward the lobby. All of a sudden, he seemed more like
a schoolgirl than the seven-foot-two basketball superstar that he was.

“I'll come grab it,” Jacob said. “I'm pretty sure we have a Habitat event the same day as your event but let me get the info and double-check.”

That was another trick that any good staffer used to smooth the we-can't-make-it message: tell people that there was something else scheduled on that date from the get-go. If the governor had seen the specific date before he said yes, that always made it a little more difficult. But for a staffer, looking at an invite and saying, “I know we have yada yada on that date but let me see if I can try to move things around,” crafted a win-win situation. If the boss didn't go to the event in the end, it was clearly because there was something important on the calendar. And if by some off chance the candidate could go, the staffer was the hero who moved things around to make it happen.

Being a hero to the donors definitely garnered privileges. Donors needed contact with the candidate to feed their egos. And wealthy donors' thank-yous for that access ranged from tickets to sold-out concerts and sports games (like the ones to last year's Final Four that Olivia scored), to Hermès bags, to weekends at their Caribbean homes. While those staffers working in government offices were limited in what they could accept (Jacob's friends on the Hill couldn't even be bought more than $20 in drinks), campaign workers were completely unrestricted in what they could accept.

Jacob followed Dikembe to the lobby. As he disappeared out of sight, Olivia joked with the governor, “Jacob seems so smitten by Dikembe. Are you worried he's over there asking for a job?”

The governor laughed with ease. “Please, he could never leave—his grandmother loves me. Plus, there's more basketball on this campaign than in any of Dikembe's days. Seriously, did you see the last Dick Vitale March Madness scouting report?”

“No, but I'm interested in working on any campaign that promises good basketball talk. Where does someone even get the scouting report? Is it part of your presidential-run briefing?”

“If I had my way it would be! Dick did some events for us down
by Chapel Hill and I figured getting on his scouting email lists might be even more valuable than his fundraising.”

“So you adhere to God, family, and then college basketball as the natural order of things? I love it.”

“Something like that.” He smiled like a five-year-old boy. “Here,” he said, flicking through his BlackBerry, “I'll add you onto his list. What's your email? Consider it a welcome to the team.”

She spelled out her email address, beaming.

Taylor barely looked up, seamlessly turning the conversation from basketball back to the campaign. “This is a big job we have here,” he said, hitting the SEND button. “You really ready for this?”

“Definitely.” She tried to disguise her total insecurity in the answer.

“This is going to be a good one. We're going to change the world.”

Even now Olivia felt as if she were reading a really good book about the beginnings of a great social movement or a heart-shaking romantic tale, one she would get so lost in that she could believe the world really was the way she wanted it to be: the man really does come running back for his true love; and the woman overcomes her fears and admits she adores him too; and a kiss at sunset promises a long and happy life together. Olivia was a political romantic and those moments—which had become fewer and farther between—when she could really believe, as she could with Governor Taylor, made her feel completely high.

Jacob returned with a T-shirt draped over his shoulder. He dropped a handful of papers about Dikembe's charity on the table.

“Papers for you, shirt for me. See,” he said, showing Olivia the extra-large neon tee complete with a caricature of Dikembe on it, “this campaign gets the good stuff!”

Another cup of coffee later, Olivia's job was solidified, the final approval in, and Jacob was eyeing their next meeting, who had just walked in the door. Knowing the look on Jacob's face from firsthand experience, Olivia understood that he was concerned with transitioning from one meeting to another. She said her thank-yous and excused herself from the table.

The governor stood and shook her hand. “Welcome to the team, kiddo. Get ready for the adventure of a lifetime. I can't promise we'll win, but I promise we'll change lives.”

“Be careful of that one, sweetie,” Jo said to Olivia as she said goodbye to her in passing.

“Okay, thanks!” Olivia might have said the words too cheerfully and too quickly. She turned back to ask what Jo had said, realizing she hadn't really heard the exact wording of the warning, but Jo was already showing someone else to his table.

As Olivia walked out of the hotel, the day seemed more vibrant than it had been when she walked in. She had gotten lost in the dark library-like dining room and even more so in the governor's gaze, which seemed to have a magnetic quality to it. She felt almost flustered by his genius.

She grabbed at her BlackBerry, which had been out of her hands for longer than she was accustomed to, and read down the thirty-two new messages.
Ugh
, she thought,
back to life.

By the time she got to her apartment, a cozy junior one—or at least that was the way the ad had described the tiny one-bedroom apartment—it was six p.m. It was much earlier than she got home most nights. Her soon-to-be-ex-boss, the newly elected district attorney, was traveling this week, so she could savor a few early nights. He was off to California until Tuesday, partially on vacation, but with a few meetings squeezed in. It was a trip she would usually have gone on, but with no need to fundraise so soon after the election, she had talked him out of taking her. Though she liked having a little time to herself and the relative quiet of a post-election fundraising job, she had to admit she missed the craze of a real campaign and was excited to start a new one.

She reached for the box of pasta that sat on the counter because her cabinet could only accommodate two boxes of cereal and threw her culinary specialty on the stove. As she waited for the water to boil she began to Google Governor Taylor. The articles were endless, and that was just from today. She couldn't wait to be an official part of the team that would “re-dream America” and get to work.

W
hat a waste of time
, Jacob thought as the next meeting slid into the chair at their table. Lori Sanders adopted her signature perfect posture as she unbuttoned the jacket of her maroon tweed suit, which looked like the ones his grandmother wore whenever she saw the governor. “Proper church clothes,” she called them. Lori's blond hair was tied up in such a high bun on top of her head it looked like it pulled her eyes skyward.
Hah! Probably her attempt at a cheap face-lift!

Jacob sat back and began rewinding the meeting with Olivia as the governor and Sanders began their small talk. For a second, Jacob let himself admit that it wasn't the smartest plan to bring his buddy into the campaign.

When he'd first suggested Olivia he wasn't completely serious. He and the governor had been through three fundraisers in the last year, all of them unable to keep pace, and they weren't getting any traction from their other prospects for the job. Their main opponent, Senator Kramer, was the former head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and since almost all good fundraisers went through there at some point or another, he had close ties with just about everybody. Jacob had tried them all—Dara, Annie, Dennis, Jill, Allison, Meredith, Emily, Stephanie, Rachel, Leigh, Hildy, both Jennifers, Jordan, Lenny,
Jamie—the list went on and on. People didn't necessarily want to work for Kramer, but they didn't want to work against him either.

She can do it
, he thought, trying to reassure himself, remembering that Olivia had pulled rabbits out of hats to get the new DA boatloads of money. Plus, she was one of the hardest-working people he knew and she seemed to still have that idealistic shtick going.

Then he let his mind slip to the thing that hovered in the back of his thoughts. Olivia was a friend and he knew the governor's effect on people, especially campaign people. He could draw them into his world with a grip tighter than any of Jacob's old wrestling chokeholds. And he knew how hard this campaign was going to be.
It won't get tough for a while
, he thought. She'd have time to learn to be the highest-powered campaign fundraiser in history before she really needed to set historic fundraising records. He reminded himself of one of his favorite sayings:
Campaigns and long-term thinking don't really go hand in hand. Relax
, he thought,
it will all work out. And having her around couldn't hurt the governor's mood.

Jacob wondered if there was any project in life other than a campaign that relied so heavily on the mood of one person. Whatever the long-term strategy or policy ideas were, on a day-to-day basis, especially for—but not exclusively for—the “body guy,” in this case him, the candidate's mood was the most essential part of everything they did. An annoyed candidate would cancel meetings, events, calls. An angry candidate could easily fly into a rage and upend the staffing or power structure of the entire campaign in an hour. At his worst, a mad or tired candidate could slip up in public and say something explosive in front of the press. And in the new age of the Internet, a small mistake could cause a big downfall.

All campaigners had their way of dealing with candidates. Jacob's friend, who was Governor Ashton's body guy, once told him Ashton wasn't a morning person, but a crowd could turn him around in a minute. So on particularly tough mornings, his staff would set up rope lines—rope-and-stanchion setups to keep crowds at bay, or in this case to build crowds behind—wherever he was. A minute into walking down the aisle of any rope line, the governor would shed his morning grumpiness, and the staff knew they could start the day.

For the senator whom Jacob used to work for, Senator Marks, all Jacob had to do was mention a car part or something similar that Marks could fix. Staffers could stop him in his tracks in the middle of berating someone with a quick, “Do you hear that clicking noise?”

On one road trip that was filled with painfully long and eminently annoying events, a Marks adviser brought along an old-school leaf blower that no longer worked. Sure enough, after the first day of events, Marks was near implosion, snapping at Jacob as soon as they ducked around any corner. To this day Jacob could picture the senator grabbing at his arm and asking if Jacob “planned on being useful at all.” Then, before the last event, where press would be observing, the staff took the senator to a conference room for an hour's break. To Jacob's surprise, out came the leaf blower.

“I don't know what's wrong with it,” the adviser said, as if it were the most normal thing ever to have a huge, rusty old piece of lawn equipment cradled in her overnight bag.

“Let me see that.”

An hour later the leaf blower was in working order. Two hours later the senator gave one of his most acclaimed speeches and happily bought drinks for the staff afterward.

For Governor Taylor, the key was pretty girls. Like all mood-changing secrets, it was never anything spoken aloud. But it was what it was—whenever a beautiful woman interested in what Taylor was saying was around, fewer people got yelled at, more events stayed on schedule, and speeches were better. There wasn't a science to it, but as far as Jacob saw, it was a fact. Of all the vices Taylor could possess, Jacob thought, this wasn't so bad. The governor was never inappropriate, and his wife, Aubrey, had a real hold on him. That was another mystery Jacob didn't care to investigate too deeply, as it also worked for him as a campaign staffer: America loved the Aubrey-Landon romance.
Use it, don't excuse it
was the philosophy Jacob had come to adopt over the years. While it sometimes felt odd to Jacob that he questioned the basis of their marriage so much, he had real reason to marvel. Why would Landon decide to love her? Sure, she was pretty in a way where you could see she was once beautiful, and Jacob could rationalize them as college sweethearts—she, the beloved Miss Georgia, and he, the brilliant,
passionate quarterback who had the world knocking at his door. It all made sense in theory, but in reality, well, Jacob thought, she was just a bitch.