The Ongoing Adventures of Stupendous Girl!

The Wire-Pullers 06 Apr 2007

Lewis sits at the mayor’s antique campaign desk, tapping a pen impatiently on the side one of the brass handles. He’d already had misgivings about coming here for a private interview, and that was before he’d been made to wait twenty minutes. If things didn’t pick up, he wouldn’t have time to head over to Henderson’s office to cover the now striking warehouse workers of the IBIWPC.

(In case you’re interested, dear readers, I can tell you that acronym stands for the International Brotherhood of Industrial Workers and Plot Contrivances.)

Finally, however, Mayor Richards deigns to enter the room for a small, almost hidden door on the left side of the office. The mayor is not a fat man, particularly, but it is clear that he has enjoyed more than his share of late night meals while plotting out political strategy. At well over six feet tall and two hundred pounds, Richards can best be described as “solid”, if only in physical and not ideological or moral terms. His thinning grey hair, which is slowly being pushed back by time and heredity from the front lines of his forehead, along with small bags under his eyes and the slight plumpness of his jowls, are the only signs that he has spent fifteen long years plotting to hold and keep this very office.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, my son! Couldn’t be avoided.”

Lewis had been around the city beat long enough to know that nine out of ten things the mayor said contained some element of untruth. In this case, he was willing to guess those elements were the words “sorry” and “couldn’t”.

“I’m going to cut straight to the chase, here…”

Now this did surprise Lewis. He’d been half-expecting… no, much more than half… a long and pointless conversation, which is what one normally got from the mayor. Perhaps the fact that he is four months away from re-election, and ten points down in the most recent poll, had stripped his normal loquacity away. Surely, he had some reason for inviting Lewis over. The reporter had originally thought it was just to mouth the old platitudes, and try and get his name in the paper a couple of times. Perhaps something else was going on here. He tries to figure out exactly what that might be as the mayor takes a seat on the other side of the desk.

“You are aware, I suppose, that my opponent is… shall we say… a practitioner of an alternative lifestyle?”

Lewis grimaced. “So that’s the game”, he thinks to himself. Trying solidify the social conservatives. It seems like an unusually poor strategy for the Machiavellian mayor, given that he is already running behind. More than that, it is a strategy that disgusts Lewis personally. He wasn’t going to play along, not any more than he absolutely had to.

“If you’re talking about her sexuality, I am aware. And I don’t consider it particularly newsworthy, unless she were interested in sharing that part of her life with the public.”

Richards dismisses the young reporter’s concerns with the wave of a hand.

“Of course, my boy, of course. I don’t mean anything by it. I assume then, you are also aware of her relationship with Olympia York?”

Now that was newsworthy. Since there’s no radio in the room, we can’t really have the good folks at 91.8 FM chime in with their normally expository brilliance. I guess it’s up to me to let you know – Olympia York is the leading property developer and building manager in the region, who at a conservative estimate owns a quarter of the city at any given time. She also has a habit of treating City Council and the city’s Planning Department in much the way a dog treats a fire hydrant. For a serious mayoral candidate (let alone a radical, pro-environment, leftist candidate) to be involved in an intimate relationship with Ms. York would be the mother of all conflicts of interest.

Lewis had no idea if there was any truth to what the mayor had just told him. He was too shocked, at first, to even reasonably assess the likelihood. But he would have to look into it, no matter how little he wanted to do favours for a mayor he knew to be hopelessly corrupt and self-interested. If there was even a thin wedge of reality to the claim, he had to run with it.

“I was not aware of that. Do you have any evidence of that claim?”

***

From his perch in the secret chamber directly behind the mayor’s office, Mr. Atwater smiled. Once he heard the reporter – that same damned reporter who’d done so much damage to the campaign by digging into the kickback scheme – ask for evidence, he knew he was hooked. And he knew that once he started looking into it, he’d find just enough to make a story.

No, a whole series of stories.

Julie Nyerere had indeed been sleeping with Olympia York. Of course, this had happened twenty-five years ago, when both had been in college, and had ended within three months. But they were still on friendly terms, especially for two people on opposite ends of the political spectrum. There was enough there to raise questions, and that was what a good journalist did.

The whole strategy was one of Atwater’s best. He normally didn’t allow himself too much self-satisfaction, especially before the votes were counted. Access to power was its own reward. More accurately, access to power allowed one to reward oneself. But this plan was just too good, because it worked on so many levels.

First, it would dampen the enthusiasm of Nyerere’s partisans and campaign workers. Not those closest to her, who would see it for what it was – an unfair, sleazy whisper campaign gone mainstream. But for those on the margins, the people who were excited enough by the campaign to give up precious free time on a weekend to drop off flyers, or put up a sign on their front lawn, it was a deterrent.

Second, it changed the mood of the electorate at large, the big mushy middle, from “throw the bum out” to “a pox on both their houses”. Everyone already perceived Nick Richards as a hypocrite and a thief. Now, however, many would see Nyerere as a hypocrite herself, as someone who set out public standards and then violated them when her own desires were at risk. That was hardly a fair characterization, but Atwater knew most people would be familiar with the story without really having followed it. When Nyerere’s name came up, people would think to themselves “isn’t she the one that says she’s against over-development, yet is fucking the top developer in town?” It would change their opponent from the unknown quantity worth trying to boot out a corrupt mayor to someone who’s just the lesser evil, which would allow some portion of those currently leaning against the mayor to talk themselves into voting for the devil they know.

Finally, it would send coded messages to the outlying suburban districts that Richards needed to carry by big margins to win. Nyerere’s campaign didn’t really have traction out there anyway, so making her look bad didn’t help directly. But reminding all those people that Nyerere was different, was out of the mainstream, would scare lots of suburban residents into holding their noses and voting for Richards, just to keep Nyerere out. Telling everyone that she was queer did that, and for different reasons. It set off a whole set of alarm bells in the suburbs, even amongst those who had no phobias on the issue. Set into their subconscious the idea that she was different, and it would bring to mind whatever issue did frighten those voters once they got to the ballot box. His campaign would say “dyke”, but the voter would think “tax raiser”, or “mandatory recycling”, or “anti-car”, or “soft on crime”. The best part is, they wouldn’t even know why they’d thought it.

Yes, Mr. Atwater felt entitled to a self-satisfied smile. Richards now had a fighting chance at retaining his job, and he needed to. The current administration had done so much to cover up the activities of the Project in this city that they count administration had done so much to cover up the activites of the Project in this citiesg his job, and he neededuldn’t risk a new, principled mayor taking office and uncovering it all. His nominal boss, Mayor Richards, would be pleased with his work. His real boss, Assistant Section Chief Tafelwein, would be very pleased.

Atwater looked out into the office through the secret peephole, and saw the young reporter writing down notes furiously. He laughed, almost silently, to himself.

Very pleased indeed.