“This game isn’t over yet. Let’s face it, Mike plays well to the religious crowd, but that isn’t going to help him everywhere. They’ve never trusted you or me, and they sure aren’t going to vote for a Mormon. As for Mitt, he’s running against you. I’ve heard he’s been telling the financial types that you’ve betrayed your class,” he replied.
I stared at him briefly. “My class? I’m a middle class suburban kid who’s made twenty times more money than he’s ever seen! What was it Ann Richards said about George’s dad? He was born with a silver foot in his mouth? Sounds like Mitt to me.”
John laughed at me. “Don’t shoot the messenger! I’m just passing this along. Call some of your old buddies and ask.”
“I might just do that! My class, my ass! The balls on that guy!”
“Like I said, this thing isn’t over yet. What would you say the most important states for me to win on Super Tuesday will be?”
I had to think for a second. “California’s the big prize, and I’m sure they won’t go for Huckabee. Hmmm…” I thought a bit longer. “Illinois is big. So is New Jersey. New York, maybe. They won’t vote for you in the general election, but you need to win the primary. You tie up four or five of the biggest states and the day is yours. Otherwise…” I shrugged again.
He smiled. “I know you’re making phone calls. So am I. I’ve been doing this longer than you have. Don’t go counting me out yet.”
I nodded in agreement. “Okay. I’ll start writing my speech for the convention.”
Mitt’s comments pissed me off. I made a call to Jake Eisenstein Jr. and confirmed what John told me; Mitt really was running down my record at the Buckman Group and, by extension, John’s record working for me. I reminded Jake of my record back in the old days, and also reminded him of the times we spanked Mitt’s ass, which got a few good laughs out of my old partner. “You planning on coming back here after you’re out of a job?” he asked. Technically I had enough stock in the blind trust to let me do that.
“Not as long as John’s the President. If Mitt’s running the show, or God save us, the Democrats, I just might have to! You start telling your buddies the truth about Mitt Romney, huh?”
“Nothing like a little incentive! I’ll see what I can do.” We were good friends, but he liked running the show, like I enjoyed running the show. He wouldn’t want me to come back. We closed our conversation with some gossip about our families, and hung up.
To what extent that helped, I’m not completely sure. I do know that within a matter of days, and before Super Tuesday, Wall Street money began flowing more to John McCain and the tap began drying up for Mitt. This was really critical for both men. Iowa and New Hampshire are very small states, and the emphasis during those campaigns was very much about meeting as many people as possible. Super Tuesday states are much bigger, and there was no way to shake that many hands and visit that many living rooms. They needed massive amounts of campaign funding to buy the television air time needed to reach that many people. John also scored some major endorsements from the governors of both California and Texas on January 31. Those were two must-win critical states.
One of John’s strengths was that he had a major funding source not available to either Mitt or Mike. The outfit that Marty Adrianopolis and I had founded down in Austin, Austin Consulting Group, had developed all sorts of Internet based funding schemes. In addition to the traditional campaign and RNC websites Austin managed, they also operated the McCain Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook sites. Nobody knew yet which of these social networks would end up becoming important, but they were operating McCain issue and fundraising pages on each of them. Just as important, they weren’t operating any for Romney or Huckabee. They were pulling in millions off the Internet.
Brewster McRiley wasn’t directly working for John McCain, but his management of my 2004 campaign had propelled him to the top levels of the Republican Party. If John McCain won this fall, Brewster would be a lock for the next RNC chairman. As it was, he was coordinating a lot of funding for the RNC, and at the same time his McRiley Associates group was running three Senatorial campaigns and six House bids. He was also working on purchasing Austin and folding it into his operation. Brewster wanted to become a one stop shop for Republican elections! He wanted John to win, too.
Things got amusing when the pending purchase of Austin was raised in a column on politics in Business Week. Both Marty and Brewster were quoted. Both men were known as long time friends and associates of yours truly, and the question was raised as to my financial involvement in the Austin Consulting Group. Donna Brazile asked them about it the next Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Brewster laughed at the accusation. “Carl Buckman was involved with the Austin Consulting Group only to the extent of suggesting its creation. That was it.”
When asked where I had come up with the idea, Marty snorted and answered, “Everybody knows about Carl Buckman the billionaire and Carl Buckman the soldier and Carl Buckman the philanthropist, but nobody remembers Carl Buckman the mathematician and computer scientist. They forget about the guy I went to RPI with, who got his doctorate in math at the age of 21, who wrote code for Bill Gates, and who sat on the boards of Microsoft, Adobe, and Dell. Carl told me that it was time for a couple of old Keggers to show people how to raise money by computer. After all, he helped invent modern computer networking.”
“What are Keggers?” asked Stephanopoulos.
Marty smiled. “Kappa Gamma Sigma was our fraternity, KGS. We called ourselves Keggers. It was appropriate, too. Both Carl and I were bartenders during parties back in the day.”
Brewster added, “I so believe that of both of you!” to which everybody laughed. It made for an amusing interlude.
Like a lot of people, I spent that Tuesday night watching the election returns on television. On the Republican side, John McCain showed some real strength, and basically put it away. There were 21 states in play for the Republicans, and John took nine, Mitt took seven, and Mike took five. That didn’t sound like much of a landslide, but it was. John McCain took California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois, the four largest states and the ones with the most delegates to the convention. John took two-thirds of all the delegates up for grabs. It was a landslide.
It wasn’t anywhere near as clear on the Democratic side. Super Tuesday wasn’t the day that determined the winner there. Both Obama and Clinton claimed a victory. Obama won 13 states to Clinton’s 10, but Clinton picked up a few more delegates in the bigger states she won. This thing was going to keep going on the Democratic side, probably for at least another month. Meanwhile, they were blowing through money like it was confetti, the rhetoric kept getting uglier and uglier, and everybody was waiting for somebody to completely fuck up and blow it. All it would take would be one idiotic comment to be caught by somebody with a video camera or a cell phone for a campaign to be sunk.
I couldn’t let the primaries be my whole life, no matter what kind of professional interest I might have. In February Fidel Castro resigned as the President of Cuba, to be succeeded by his brother Raul in a unanimous vote. Like The Who said, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!” I doubted there would ever be the political will in the U.S. to make nice with the Cubans until both men were in the ground.
Elsewhere overseas, Hugo Chavez was being a major league asshole down in Venezuela. He fancied himself the new leader of the socialist world, fulfilling the destiny of his hero, Fidel Castro. He did this by playing games with the oil they exported, nationalizing businesses, and giving oil and money to various countries he supported, all the while turning the proceeds over to the poor in grandiose schemes designed to buy their allegiance. For years now I had gotten a variety of requests from the right wing of my party to do something about Chavez and install a President more amenable to American influence. I had always pushed this away. I didn’t need to start a war I couldn’t win, and America had a bad enough reputation south of the border for colonialism and interference. Chavez could strut around like a jackass and make all the speeches he wanted to, but he had no ability to harm us.