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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 VII
It was a few minutes drive to 800 Washington Avenue. The McCaskill victory party was in the Majestic Ballroom of the Renaissance Grand Hotel.
In the center of the room was a large area, roped off for the national media. In its middle was a large riser, crowded with huge light stands, cameras and reporters. ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN - even ‘unfair and unbalanced’ FOX. Behind the riser area were many large tables, each with multiple laptop stations for the print media. Photographers milled through the crowd.
The local TV stations set up separately, on the perimeter of the ballroom. At the far end of the room were the stage and podium. On either side there were large multi-media screens, each providing video of a different news channel.
As we were making our way through the thick crowd, Zelda requested a glass of wine so we headed to the bar. She ordered up a glass of stock merlot. Seven bucks. I remember thinking that perhaps the profit on the drinks would go toward repaying the $500,000 loan Claire personally made to the campaign. If so, there’d be no complaint from me.
We bumped into David Eagleton again and we visited with Pete, the Bostonian who had been our ‘transportation captain’ that morning. Many of the young staffers were partying it up, one last burst of energy after all their hard work. We saw Jake Zimmerman, our new State Representative (he ran unopposed) come in and he stopped to chat. We wandered back toward the stage and found Bernie Frank. He was with a few friends and was seated near the front.
I had met Bernie months ago at the Stem Cell Roundtable discussion at Congressman Russ Carnahan’s office. From then on we’d see each other at a series of events. A Parkinson’s patient, Bernie is passionate about embryonic stem cell research. As an attorney, he’s always vigilant of how legalese translates to reality; a good man to know and, more importantly, a good man.
Finding Bernie in the crowd was fortuitous. I had forgotten my camera, but Bernie was seated near John Reichman, who had not suffered such memory lapse. John was kind enough to take all the pictures in the left column of this page and email them to me. (Thanks, John!)
We constantly scanned the multi-media screens. Every graphic depicting a Democrat with a lead drew a cheer - and with every update that McCaskill was closing in on Talent, a boisterous eruption.
We watched as Brown beat DeWine in Ohio, as Tester went ahead of Burns in Montana, and as Webb took an infinitesimally small lead over Allen. Of course, Casey had stomped Santorum in Pennsylvania. They had already called that one for Casey before 3,000 votes had been counted. Except for Ford losing to Corker in Tennessee, it was all looking remarkably good.
House seat after House seat was turning from red to blue, but sadly, I watched as Tammy Duckworth from Illinois appeared to lose. But finally, the graphics on the news screens had Claire turning the corner, now with a slight lead over Talent. There was no check mark next to her picture, but we knew that the later returns from St. Louis and Kansas City would yield positive results. There were cheers and chants of, “We want CLAIRE! We want CLAIRE!”
After a while I noticed Jim Talent on one of the screens. There was video, but no audio and I assumed it was file footage. Since the networks hadn’t yet placed a check mark by Claire’s name, it never occurred to us that what was being aired was Talent’s concession speech.
Before we knew it, those handling the media’s portable video camera began working their way toward the stage. I checked the screens. The news networks had yet to call the race for Claire, though clearly something was about to happen. The ceiling lights in the room dimmed, but those media lights increased their intensity. It became hot. I removed my suit coat and loosened my tie. Up came the music and a moment later Claire’s family came out on stage. Then, a couple of moments later, Claire entered to the roar of the crowd. She was smiling broadly and waving and pointing into the mass of supporters.
She approached the podium and tried to begin a speech. The screaming crowd interrupted her and she momentarily laughed at all the ruckus. Finally, after a few more moments, she made her address. Each and every sentence was answered with cheers and signs waving in the air. You can see a video of the speech on youtube.com (Click here.) If you watch closely at 1 minute and 49 seconds and again at 8 minutes and 11 seconds, you’ll see me and Zelda in the crowd. You’ll also notice that there’s a shot of one of the large screens – and they still hadn’t called the race for Claire.
But Jim Talent knew what the media didn’t: Claire was going to carry the urban areas and, as they were going to be the last to be reported, he couldn’t recover from any deficit going into the final stretch. It was over.
I was struck by two items notably absent from Claire’s speech. First, there were no congratulations to Jim Talent for a “good, tough campaign.” This used to be part and parcel of virtually every victory speech, but in this campaign Talent had approved ads that called Claire “a cheat and a liar” - literally. He also ran ads implying that her husband had evaded income taxes and that Claire had deliberately left property taxes unpaid. Newspapers, whose reporters had investigated the charges and determined they were unfounded, decried the ads saying Talent had crossed the line.
This style of character assassination was new for Jim Talent. Observers and pundits theorized that it was the hand of Karl Rove applying the pressure and Talent yielding to it in exchange for five visits by the President, stumping and raising about a million dollars with each visit.
So instead of the typical congratulation to her now defeated opponent, she instead noted that Missouri had rejected the smear tactics and she acknowledged her husband, Joe, for withstanding more than any spouse should ever be subjected to.
Second, there was no acknowledgment of Michael J. Fox. It was Fox, after all, who in the late rounds of the campaign brought all the national media attention to McCaskill - by way of Rush Limbaugh, of course. The episode was responsible for large sums of contributions pouring in at the eleventh hour. If not for the all the money generated by the event, certainly for the awareness Fox deserved a thank you. As Claire was moving from interview to interview, I stopped her long enough to whisper in her ear, “Be sure to thank Michael.” She smiled and said she was handling that privately. That was all I needed to know.
A few moments later I realized I had lost Zelda in the crowd and I began to look for her. It didn’t take long. She was jitterbugging with some guy she didn’t know. He had a McCaskill sticker on his shirt, and apparently that was all the introduction required.
Someone called my name. I turned around and David Eagleton was running toward me. He jubilantly lifted me up off the ground, no easy task given my current weight. After he set me down, we asked in unison, “Any news on Amendment 2?” Nobody seemed to know the answer but one could hear the questions constantly repeated in the crowd.
I spotted Claire’s husband, Joe Shepard. I went over to congratulate him. As we shook hands I mentioned how much abuse he’d had to tolerate during the campaign. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, shaking his head. I suggested that he consider sending a nice humidor to Rush Limbaugh for stepping into the fray and charging up the campaign. He smiled and began to tell his version of the story…
“Last night,” he began, “Claire mentioned that Rush always refers to her as ‘an old friend.’ Then rips her for ten minutes, but always ends by again calling her his ‘old friend, Claire.’ Well, they’re not really friends, and last night Claire said to me, ‘You know, if we win this thing I’m going to send Rush a dozen roses with a card that reads, ‘...from an old friend.’”
Touché.
“She needs to send another note,” I told him.
“Another?”
“To the White House. She needs to tell Bush she’s measuring for drapes.” Joe’s grin instantly broke into laughter.
I found myself once again trying to get an update on Amendment 2, and still nobody seemed to know. We could still hear the question being repeated throughout the crowd, but to no avail. Finally, I heard someone say, “It’s close, but we’re up by 3,000 votes!” That was better news. Hopefully, the late returns from the urban areas would carry it, but it was still too close.
By this time it was well past 1:00 am. Time to head home – or so we figured.
- Jeff Eisen
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Above: Screen at McCaskill victory bash shows CNN reporting that Claire is pulling ahead.
Below: Zelda and I enjoy the moment |
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Above: Claire McCaskill delivers her victory speech, flanked by her husband, Joe Shepard.
Below: Crowd erupts during the speech |
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