Ballots and Blood (24 page)

“What about the so-called trigger mechanism that would authorize military action against Iran if the sanctions don't work?” asked the host. “Where do you stand on that issue?”

“Military action is a separate matter,” said Lightfoot. “If it can be effective, that's one thing. But many experts believe the Iranians have buried many of their nuclear installations underground, meaning a bombing raid similar to that which the Israelis did against nuclear plants in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007 may not be effective.”

“So you're not in favor of military action?”

“I am if it has a reasonable prospect of working,” said Lightfoot. “I think the jury's out on that. I'm not sure I support putting ground forces in Iran when our guard and reserve troops are stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can't be the policeman of the world.”

“But on Iran, it sounds like you favor sanctions but oppose military action,” said the host, moving in for the kill.

“Well, here again, I'd have to know more than just a ‘trigger.' What are we talking about?” said Lightfoot. “As governor I was the commander in chief of the Florida National Guard, and many families saw their loved ones go to Iraq and Afghanistan on repeated deployments. If we're planning to take military action against Iran, we need to get serious about increasing the size of our regular Army forces.”

“Alright, Senator, that's all the time we have today,” said the host. “Thanks again for being with us.”

“Thank you,” said Lightfoot.

As the floor director removed his microphone and handed him a wet cloth to remove his makeup, Lightfoot glanced at his media advisor. He looked crestfallen.

“What?” asked Lightfoot.

“We're going to get calls about the Diaz comment,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Lightfoot. “Probably. I said he was qualified as far as I knew.”

The media advisor nodded. It was going to be a long day.

19

A
“money bomb” blast e-mail from the Faith and Family Fund—Andy Stanton's political action committee—on behalf of Don Jefferson for U.S. Senate went out to its 4.2 million-member e-mail list at 6:00 a.m. on Monday morning, two days after Jefferson formally announced his candidacy for the Republican Senate nomination in Florida. Text messages were blasted to a million mobile phones simultaneously. The e-mail was strategically timed to benefit from the earned media over Jefferson's entrance to the race and take advantage of higher open rates on Monday mornings. The conventional wisdom: Jefferson had a strong following among evangelicals and the Tea Party crowd, but he couldn't raise the dough. Thus the money bomb.

Ross Lombardy pulled into his reserved parking place at the Faith and Family Federation headquarters in Alpharetta, a prosperous suburb on the north side of Atlanta, in his silver Lexus 450 at 8:40 a.m., strolling to his office carrying a Starbucks Café Americano in one hand and his laptop in the other hand, breezing past his assistant, and sitting behind his desk. Not more than two minutes transpired before his PAC director, brown hair mussed with a cowlick at the back of his skull, appeared at his door in a pair of pressed khakis and blue blazer, eyes wide open, body twitching, visibly excited. He held a sheaf of papers in his hands.

“What's up?” asked Lombardy. “You look like you're about to wet your pants.”

“You remember the Jefferson money bomb?” asked the PAC director.

“Remember it? I wrote it,” joked Lombardy. “How's it doing? We need to give Don a big, fat, wet kiss, if you know what I mean.”

“We're doing more than kissing him,” said the PAC director. “He's going to have our baby. This thing is blowing the doors off!”

“Really? That's great.”

“Way better than great,” he added. He glanced down at some figures on the papers he held. “We're sitting at $1,272,325 so far. That's after only two and a half hours.”

Lombardy let out a long whistle. “That's insane. That's just nuts. Are you sure?”

“You bet. We're already at a 15 percent open rate and half of those people are linking to Jefferson's campaign Web site. This thing could end up with an open rate north of 50 percent.”

Lombardy shook his head in wonderment. “That's mind-boggling. What's the industry standard open rate again?”

“Twenty percent. We're usually around 30 to 32 percent because we have such an engaged and active membership. But we've never seen anything like this in any endorsement e-mail soliciting contributions for a candidate. Not even Long.”

“Let's call Andy and give him the good news.” Lombardy hit the speaker phone. He punched in the number for the dressing room at New Life Ministries, where he knew Andy would be preparing for his daily television show, a folksy mix of commentary, news, and celebrity chat resembling the
Today
show with a sprinkling of the gospel.

The makeup artist answered on the first ring. She put Andy on the phone.

“Ross, what's up?” asked Andy abruptly. He generally didn't like to be bothered right before he went on the air.

“Andy, remember I told you we were going to send out the money bomb for Don Jefferson?” asked Ross.

“Yes. And?” asked Andy, his voice rising an octave with anticipation.

“Well, we're already north of a million bucks, and the e-mail only went out two hours ago,” reported Ross. He glanced at his PAC director, who fidgeted like a ten-year-old boy who had to use the restroom and winked.

“Brother, this is
fantastic!
” said Andy, his voice raised to a squeal. “This is a major shot across Mike Birch's bow.”

Ross leaned into the speaker phone. “Try a torpedo fired at close range.”

Andy giggled with manly mischief. “Birch is going to spew his coffee!” He paused. “I'd like to mention it on my show. But I don't know if I can report it directly without running afoul of the tax lawyers.”

Ross knew all too well the dangers of a tax-exempt ministry endorsing candidates. “Why don't I leak it to
Merryprankster
or
Politico
? Then you cite them and report it as straight news.”

“I love it,” said Andy. “But hurry . . . I go on the air in twelve minutes.”

“When I feed this to the barracudas at Merryprankster, it's going to go viral.”

“Brother, put the pedal to the metal. I'd put banner ads on Drudge, Merryprankster, National Review, Newsmax, the works. We shouldn't limit this to our members. There are going to be a lot of Christians and conservatives who want to give money to Jefferson.”

“That's brilliant, Andy,” gushed Ross, always amazed that a preacher and talking head usually had more good ideas than a political operative. He turned to his PAC director. “Can we get those ads up quickly?”

The PAC director nodded vigorously, an irrepressible grin on his face, his eyes like saucers. He was running on pure adrenalin.

“Once it goes live, get that story from
Politico
or
Merryprankster
over to my news director,” ordered Andy. “We'll report it in the news segment, and we'll flash the Federation Web site address. I'll do it on my radio show, too.”

“Yes, sir!” said Ross with sycophantic brio.

“Tell your IT guys to reserve back-up server capacity,” said Andy with a chuckle. “You're about to get deluged.”

Ross hung up the phone and pulled up the Web site with the click of his mouse. The money bomb display appeared on the home page, a graphic of a bag of cash with a photo of Jefferson, a ticker displaying the current running total. “Holy smoke . . . we're up to 1.6 million!”

The PAC director leaned across the desk, gazing at the screen. “It's a tidal wave,” he muttered to himself. “A freakin' tsunami.”

Ross whipped around in his chair. “You heard Andy . . . get those banner ads up. Make it happen!”

The PAC director turned and scampered from the room. Ross stared at the ticker as it continued to spin, counting the cash pouring in over the Internet like water rushing over a waterfall. His mind raced. They were riding a wave, and his name was Don Jefferson. He hoped they didn't get thrown off their surfboard.

IN A BLACK LINCOLN NAVIGATOR with smoked windows (donated by one of the largest car dealers in Tampa-St. Pete) heading north on the Sawgrass Expressway, Dolph Lightfoot cradled a cell phone to his ear, listening to his high-paid strategists offer him expensive and thoroughly useless advice, doing a slow burn.

“The guy's gonna have his day in the sun. No way around it,” offered his laconic campaign manager. “The media wants a race. Now they've got it.”

Just great,
thought Lightfoot.
I pay you $20 grand a month to state the obvious.

“I think we say something like, ‘One day does not a campaign make,'” chirped the finance director, a chain-smoking veteran of six statewide campaigns. “We'll see who raises more on their next finance report.”

“Too inside baseball,” said the campaign manager.

“Point to the published polls,” said the pollster, who was on the conference call from DC. “We're leading by 22 points in the Mason-Dixon. The guy's a congressman from Ocala, which in a state the size of Florida is practically a state legislator. He's a
nobody.
Don't blow helium into the guy.”

“Make it about outside special interest groups versus Florida,” offered the general consultant, who assisted Lightfoot in his victorious gubernatorial campaigns. “This is an outside group led by a cable talk- show host trying to choose Florida's U.S. senator.”

“You have to be careful,” cautioned the campaign manager. “Faith and Family Federation has 250,000 members in Florida. We don't want triple-F to be able to do a mailing saying we trashed Andy Stanton.”

Lightfoot had heard enough. “Folks, I hate to ruin this discussion by injecting a dose of reality. But Don has raised almost $2 million in less than three hours on the Internet with no fund-raising costs,” he said with more than a trace of impatience. “This is a big hairy deal. It's going to be a national story. We better come up with more than spin.”

The line went silent. Lightfoot's frustration was palpable. He viewed the Republican primary, if not the general election, as a virtual coronation. Now this?

“What are we going to show on our first finance report?” asked the campaign manager.

“Our goal is $7 million,” answered the finance director. “I think we'll make it.”

“How much from Florida?” asked Lightfoot.

“I don't know . . . maybe 90 percent,” said the finance director.

“So our funds come from mainstream Floridians, not some special interest groups led by an out-of-state flake and right-wing preacher,” said Lightfoot in a firm voice.

“Stress that you've never taken any campaign for granted and you don't intend to start now,” offered the consultant, speaking in the falsetto voice of an imaginary candidate. “We take Don Jefferson's challenge seriously. We look forward to a vigorous campaign.”

“People are getting more than a little sick and tired of Andy Stanton thinking he's the chairman of the Republican Party,” said Lightfoot, his voice dripping with disdain. “Who does this guy think he is? I was governor of this state for
eight
years. I built this party. How dare he tell me I'm not a good Republican. It's outrageous.”

“Stanton's not on the ballot. You're running against Jefferson,” cautioned the consultant.

“The heck I am!” shouted Lightfoot. “I'm running against FOX News, Andy Stanton, Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, and the stinking Tea Party.”

“We need to test Stanton on the next poll,” said the pollster. “If his numbers are as bad as I think they are, we may want to do an ad morphing Jefferson into Stanton.”

The car exited the expressway. They were minutes away from the community center where Lightfoot was to address a gathering in the vote-rich suburbs of western Broward County. A call broke in on the phone. Lightfoot glanced at the screen of his phone. It was Governor Mike Birch.

“Gotta go, guys.” He hung up and answered the incoming call. “Hello?”

“Dolph, it's Mike Birch.”

“Morning, Governor,” said Lightfoot, trying not to sound rattled.

“I assume you saw the Faith and Family Federation sent out a fund-raising e-mail for Don Jefferson?” asked Birch.

“Oh, yes, I saw it.”

“That's Andy Stanton trying to hurt me by pounding you,” said Birch. “He's a bad guy. Claims I'm a RINO. Sorry his dislike of me is complicating things for you.”

“Looks like I've got half your friends and all your enemies,” joked Lightfoot.

Birch laughed. “The good news is I've got a lot of friends.”

“Well, Stanton's an enemy of all of us who believe in a broad-based, inclusive party,” said Lightfoot with an edge in his voice. “The guy's practically issuing fatwahs. I for one am not intimidated in the least. And I'm gonna beat his fair-haired boy like a drum.”

“Now you're talkin',” said Birch, hate juices flowing. “Keep doing what you're doing. You're doing great. I just wanted to call and tell you to hang in there.”

“Thanks, Mike. You're a great friend.” Lightfoot hung up the phone as the car pulled up in front of the community center. A clutch of television and print reporters from local news outlets gathered on the sidewalks, microphones and tape recorders poised.

“Governor Lightfoot, I wonder if you have any reaction to the nearly $2 million raised so far on Don Jefferson's behalf by the Faith and Family Federation?” asked the local CBS affiliate.

“Well, I've never taken any race for granted, and I certainly don't intend to start now,” said Lightfoot, squinting in the sun, the crow's feet around his blue eyes evident. “I expect this to be a vigorously contested primary, and I'm looking forward to the debate.”