Cahill for Congress

Excerpt From the Book

I’ve always wanted to make a difference. A bit of an odd child at nine or ten, I tried to teach myself Russian with the help of library books. I felt sorry for the Soviet Union because of all the negative press it was getting at the time.

Maybe I could be an ambassador and help relations there and elsewhere in the world, I thought. In the meantime, I made my stuffed cheetah, whose name was Anwar Sadat, and my lion, named Menachem Begin, sit next to each other every day after I made my bed. Side by side, they leaned against my pillows guarding my other stuffed animals and in my mind were dear friends. The solutions seemed so simple then. They seemed less so now.

Do I even know how to be a candidate? I asked myself again and again.

The answer was a resounding no. I was as much a student of this campaign business as my sixth graders were. Help came from a most unexpected quarter. The husband of a woman I knew casually, a sitting judge who had once been active in the Democratic party, had the grassroots experience in politics that I lacked. So I put in a call and asked if he would be willing to talk to me.

“Are you a serious candidate?” he challenged right off the bat.

“Define serious,” I answered. “Do I wear a Bozo nose and have an air horn? What do you mean? Do I never smile?”

“Are you really in this to win? I’ve got to know.”

I had asked myself the same question, though never out loud. How serious was I? Did I really have the ability I needed? Because I certainly lacked the credentials. Was I really going to start a major fund-raising campaign? How would I even do that?

Somehow the judge’s skepticism helped move me to an answer. It was one thing to doubt myself. Having someone else question my drive triggered every competitive instinct I had. And for a person who had gone to college on a full athletic scholarship, that was saying a lot.

“Why would anybody get in a race if they didn’t want to win?” I snapped.

“Okay, fair answer,” he replied. “But I want to look you in the eye and see that you’re serious.”

Oh my god, I don’t know if I can look myself in the mirror and convince myself that I’m serious about running, I thought.

“We need to meet. But we’ll have to do this very incognito.”

Sitting judges are supposed to be unaffiliated and impartial. Helping me didn’t fit the bill.

“All right, superspy James Bond,” I quipped, unable to help myself. “Do you want me to wear sunglasses and a wig?”

“I’ll meet you downtown,” he said without a trace of laughter. “You’re not going to tell anybody that you’re meeting with me. This has to be top secret.”

“Okay,” I agreed in a small voice.

We met in a tiny locally famous greasy burger joint at the back of Jim Kelly’s Nugget, a dive casino on Reno’s main strip that locals frequent because it has the cheapest poker tables, the cheapest craps, the best drinks in town, and, as the college students know, the best chili-cheese omelets and greasy Awful hamburgers for curing hangovers. The judge, sitting on one of the five bar stools, was wearing a tweed jacket, bolo tie with a large turquoise, and a big old hat. I could tell that he had probably been a good-looking man when he was younger. Now the years and his wild gray mustache made him look like an eccentric, fun grandpa.

But he wasn’t my fun grandpa. I was terrified. I sat on the stool next to him hoping that my choice of dress, matching jacket, and high heels, all so out of character, would make me appear like a serious candidate.

“What’s your plan?” he demanded without another word of greeting. “How are you going to do this?”

Oh my god, he’s grilling me, I thought.

“Jim Gibbons is a tough candidate,” he continued. “He’s got a lot of money, and he’s got a ton of support.”

The judge was so worried about “spies” that he looked forward when he spoke, so it didn’t look like we were together. Though I sat to his right, he even talked over his left shoulder.

“I’m not sure how I’ll win other than to be myself, be the best candidate I can be, and be as accessible as I can,” I finally answered. “You know, I’m trying to do everything genuine candidates do. Yes, it is a school project, but I’ve made a commitment that this will be real, and to be real, you try to win, right?”

“I hope so,” he answered before asking me how I was raising money.

“I’m struggling there. I don’t feel very comfortable asking people for their money.”

“You need to get over that. People expect it.”

I knew that I should spend more time fund-raising (U.S. House candidates typically spend a third of their time doing only that) and that I should ask the big-money Reno people for campaign donations. Casino owners like John Harrah, the Caranos, or even Steve Wynn follow the money, so I needed to get some to be seen as viable. I just couldn’t. I never sent out fund-raising letters. Asking for money and being denied just seemed too humiliating. I would eventually do better asking groups for money when I spoke, because those who chose not to contribute just blended into the crowd. “If you happen to feel good about this campaign and want to contribute, there’s a coffee can right over there,” I’d tell them.

My lack of fund-raising wasn’t my only drawback.

“Do you have a consultant?” the judge asked.

“Do you mean like a hired one or do you mean my sixth graders?” I answered.

“Oh, Christ! Here we go! A real one. Have you paid for a consultant to come in and get your campaign organized?”

“No. There’s no money for that,” I answered. There was no money for anything at this point.

“Well, I don’t know how you get to the point where you can afford one, but that would probably be one of the best uses of your money.”

“Well, how much are they?” I asked.

“A good one is probably $5,000 a month.”

Are you kidding? I thought to myself, choking on my iced tea.

When the judge finally realized that I simply had a group of sixth graders running everything, he shook his head, clearly stunned and a little incredulous. Then he nodded and gave me an encouraging smile.

“Listen, kid, if you’re serious about this, you’ve got to know what you’re getting into here,” he said. “You gotta know how to play this game, because it’s brutal. You better have some people you can go to to get information.”

He started giving me names of individuals to call, as well as lists of things I needed to do and events I needed to attend. I took mad notes as he spoke, trying to figure out whether I knew the people he was mentioning as I scribbled. Every now and then he got annoyed with me, but he
remained supportive, pointing me in directions I would never have known to follow. When the meeting finally ended, he shook my hand.

“Okay, I believe in you,” he said. “You better not disappoint me.”

“Okay, no pressure,” I answered. “Great. Thanks!”

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