Matt’s approach was to have Jimmy focus on fracking and the environment. (A few months earlier, I’d never even heard Matt say the word fracking, and now he probably used it a hundred times a day, like it had always been a part of his vocabulary, like he was an expert on the whole situation.)
“This is our way in,” he told me when he first started researching fracking. He sounded excited, almost manic. “The Republicans don’t want to touch this. They won’t do anything to ruffle the feathers of the oil and gas companies.”
If I was being completely honest, I wasn’t even exactly sure what fracking was before Matt started talking about it, and I’m not sure Jimmy knew much about it either. I was there when Matt first proposed this strategy to Jimmy, standing in front of him and making his case. “The week that you filed to run was the same week the earthquake hit around Fort Worth,” he told him. “These earthquakes aren’t right; they aren’t normal. The people in these towns are suffering and in danger. They need an advocate, and that can be you.”
Jimmy nodded slowly. “I think you’re right,” he said. And that was all it took to convince him—even I’d asked more questions about it. But Jimmy was content to let Matt run with this, and from that point on he let Matt decide almost every aspect of his campaign. There were times Matt wouldn’t even bother to consult Jimmy—he once wrote and sent an e-mail to all of Jimmy’s supporters (from Jimmy) emphasizing the need to investigate the harmful effects of wastewater injection wells. It was only after everyone received it that Matt realized he’d forgotten to show it to Jimmy first.
“It just slipped my mind,” Matt said. “I’m sorry. We talked about it and I got so caught up in all of it.”
“No worries,” Jimmy said. “I trust you. This is why I wanted you on the team.” I watched Jimmy closely, trying to see if he was upset, but he honestly didn’t seem to mind.
I walked by the den one day and heard Matt talking to Jimmy, but it sounded more like a lecture than a conversation. “I think we need to be bold, to propose an end to all fracking in the next ten years,” Matt said. “This will reach the people outside of Houston, it will speak right to them. We can get them on our side. Then once we win the primary, we’ll push even harder.”
I peeked in and saw Jimmy nodding seriously, like a student in a classroom. And this was their dynamic throughout the campaign. It didn’t exactly surprise me—this was Matt in his element, absorbing huge loads of information and then dispersing and explaining it to someone in manageable bites. He even did it with me. On Sundays, we’d spend hours with The New York Times. I tended to favor the Book Review and the style section, and he read just about everything else. But after he’d finish an article, he’d sort of recap it for me—giving me the highlights, answering any questions I had. I figured he liked to talk about the things he’d just read about, that it helped him sort things out in his own head. I don’t think he was doing it because he felt like he needed to teach me—although there’s no denying that I became a lot more knowledgeable about current events after I met him.
And why wouldn’t Jimmy like this arrangement? He agreed with Matt on all the issues he was fighting for. He just let Matt do the research and break it down for him—Matt was like the real-life version of CliffsNotes.
—
Most of the time, Matt and Jimmy were concerned with raising money. Jimmy’s first fund-raising goal (created by Matt) had been to raise $50K by the New Year, which they’d easily done. And while I thought that sounded impressive, Matt told me that compared to the Republican candidates, it was peanuts.
Jimmy had even gone to L.A. for a few days, using all of the connections he’d made while working in the White House. One young actress had a casual cocktail party at her home, invited twenty of her friends to meet Jimmy, listen to his pitch, and give him money. He had a dinner thrown in his honor by a reality TV star, famous only for being pretty and dating athletes. Matt had always thought this woman was an idiot, was annoyed that she was constantly on television, that she got so much attention. “She doesn’t do anything,” he’d say. But they raised more money at that single event than they had in the prior month. And Matt never said a bad word about her again.
The week I got to Texas, Matt was working on a new fund-raising plan for Jimmy. He told me about it one night before we went to sleep, describing the incentives he had created: If you donated two hundred dollars, you’d be eligible for a raffle to win a private dinner with Jimmy; five hundred dollars got you invited to an intimate evening of drinks with him. And for a thousand dollars or more, you and Jimmy could spend the day at the shooting range together.
“Seriously?” I’d asked.
“Seriously,” Matt said. And then like Dorothy before him, he shook his head in wonder and said, “We’re not in DC anymore.”