What Really Happened (6 page)

The next day I met with Cary, who had taken the train down from New York. Cary told me he could not go to the concert because he needed to return to New York right after lunch. I called Johnny from the lobby of the Ritz Carlton where we were meeting Nick for lunch to tell him about this new development.

Cary and I had a good meeting with Nick. Both of us were surprised how much we liked him. Despite his political operative side, Nick had a really soft, nurturing side and a good sense of humor.

After the meeting, Cary and I parted way. I went back to Johnny’s house, where I met with Matthew Nelson, one of Johnny’s staffers. It was funny to discover Johnny’s alias (the name his rooms were listed under) was a real person who worked for him. Matthew and I waited and chatted in the living room while Johnny showered and got dressed so we could drive to the FBO, or fixed-based operator. An FBO is basically the small airport, often next to the large commercial airport, used for private planes. Apparently Matthew had earned himself a seat on the private plane and a concert ticket because Cary couldn’t make it. I don’t know who decided this (Johnny or Nick or maybe both of them), but someone thought that it probably didn’t look good for Johnny to be arriving in North Carolina with just me on a private plane. This was my first experience of the micromanaging that goes in politics. Every move was handled: What will it look like? How will it affect the candidate’s image? Will this help us or hurt us? Welcome to politics. Many cooks in the kitchen all armed with their own recipes.

We landed, and Johnny’s loyal aide Andrew Young was there to meet him. I was told before we landed about Andrew’s love for the senator. There were many jokes within the PAC: Andrew was so in love with Johnny that he would meet him with rose petals to scatter under his feet as he walked.

This was my first meeting with him, and initially, I really liked Andrew. He was working for Johnny, someone he very obviously loved, so he radiated happiness. He was completely joyful and a little flirtatious. But he also displayed signs of a pattern I observed with most of the people around Johnny. Like so many of his aides, Andrew had a false sense of his own importance. Andrew was not the first one (nor would he be the last) who believed Johnny was gifted but couldn’t cross the street, let alone get to the White House, without his assistance in every last matter. In fairness, Johnny’s behavior played into this pattern completely.

With Andrew, though, it was endearing. He so clearly believed himself to be in charge of everything and he so clearly wasn’t. As I chatted with Andrew about the great state of North Carolina, I wondered to myself why Johnny surrounded himself with people who believed that he was a very talented simpleton who couldn’t function without them. Because the Johnny I knew was no fool.

We got to the concert and went to the back where all of the Dave Matthews Band tour buses were; the number and the size of those buses were humbling. There was an outdoor tent, drinks, and buffet food. Supporters surrounded Johnny while Boyd Tinsley, who I later learned was the violin player for the band, was holding court. I met Cate Edwards (who later told her dad she thought I was cool), a friend of hers, and many of Johnny’s supporters. They were all very friendly; some expressed their excitement that I was going to be making a documentary about their guy.

Boyd was giving some of Johnny’s supporters an inside tour of his bus, and I was invited to come along. When I stepped inside, Boyd was talking about his passion for tennis and doing musical things outside of the band, like scoring films. I asked if he would be interested in doing some music for the documentary I was about to start making for Johnny, and he said yes, very much. I exchanged numbers with one of his two assistants, we chatted for a second, and then I went to get dinner from the buffet.

We were all sitting in the audience. During the concert Andrew gathered Johnny and some folks to go up to the side of the stage and watch from there. Johnny, of course, had a seat; everyone else stood. After the show, Andrew drove Johnny, Matthew, and me back to the plane.

The night before I wrote this, Johnny, Quinn, and I were having dinner, and because I was working on this section of the book, we were talking about that particular ride. Johnny remembered that
The
New York Times
had a piece about him coming out that we read in advance via BlackBerry on the way back to the plane. I remember a lot of laughter and joking amongst the group. Andrew had gotten us all concert T-shirts, and Andrew and I were talking about the band and the song “Steady As You Go.” Andrew and I both agreed that we loved that song. Later Andrew would claim it was going to be Johnny’s and my wedding song, which isn’t something we ever talked about. I had been married once and did not want to do it again.

Boyd and his assistants flew back to DC with us. I remember Matthew and I dropped Johnny off at his place first, then Matthew dropped me off at the Georgetown Inn. And then I walked back to Johnny’s, a few blocks away.

In the morning, as I was getting ready, Johnny went running. I left his place and took a cab to Union Station in order to check my bag and then took a cab to go hear Johnny give a speech on poverty in America. Johnny called as I was in the cab and asked if I saw anyone when I left his place. I said no; apparently I had just missed a staffer.

At the speech, I sat with Boyd and his assistants. Josh Brumberger was there. It was the first time I had seen him since the night at the Regency. He did not do a very good job of either hiding his feelings about my new job or his judgments about me. I believe he was mostly bothered by the fact that I was hired without his knowledge or control.

After the speech, Matthew escorted me up to say goodbye to the senator.

The senator and I said farewell, and I told him that I was looking forward to working with him. It was sort of funny, pretending to be formal and acting like I had no other relationship with Johnny. This was the first time I really felt like I was living a double life. And then I hopped a cab to Union Station and headed back to New Jersey.

I had no illusions or doubts as to why I had joined him in this secret life; my choice was to love and support the man I was in love with as he (I hoped) ended his double life. He wanted truth, he wanted authenticity, he didn’t want to hide—this I know for sure, even though he sometimes fought himself tooth and nail.

How do I know this for sure? He never would have fallen in love with me if that hadn’t been the case. True or not, I believed it.

FIVE

And Away We Go

“Being president is like being groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.”

—
B
ILL
C
LINTON

I
N EARLY JULY, as the contract for the documentary was getting worked out with the lawyers, I grabbed a camera and set off to join Johnny for two weeks of development, in order to check out his world and the people in it. My biggest concern was how I was going to turn this world of political preparation into something interesting.

Once I got to DC, I took a cab to the PAC offices and spent a few hours chatting up some staffers. I still remember John Davis (the same one who went for ketchup) as such a likeable, fresh-faced Iowa guy, sitting at his desk explaining the importance of Iowa to me.

Then I took a cab to Nick Baldick’s office, where Johnny was making phone calls and having a meeting with Nick and David “Mudcat” Saunders, a political strategist known for making very colorful statements. To me, Mudcat was quite a character, a man who couldn’t seem to get enough camera time.

Johnny told me later that he and Nick were meeting about Johnny’s desire to replace Josh Brumberger. Johnny’s reasoning was that traveling with someone all the time was hard, and without getting into all the details of why Josh was wrong for him, he just wanted him replaced. But for some reason it didn’t happen.

I would soon see a very disturbing pattern from the PAC leaders who supposedly wanted their candidate to reach the highest office in the land: Johnny would request something, and the request would go unheeded because the folks working for him thought they knew better. I wondered, is this from his marriage too? Or is it just youth and ego? Or is it all of politics? Welcome to Washington, DC, the stagnant capital of “I am right and you are wrong.”

I went to the Daily Grill, ate my favorite Cobb salad, and checked into the Georgetown Inn, where I stayed the night. Johnny came to visit me later that night for a few hours, which was easy for him because it was just a few blocks away from his house.

We flew to Iowa the next day. Johnny’s first event was at a small coffee shop/cafe. I shot a few “man-on-the-street” interviews along with his stump speech. One was with an older female supporter and her husband. She was hilarious. She thought Johnny was the cat’s meow, and she had clearly dragged her husband down there to see him. She showed up in the afternoon, at a different event hours away, having ditched her husband, this time with a girlfriend in tow. I would see her at almost every event in Iowa and was beginning to learn that in some cases, there is a fine line between stalker and supporter.

When we pulled up to the event, Johnny’s cell rang. He answered and even from the back of the car, you could hear screaming coming from the phone. Johnny said, “I will call you back,” and he hung up the phone. He got out of the car and walked half a block away from us, but anyone could see that he was having a heated phone call. He hung up and as he walked by he mumbled to me, “Elizabeth.” As if I hadn’t already figured that out.

I wasn’t allowed to shoot this event so I wandered outside and ran into Jonathan Darman. Darman was a
Newsweek
reporter who was following the senator for a story and had flown in on the same commercial flight with us. I learned that you are always forewarned when press people are around so everyone who is traveling with the candidate is always aware that they are being watched. Johnny even texted me on the plane from the “other woman” cell phone to tell me exactly where the reporter was sitting. Outside this event, Darman gave me his card and his word that he would not write about me or our conversation, given that I didn’t have all the details of the upcoming project hammered out yet. Darman and I would later become close friends, at least from my perspective. I came to think of him as a friend first and a reporter second. This was a mistake—a stupid mistake.

After Iowa, Johnny and I flew to Ohio to meet Josh. We were seated next to each other on a small commercial flight. Five months into our secret relationship and we were traveling together, working together right out in the open. It was surreal.

Josh met us, and the ribbing and teasing me started immediately. Sometimes he was very funny, sometimes just plain mean—adolescent displaced anger. Even so, I realized within minutes of being around Josh that I would need to mic him too, and have a second camera, in order to capture the real relationship between Josh and Johnny. Josh would be a great way to inspire a younger generation’s interest in politics.

Johnny and Josh had a lot of father-and-son stuff going on. And like any firstborn son, when a new member was added to the family, Josh turned defensive and unhappy when he was no longer getting all the attention. My existence alone irked him, without even counting all the ways I didn’t operate within what Josh thought was appropriate parameters for a political staffer. And Josh was right about that: I didn’t operate like a political staffer. I didn’t falsely bow to Johnny, or talk bad about him behind his back. I wasn’t interested in engaging in the pettiness. I really wasn’t one of them, nor did I try or pretend to be. I was in my forties and had been hired as a consultant in order to show a fresh perspective of what goes on behind the scenes. I wasn’t a staffer; I was removed from that and was also the boss’s (secret) girlfriend. Because of that, Johnny was nicer to me than he was to Josh. He often showed his humanity in his interactions with me. If Johnny was eating or getting something to eat, he would frequently ask me if I was hungry. In the airport, Johnny would often offer to help me with my luggage. This was basic kindness, which didn’t exactly extend to Josh, the male twenty-something body guy. I am sure Josh felt rejected—who wouldn’t?

But Josh was also sporting an attitude, perhaps driven by his exaggerated sense of self-importance as Johnny’s gatekeeper. Even the most important donors mostly had to go through Josh to get to the senator. And yet, somehow, I had managed to get hired without Josh’s consent or even input. And try as he might, Josh just couldn’t control me. I was the new thorn in Josh’s side, and he was doing all he could to remove me.

I often thought that it was going to take a miracle just to get their candidate to the next event, let alone the White House, with these kids at the helm. There were
way
too many unaware, underage, wannabe captains on this ship.

While we were in Ohio, Darman’s piece appeared in
Newsweek
, and we read it in the car on the way to some event. As with much of his writing, it was quite snarky. He seemed so much nicer in person. Both Josh and Johnny told me that that was almost always the case: the reporters will act and appear to be favorable to you in person and then nail you to the cross in print, twisting and turning everything to fit the story they and/or their editor want to tell, or at the very least, take a few jabs.