Chapter 100: The Race Begins

One thing I did with Brewster was to start spending some money. In the military they teach you early on the value of reconnaissance. In business, it’s no different. If you are going to win, or just even hold your own, you need to know who you’re going up against, and what they have planned. In the Army you can add espionage to the mix. That’s a bit frowned on in the business world, at least if you get caught, so we avoided that, but I knew of companies that did it.

Why should politics be any different? Andy Stewart was not going to conduct a gentlemanly campaign, not against Bill Worley, who had already announced a primary battle, and certainly not in the general election against me. The more information we had on him, the better. The first thing that McRiley and the accountant and I agreed on was the need to have Stewart investigated.

One aspect was to look for ‘gotcha’ moments, where he had said one thing and voted for something different. Why would a dedicated public servant do such a thing? Not to seem cynical about it, but perhaps he had been paid to change his mind. That led to a second subject for investigation, Stewart’s campaign finances. Who was donating money to Stewart, and what were they getting in return?

The sort of thing we needed was his financials, as well as some very discreet inquiries into everything else. Specifically, how had a guy who had never once worked in the private sector but had always worked for the government somehow become a multimillionaire? Inquiring minds wanted to know! We needed to hire a forensic accounting team, and not look too closely at the techniques they used to get some of the information we asked for.

Who was to do all these wonderful things? A quick answer was to hire a clipping service, to go through newspapers and magazines and find anything reported on Stewart. John suggested we expand the search to what they were reporting on me, since Andy was certainly going to do that. We needed professionals to do the investigating of the finances, but for a lot of the other work we needed volunteers. There was no way I could afford paid personnel to do all the scut work; that would blow through our campaign budget way too fast. I needed campaign volunteers, and fast. One of our first priorities after officially announcing my candidacy was to start rallying the troops. McRiley laid out a timetable and a plan for doing this. We would start out with captive audiences, the local Republican groups. One problem we had was that there were only a couple of colleges in the district, Carroll Community College and Western Maryland College in Westminster. College kids make for great volunteers, but on the downside, they are usually Democrats. Win some, lose some. I would certainly rely on whatever resources the local Republican committees had available.

Campaign finance was one area where I had the advantage. The estimate we had out of the RNC was that it would cost approximately $350,000 to run for Congress this year, but that was a national average. I knew that number would skyrocket; I remembered reading (back on my first go) that by 2010 the cost would be three times that, and by 2020, it would double yet again. Senate runs could cost five or six times as much, easily. For a typical Congressman, every moment of their day is spent trying to produce cash for their next campaign. That’s their job, and if they can work on laws or fix the country in the meantime, that’s nice, too. They must come up with at least $500 in campaign funds every day for two years to even have a chance. If you have a primary battle, or a rich competitor, you can double or triple those numbers.

The need to pay for a home and schools in the D.C. area only made it worse. Various ethics rules allowed for some speeches to be considered not as fund raisers, but as personal educational discussions, which could be considered income. Income that could go towards paying their local mortgage. Income from book sales was also income and not allocated to the campaign. There was never enough money to go around.

So, how to come up with that cash? Congressmen are constantly holding fundraisers, dinners, and speeches where they can pass the hat and collect money. A $100 a plate dinner, with 50 paying guests, collects $5,000, with maybe only half of that going into the coffers. That covers five days’ worth, but there are only so many dinners and speeches you can give. Also, there is a limit to how much you can charge. Presidents get $10,000 and above; Congressman wannabes get maybe $50. You end up constantly begging for money.

Enter the lobbyist. He’ll be happy to funnel some cash to your campaign, because he knows you’ll be happy to give the group he represents an adequate hearing and consideration on their concerns. The quid pro quo is obvious - vote our way or there is no more cash. There are thousands of lobbying groups in Washington. Some of them compete against each other and some duplicate each other. The money comes from various corporations. Even Big Bob and Lefleur Homes hired lobbyists. They paid a small amount on every home they sold to the New York Manufactured Housing Association in Albany, which funneled some of their proceeds to the Manufactured Housing Institute in Washington, and there were at least another half dozen housing related lobbying groups I knew of, not including the ones for construction and real estate.

The other option is to elect rich people who could finance their own campaigns. Yes, we would be happy to take donations, and Brew and I were working on some fundraisers, but if you can write the big check yourself, or get a few rich friends to help, it becomes vastly easier. Congress was rapidly becoming a millionaire’s club; the Senate had been one for years. Brew was figuring I would need to raise more than the average, because Andy Stewart was a power on the Banking Committee and was going to have a fat war chest courtesy of the banks who liked him. We would need almost a million dollars, he thought.

What does the money get spent on? At the heart of every campaign is a small group of paid professionals, like Brewster and our accountant, Mike Finnegan. Add in a few media consultants and pollsters. Stir in a few lawyers for extra flavor. You have expenses related to a campaign headquarters - ours was in a strip mall in Westminster that Andrea found for us - plus office expenses related to that. Somebody has to pay for flyers and banners and posters and billboards. A huge expense is advertising, specifically television and radio. Realistically we were going to have to match Andy Stewart ad for ad. He had a campaign fund of at least a mill and a half, although he’d have to spend at least a third of that fighting off Bill Worley. We even joked about donating to Worley, to force Stewart to spend more!

So, with the official race not starting until the end of February, we spent the time until that point getting ready and preparing. For instance, I started hitting every potluck dinner and pancake supper in the district! I wasn’t sure how much Stewart was aware of me, and we didn’t get hit by any reporters in the meantime. We assumed that once we started getting volunteers, at least one of them would be a plant from the Stewart campaign. We would return the favor. Need-to-know stuff was held closely by me and the professionals and the long-time party people like the local committee chairmen.

I asked Brewster if I would need to debate Stewart at some point. They are always on the schedule for Presidential campaigns, and even the Vice-Presidential candidates could be expected to debate. What about Congressmen and Senators? Brew laughed. “The last thing in the world Andy Stewart wants to do is stand up next to you and be caught in photos. He’s sixty-three, going on a hundred and sixty-three, and just had a hip replaced. Without makeup and airbrushing, he looks like death warmed over! You, on the other hand, are young and vigorous and studly.”

“I don’t feel that way in the morning, let me tell you. You’ve noticed the cane, right?”

He laughed again. “So, what? You’re a wounded military hero, and he’s a lawyer. He says anything, and you can smack him with the cane.”

“I was injured, not wounded. There’s a difference.”

“Po-tay-toe, po-taht-toe. Nobody cares!”

The Maryland Ninth had a northern boundary of the Pennsylvania line. Below that we had a rough semicircle shape. It encompassed Northern Baltimore County to about Cockeysville, and then went west through the middle of Reisterstown and on south of Westminster, before turning north again around Thurmont. It was mostly northern Baltimore and Carroll Counties, with just enough of Frederick that I needed to campaign out there. There are some changes in the electorate as you traverse the district, as well. Baltimore County is relatively suburban and sophisticated, Carroll County similar though more rural, and northern Frederick County can be very conservative. You go much further west, and you end up in the Appalachian counties, and parts of those look like Deliverance is still playing.

Shortly after we filed in January, I began speaking to some of the Republican groups, working my way west. A typical one might be at the local high school. I was introduced as ‘a decorated soldier and local entrepreneur, a man who lives in the district and not one who has moved out of state, and somebody whose children probably go to school with yours. He is nationally known, and you’ve probably read his books and seen him on his appearances on Meet the Press and This Week with David Brinkley.’ I suppose there was a semblance of truth to that. I would then come out on stage, or from wherever they had me stashed, waving and go to the podium. We had blocked out a standard stump speech, which didn’t say much, but had some wonderful sound bites to it.