ONE ADVANTAGE OF RUNNING for office statewide is that people generally understand you can’t be everywhere. If someone invites you to a rubber-chicken dinner in Terre Haute and you’ve already promised to be at a fish fry in Evansville, then that’s that. But in local politics, people know you’re in town. If they invite you to a chili cook-off, and you choose to go to someone else’s corn and sausage roast, they will find out whom you favored at their expense, and they will remember. And so we did our level best never to say no to an invitation or miss an event if possible, even if it meant arriving late or cutting out early to get to the next one. My record, set during Lent, was four church-hall fish fries and a Polish dinner in less than three hours—including a few minutes’ unscheduled pause to change clothes after a pierogi malfunction sent globs of cheese and cabbage onto the front of my blue shirt.
Another feature of local politics is that there are a lot of people in charge of their particular spheres of influence, and it is important to pay them every courtesy. Some were very clear whom they were for or against. Others were more canny and subtle. James Harris Jr. presided over a shack of a liquor store in a lower-income neighborhood near campus, on land slated for a road to go through as part of a project backed by the university. A precinct chairman, he knew how everyone in his area was going to vote—with a stack of voter registration cards on the counter, he had personally registered any customer who stopped by from the neighborhood, if they weren’t voters already.
Every once in a while I would stop in to visit and try to see how he was leaning, but Mr. Harris remained permanently cryptic. I would lean over the counter as the occasional regular came in, usually for a forty from one of his buzzing refrigerator units or a fifth of whiskey from off his plywood shelves. Under the fluorescent lights, Mr. Harris would hold court, unless his wife was minding the store for him. Getting up in years, he would look up past his glasses at me and smile a little mischievously, as if we were both in on the same joke, as I began our ritual conversation:
“Hello, Mr. Harris, it’s good to see you.”
“Well, I’d rather you be seeing me than viewing me.”
“Have you thought any more about the election?”
“Oh, yes. I like what you’re doing. I hear you saying a lot of good things.”
“Does that mean I can count on your support?”
“Now, I like the other guys, too, of course. All I know is, I’ve got my store, got my wife, got my house. Notre Dame says they want my store. But what they really want is the dirt. Huh? Bullshit!”
If he was trying to get me to take a position on the upcoming road development, he never made it clear what question he was asking—or what answer he was hoping to hear. It was an infinite loop. We’d go around and around, and I never did get a clear expression of preference over whom he would back, but I’d like to think I won his vote in the end. In any case, Notre Dame must have paid handsomely for that shop with the house on top, because there’s no trace of the liquor store, and yet whenever I see him in town these days, Mr. Harris is in a very good mood.
ORGANIZED LABOR WAS DIVIDED. Many of the rank and file appreciated my stand for auto workers during the treasurer fight, but they also felt loyal to Dvorak because of his stances in the statehouse. I courted the ones that hadn’t already promised to support him. The Sheet Metal Workers came through quickly, and the Fire Fighters signaled they were open to a conversation, so Mike and I, fresh-faced and clean-cut, went to meet them at their hall. Sitting with his fellow union officers at a big round table opposite Mike and me, Kenny Marks, the president, heard me out. A big man who was also a deacon at Mount Carmel, the fastest-growing black church in town, he leaned back in his seat and shifted between knowing glances at his fellow firefighters and piercing stares at us. He seemed interested but skeptical. “I like what I’m seeing, and I like what you’re saying. But how do I know you’re not just another sweet-talking devil trying to get my pants off?”
It was hard to think of a good answer to that, so I kept on with the pitch. “I don’t know about that, but you’ll be able to hold me accountable for what we achieve from day one. . . .”
You could never be sure, but I felt that our case was convincing—and that the groups we sat down with were responsive. Indeed, the Fire Fighters Local 362 came through with an endorsement, complete with T-shirts. Then came the Chamber of Commerce, and eventually the South Bend Tribune. It was hard to tell if any of these would be decisive, but at the very least they showed that our candidacy was serious. It was starting to feel like we had a real shot. And one day in March, as Mike and I walked out of a lunch event with Latino leaders, he looked at his phone, started grinning, and put his hand on my shoulder.
“What? What happened?”
“I got the poll. My friend, you’re tied.”
Until then we had no actual research showing we could win. But we had raised enough money to do a poll, and the poll showed me and Ryan each with about thirty points, Mike Hamann in low double-digits. For reluctant supporters who said they liked me but weren’t sure I could win, this could be the tipping point.
In the detailed demographic “cross-tabs” at the back of the book of results that came back from the pollsters, there was a curious detail: the older the voter was, the more likely he or she said it was a “positive” that I was twenty-nine years old. To this day, I wonder why. Is it that senior voters are less likely to see distinctions between twenties, thirties, and forties? Did I remind them of their children? Whatever the reason, we took the data as a reminder that you should never assume who will or won’t support you.
Soon Dvorak released his own poll, saying he was ahead by seven. We knew we were competitive, but there was no infallible way to gauge where we stood—especially since an off-year race like this, with no federal or state elections sharing the ballot, would depend heavily not just on how residents felt, but on which campaign could turn out the most voters on Election Day. My two main rivals had been turning out voters in South Bend since I was a student; our team would have to outwork and outwit them in order to succeed.
THE VIBRANCY OF A CAMPAIGN headquarters grows exponentially in the late weeks of a race. At first there is nothing going on but a candidate fundraising and a staff member or two—the space is quiet, almost grotesquely empty as its floor awaits tables, chairs, and volunteers. Then, imperceptibly, it begins to feel like a small community. Volunteers begin to populate the place, supporters drop off food, strangers pop in, and soon it is a hive of activity.
Looking into the main room from the window of my small office—the “tank,” as we called it—I watched the energy of my campaign change from that of a lonely project to something resembling a movement. By mid-April there were a dozen staff members, mostly focused on organizing our volunteers. Racing to fund their paychecks, my call time intensified. Sitting across from Kathryn Roos, a talented young architect fresh off a stint in London, I ground out hour after hour of calls. Kathryn had expected to be home in South Bend only for a few weeks and was busy applying to graduate school, when a chance encounter in the soup aisle at Martin’s with our mutual high school teacher, Mrs. Chismar, led her to a different path. Nearly all careers in campaigning and politics are either long-planned or unexpected, and hers was the latter. At Mrs. Chismar’s urging, she had stopped by headquarters to introduce herself; a week later, she was the second full-time staff member of my campaign team, working as operations and finance director as the rest of the team grew around her, Mike, and me. Under her command we raised over $300,000, enough not only to pay our staff but also to launch a substantial mail and television ad campaign.
ONE AFTERNOON AT HEADQUARTERS, I plopped down at a desk, loosened my tie, and picked up a sheaf of papers, scrutinizing them intently yet quickly, as a mayor would.
“Okay, that was good. But this time loosen your tie a little quicker. This whole scene is only going to be three seconds in the ad.”
Again.