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the Stem Cell Page time and ignorance are the enemies |
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Election Day Diary |
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PART V
It was now after 4:00. I headed back to the McCaskill headquarters. I was having twinges of pain in my back as I drove west on the Forest Park Expressway. My sciatica was acting up. When I arrived at the HQ things were still bustling but the atmosphere was noticeably different. You could sense that things were about to wind down.
I visited with some of the staff. In one room they were still taking calls regarding voter irregularities, but overall, they said, things hadn’t been too bad. Mostly these were complaints regarding miscues over the Voter ID law that had been overturned in the courts, and denial of some provisional ballot opportunities. In another room, they were still answering phone calls from voters with questions about Claire’s various positions, but as the day unfolded and headed toward sunset these calls, too, were diminishing.
I saw Richard Martin, Claire’s campaign manager, come in. He was carrying his briefcase, talking on his cell phone and – he was smiling. I walked around to his office. Well, to be accurate I was hobbling. When I reached the doorway, I looked to see if he was still engaged in a conversation. No, his call had ended. He spotted me and said, “Hey Jeff, have a seat.” He was still smiling. I liked that.
Most of the time, Richard had a poker face. He was always cordial and sociable, but often tough to read. An observer never really new what he was thinking unless he verbally expressed himself. That could have been due to load he carried. He was always busy. I recall one day when I was in his office and something had gone wrong - terribly wrong - and he unloaded. Even then, his facial expression did not match the verbal upset. But now, God bless him, he couldn’t help but smile. Something had obviously gone very right.
“Exit polls?” I asked.
“Yeah, they’re looking good.”
“Good enough to win?”
“Well, I’ve been here before and I don’t want to be specific but, yeah, they’re looking very good.” Unable to return to a poker face, his grin remained locked. His phone rang again and I quickly excused myself, but with my sciatica flared up, it took me a moment longer to rise from the chair. As I exited his office, just as I turned the corner in the hall, I heard him say, “Of the three, we’re up by two, up by three and up by six!” Obviously he was revealing three key exit polls to someone in a key position in his political food chain.
I did a U-turn and poked my head back into office. He still had that cell phone pressed against his ear, but he spotted me. I smiled and said, “I heard that!”
“You did?” He was beaming so broadly he was only a step away from laughing out loud. “Well, please don’t say anything.”
“No problem, Richard.”
I limped back to the area where the volunteers were doing the last of the transportation logistics. I found my wife and told her I had to go home and stretch out for a little bit. Having lived with my episodes of sciatica, she understood. “You go and I’ll get a ride home.” I said goodbye to some of the volunteers and staffers and headed home.
At home, I settled into bed and tried to stretch out my back and left leg. Ahhhhh. I closed my eyes, thinking of all those elderly folks I had driven. I thought of the wheelchairs, the walkers and the canes. I thought about our right to vote and how these folks took that right as a sacred duty. For one of them, not even dialysis could stop her.
A little later, Zelda came home and stretched out with me. After fifteen minutes she warned that we needed to get ready to head to the [hopefully] victory parties. But neither of us moved, at least for a while. The extreme intensity of the day had diminished a bit and we were relishing that quiet moment, reveling in the silence.
That silence was broken by Zelda reminding me that we needed to shower and get on our way. Oh well, it was great while it lasted…
- Jeff Eisen
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