A Fighting Chance

We played this miserable loop over and over. In desperation, the team scheduled some practice sessions during which I was allowed to answer “the long way” before we focused on the clock. I think they could see I was getting frazzled, so they tried to sound encouraging: “That was pretty good in minute four! Maybe you could just say that part first.” No problem!

In the end, Otis was my best coach. On the day of the first debate, I turned off my phone and shut down my computer. Otis climbed up next to me and put his head in my lap. I studied, and he snored. After a few hours, I was as ready as I’d ever be.

The first debate was held in a television studio. It was cramped and cold, a small set surrounded by giant cameras that looked like something out of a Transformers movie. Only the moderator, the two candidates, and some technical people were permitted in the room—not even our spouses could come in. When Senator Brown arrived, I walked over to shake hands. The moment was somehow surreal. Here was the man I was spending every waking hour trying to defeat. Our names were linked in thousands of press accounts, yet we’d met only a few times, and I don’t think we had ever spoken a dozen words to each other. In some other context, we might have made pleasant small talk. After a brief hello, we moved back to our places, he at his podium and I at mine, locked in silence before the program began.

We were allowed to bring note cards to the debate, and before we got started, I saw Senator Brown shuffling through his stack. I had a stack of cards, too. Most carried statistics that I thought were important (family incomes, unemployment rates, and so forth—I didn’t want to fumble a key number). But my last card was a photograph. It was a picture taken in front of Legoland with a gaggle of grandchildren, nieces, and nephews gathered around me. We all wore matching bright yellow tops, and we were all having a great time. The picture always made me smile. I looked at those children staring into the camera and thought: I’m in this race for your future.

I held the photo, and I remembered Reverend Culpepper’s advice: Have faith.

Someone in the studio called out a thirty-second warning. Everyone—Brown, me, the moderator—took sips of water, our actions synchronized as if we were runners at a starting gate who’d been told to “get set.”

A countdown, then the light on the closest camera came on. The moderator made the necessary introductions and asked the first question—it was about character—which he directed to Senator Brown.

Brown wasted no time. He said his thank-yous to the moderator and viewers, then lunged straight for my throat. “Professor Warren claimed she was a Native American, a person of color, and as you can see, she is not.” He expanded the accusation, asserting that on applications to Penn and Harvard, “she checked the box claiming she was a Native American, and clearly she’s not.”

We were thirty-three seconds into the debate, and Brown had already called me a liar and then called the people who hired me liars. He had falsely accused me of using my background to get a job. And he had invited everyone watching on television to take a close look at my appearance so they could judge for themselves just who my parents and grandparents had been.

I wanted to talk about Wall Street bankers and taxes and education, but Brown wanted to go in a different direction. So I stood my ground. I talked about my family. I made clear I never sought any advantages, and I pointed out that the people who’d hired me had all verified my account—100 percent. When I got the chance, I moved to the issues that I believed were at the heart of the election. I talked about how giant companies and billionaires were exploiting a bonanza of tax loopholes and how Scott Brown and the Republicans were determined to keep those loopholes open. I talked about how we should be investing in educating our kids instead of subsidizing Big Oil. And how billionaires should pay at least as high a tax rate as their secretaries.

The reviews the next day called the debate a draw, and not many outlets featured what I had to say about tax loopholes or investing in education. But nearly every media report included Brown’s attack over my background.

Two days after the debate, Brown and former Boston mayor Ray Flynn attended a campaign event inside a pub. A rally outside the pub included some of Brown’s Senate staffers, and they were caught on video joining the crowd in cartoon-Indian war whoops and tomahawk chops. The video got widespread attention—and a lot of criticism. But that didn’t stop Brown: he started running commercials accusing me of covering up the truth about my background and lying about my family.

It seemed this race was going to stay nasty right to the end.

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