Campaigning with Tom

By Moshe Parelman

 

 

Jimmy Carter, 1976

 

            Tom Long and I were standing by the curb outside his house. He wanted to show me something. On the street someone had written with red spray paint, “Humphrey Sucks.” I wondered who would have done such a thing. Living as we were in highly Republican Johnson County, a collection of upscale Kansas City suburbs, there were certainly a lot of suspects. Then I noticed a hint of a smile starting to form at the corner of Tom’s mouth. How could I have been so gullible? Tom, of course, had written it himself.

            Hubert Humphrey was a favorite politician of my family. Humphrey was a kind of Jewish heirloom. In fact, earlier that year, my parents had asked my Ouija board who would win the presidential election in 1976. Wonder of wonders, the Ouija board spelled out “Humphrey.” What the Ouija board didn’t know was that Humphrey was dying of cancer and would not run.

            Tom was, on the other hand, a proud supporter of Jimmy Carter. Tom had a penchant for identifying and embracing cultural phenomena early. He saw the very first Saturday Night Live, after telling me a week before to make sure I watched it. He was ahead of the curve on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and subscribed to an interesting but little known magazine called New Times. His family had cable with Home Box Office when most families were still watching the Big Three networks.

            But identifying Jimmy Carter long before he was in anybody’s consciousness far surpassed those feats. Carter, when Tom first took a shine to him, wasn’t a national figure, charismatic personality or great speaker. He was the former governor of  Georgia! Who would ever dream that a southerner would be nominated for president by the Democratic party in 1976?

            But Tom was confident – and he was right. As primary season unfolded, Jimmy Carter proved to be the political HBO.

            With Jimmy Carter’s nomination all but assured by the beginning of summer, Tom wanted to help his cause by volunteering with the local Democrats, and he dragged me along. (Until then, I had been mostly a theoretician.) We showed up one June morning at the Johnson County Democratic headquarters.

            A nice, middle-aged woman gave us the job of going through the voter printouts, finding the names without phone numbers – those were the independents – looking them up in the phonebook and writing the numbers next to their names on the broad, green-and-white striped printouts. It was as tedious as it sounds. Seeking an escape from the boredom, I shared an unusual name I came across with Tom:

            “‘Barsky.’ That’s the sound a Russian dog makes.” He laughed.

            Carter won the nomination at the Democratic convention in New York in July. More than a few Democrats were dismayed. Carter was no liberal. In an attempt to keep the lefties happy, he picked Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate. Being a liberal myself, I objected to Carter’s ascent. Tom, also liberal, was, obviously, following another script.

What made Carter so insidious went beyond his lack of liberal credentials. The truth was that it was difficult to determine where Carter stood on most issues. A current joke expressed the frustration with his slipperiness: “What’s Jimmy Carter’s favorite color? Plaid.” But Carter and his oracle, pollster Pat Caddell, were unmoved by their detractors; they had the whole election figured out.

The general election began in earnest: Carter vs. President Gerald Ford. In October, Carter came to Kansas City, Kan., to give a campaign speech. Tom and I skipped school to see him. Carter spoke in front of the downtown courthouse to a large crowd. Smiling his trademark smile, he donned a Kansas City Royals baseball cap right before he spoke. (The Royals were facing the New York Yankees in the American League Championship series.)

Tom and I sized up from  a distance the peanut farmer in a baseball cap. It was our first major political rally. Tom’s connection grew stronger to the man whose success he projected, while I remained skeptical, skeptical and excited. For better or worse, Jimmy Carter was our presidential candidate, our best chance to elect a Democrat president since 1964.

Election day finally came. Steve Dwork, a friend from our junior high school, joined Tom and I in Tom's basement to watch David Brinkley and John Chancellor (Tom was a big NBC guy) count the votes as they rolled in. Carter, to our delight, defeated Ford in a close race. 

The next four years were not the “government as good as its people” that Carter had promised; neither were they a nightmare, although “bad dream” wouldn’t have been too far off the mark. In the end, Tom would switch allegiance to a silver-tongued lion of the Senate, who had trouble crossing bridges. I would throw my support to a son of Illinois with a tendency to snort when he addressed the public – who wasn’t even a Democrat.

  

John Anderson, 1980

 

            Carter’s tenure was plagued by a bad economy that continued to get worse as his term limped along mercilessly. Inflation and unemployment were out of control, weirdly, at the same time, giving rise to a new term – stagflation. At one desperate point, Carter resorted to blaming the American people for the nation’s predicament. He cited as the crux of the problem America’s “crisis of confidence.” A phrase straight out of Guru Caddell’s polling, it referred to Americans’ reluctance to curb their spending because of the strongly held belief that the cost of living would rise indefinitely. Carter handed the presidency to Ronald Reagan with that speech. Oh, and the Iranians were holding 52 Americans hostage in Iran.

            Disgruntlement with Carter was so high prior to the 1980 election that talk of finding a replacement was on the lips of many Democrats. Not wanting them to break their backs persuading some worthy candidate to challenge the president, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy volunteered to run against Carter himself. 

          Tom naturally gravitated to Kennedy: fellow Catholic; bastion of liberalism; and torch bearer of the Kennedy legacy. I, like many, thought Kennedy’s uncharged manslaughter in the Chappaquiddick incident made him toxic. As the primary season progressed, some of us dismayed with Carter’s insufficiently liberal policies discovered a frank, liberal Illinois congressman with white hair, spectacles and a professorial air, who came in a close second in the Massachusetts and Vermont primaries – Republican primaries.

           Tom didn’t share my enthusiasm for John Anderson. He found backing a Republican distasteful if not downright heretical. He chided me when I changed my registration to Republican to vote for Anderson in the Kansas primary. He told me with disdain that Anderson’s proposal to place a 50-cent tax on gasoline and use the revenues to shore up Social Security sounded like a high school debate case, contrived and tentative. (Tom was a top-notch debater in high school.)

            Anderson had a funny way of speaking, too. When he stated the year, he wouldn’t say “1980” but “nineteen hundred and eighty,” as in, “Our choice in nineteen hundred and eighty is …” And occasionally, at the end of a sentence, he would sort of snort. Tom did a good imitation of the snort; I couldn’t do it.

Then Anderson came to town to speak at an area high school. The local Anderson campaign  asked me to drive the press van. That sounded cool.            

            I picked up the press people at the Kansas City airport. Five reporters piled in. One older man, I believe he was with the Associated Press, asked me my name. When I replied, he asked me if I was related to Jake and Susie Parelman. I told him Jake was my grandfather. (I don’t remember how they knew each other.) After I ran over a curb, one of the reporters, listing the peculiarities of the Anderson campaigned, ticked off “amateur drivers.”

The next topic of conversation was where to have dinner. One of my passenger journalists suggested Trader Vic’s. “Is it any good?” asked a second, dubious reporter. A third one stepped in with  the clincher: “It’s Polynesian food. It’s definitional.” Wisely, they settled on Plaza III. After the reporters and I were seated in the elegant restaurant, they asked me what I wanted for dinner. (One of them was going to pay for me with his expense account.) For some inexplicable reason, I declined. But then I ordered steak soup. It was delicious.

That evening Anderson spoke at Shawnee Mission West High School. A stirring orator, he stated the aspirations of his high-minded campaign, exhorted us to good citizenship, and snorted.         

Anderson, emboldened by his two second-place finishes in New England primaries, decided to run as an independent for president. I put a red “Anderson for President” bumper sticker on the family's yellow Maverick, with my father’s blessing. My father (and, of course, I) voted for Anderson in the general election, rather than for Jimmy Carter. My mother, ever the Democratic loyalist, voted for Mr. Jimmy. In November, Reagan beat Carter in a landslide (Anderson got 6.6 percent of the popular vote.), ushering in the Conservative Revolution and lots and lots of hot air in the decades to come.

 

Tom Long, 1982

 

            The Johnson County Democrats needed a “sacrificial lamb,” someone to run against the speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, Wendall Lady, even though taking him on meant certain defeat. Fielding a candidate against Lady would force him to spend time campaigning for his own seat and less time campaigning for other candidates. Tom, party stalwart that he was, agreed to be the lamb.

            How is a sacrificial lamb supposed to campaign? Should he even bother? Those were some of the questions vexing Tom’s candidacy. One time the candidate and I were wandering through a local mall. We came upon a platform with a sign announcing that the stage was reserved for political candidates. Tom demurred; but I got up there and lectured the shoppers who were walking by the stage about political apathy. No one stopped to listen. They couldn't care less.

            Tom made a gigantic, wooden sign, blue with white letters, reading, “Tom Long for State House.” I’m not sure if Tom planted that sign anywhere. I do know that it ended up in my parents’ garage, because Tom didn’t have any room for it in his (or, more likely, his parents wouldn’t let him keep it there). Post-election, my mother vowed to stand the sign in the yard in front of Tom’s dormitory at the University of Kansas to surprise him, but the sign never made it out of the garage.

            Wendall Lady, of course, won in a route. I don’t know if Tom’s presence restricted his campaigning for other Republicans. I do know that from the beginning we found it amusing that our opponent, a dude, was called “Lady.” I’m sorry to say few got in on the joke due to the limited exposure of the Tom Long brand.

Gary Hart, 1984

 

Reagan’s victory brought with it a slaughter of Democratic senators, especially liberals.

            Progressive senators from New Hampshire to Indiana (Birch Bayh) to South Dakota (George McGovern) to Idaho (Frank Church) drowned in a conservative tidal wave. (Nine Democratic senators in all lost seats.) One of the few liberals to survive was Colorado Sen. Gary Hart. All of a sudden Hart became the most attractive presidential possibility for 1984.

            The Hart speculation took hold of Tom and me, two party animals always on the ready for a liberal Democratic savior. Gary Hart automatically advanced to Topic A at the late-night political bull sessions held sporadically by Tom, Steve Dwork and me in the bedroom in Tom’s (parents’) basement. Then the subject of all the talk stopped by the University of Kansas, where we were all freshmen, to say “Hi.”

            Hart, a good looking guy with a shock of blow-dried hair, bushy eyebrows and a serious demeanor, gave a speech on campus one night. After the would-be candidate was finished, Tom sauntered over to where Hart and his entourage were gathered. As he approached them, grinning, he raised a homemade “Hart for President” sign. Hart and his people laughed and cheered. Sometime after that, on the basis of Tom’s warm show of support (or maybe it was the polling numbers), Gary Hart announced he was a candidate for president.

            Hart, 47, running as the “New Generation of Leadership,” placed second to frontrunner Walter Mondale in the February Iowa caucuses, the opening gun in the presidential primary race. Then, a week later, he beat the former vice president in the New Hampshire primary. Hart and Mondale, like two heavyweights standing in the middle of the ring, proceeded to exchange blows, each winning a different primary every week or two.

            Finally, on April Fool’s Day, the tour landed in Kansas. That year, rather than the usual primary, Kansas was holding caucuses. A primary, the preferred method of choosing a presidential nominee, is like buying a present for your teacher at Target. You just go in there, pick out your item, take it to the cashier, and that’s it. A caucus, on the other hand, is like making your own gift by hand.

            Tom and I were occupying the “Hart” room in the school where our caucus was taking place. By the time of the Kansas vote, the campaign field had dwindled to three candidates: Hart; Mondale; and Jesse Jackson. Voters were to report to their candidate’s room where they would vote for the candidate by raising their hand, unless someone persuaded them to vote otherwise.

            As the votes were counted, it became apparent that only Hart had enough votes to earn delegates. Mondale and Jackson lacked votes to meet the delegate threshold, but they were both close. From the Hart perspective, it made sense to “give” Jackson some of Hart’s surplus votes to make sure they didn’t go to Mondale, Hart’s rival for the nomination. And that’s how Tom and I found ourselves migrating from the Hart room to the Jackson room.

We arrived heroes. Our two votes were enough to take Jackson over the top, into delegate land. As we got our bearings in the crowded room, an African-American girl standing next to us said to Tom and I, “That Mondale’s a real MF.” I had never heard that abbreviation. But after a little reflection, I figured out what the letters stood for. Tom and I then cast our fateful votes for Jackson. She hugged us.

            Hart won the Kansas caucuses. The tide, however, was turning. Although Hart had won a number of big states, including Ohio and California, he was taking mostly smaller Western and Republican states, like Kansas, while Mondale, with organized labor backing, was picking up the larger Eastern and Rust Belt states. Eventually Mondale pulled away. At the time I thought Hart’s loss was simply one of life’s cruelties. But a few months later I was in graduate school, in a political campaign management program, and one of my fellow politicos gave me a different perspective: “How good a candidate was Hart be if he couldn’t put away Walter Mondale?”

            In November Reagan defeated Mondale in a landslide even bigger than his victory over Carter four years earlier. We knew Hart would have done much better.

Hart ran again in 1988. By that time Steve Dwork and I were studying in yeshivas. Tom would soon leave Catholicism and become a worshipper in the evangelical Church of the Nazarene, ironically the religion Gary Hart was raised in, and study to become an assistant pastor. Hart, a former Yale Divinity School Student, took a fatal hit to his campaign when the Miami Herald, after staking out his Washington, DC, townhouse, revealed that he was having an extra-marital affair. He never ran for office again.