Free The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear by Stuart Stevens Page A

make only sixty or so calls and then “weighted” the numbers, extrapolating the results that would have resulted if he had made the full six hundred calls. But he was charging, of course, as if he were making all the calls. When his client discovered what was going on, Shenkoph defended himself by asserting that however he came up with the numbers, they were right on the money, which was a hell of a lot more than you could say for a lot of pollsters. The governor, a self-made millionaire, was not a stupid man. He kept Shenkoph as his pollster and strategist until he won, then waited a week and had his campaign manager announce to the world that they had just discovered this grievous fraud and demanded a full refund on all polling. The lawsuit that followed had driven Shenkoph into bankruptcy. The assistant campaign manager on that campaign had been a young hotshot—me.
    “But I hate to think,” I barked, “what kind of holy shit would come down on our heads if one of our brothers in the media found out we were in the field the morning after this bombing trying to figure out how the hell the vice president should respond. Let me go out on a limb here, guys: I think we ought to be against it.”
    “No, but really, Tommy,” Kim cut in, “if your poll showed that maybe we should come out in support of more terrorist bombing, I’d love to make a spot about it.” She turned away in disgust and lit an unfiltered Camel. Only Shenkoph and she smoked. And Camels? They were still legal?
    “Kim,” Tommy said in the same logical voice, “I am sure, given your track record in other campaigns, that you would do precisely that.”
    “Goddamn it!” She was half out of her chair in an instant. “I’ve won more races—”
    “It is a matter of nuance I am speaking of,” Tommy continued, unfazed. “The wording. The precise language of our response.” He held out his hands like a teacher reduced to proving simple theorems to children. “This is what is critical and this is what a poll could assist us in formulating.”
    I shook my head. This was a bad idea. The last thing we needed was a nasty story about how we were so unsure how to respond to the bombing that we needed to poll. And the truth was that in all likelihood, Hilda Smith was going to say whatever she wanted to say, regardless of what we told her to.
    “Let’s move on,” I said.
    Eddie stood up and passed around sheets of paper to the seven people in the room. “We have heard from a half-dozen delegates that they are leaving town. We may be able to turn some of those around or it may get worse. These are bios on the alternate delegates who will replace anyone who leaves.”
    “What about George delegates leaving?” Kim asked. We all looked at her and then she shook her head. “Yeah, right. They’re dying for this fight. They’ll probably have alternates already riding horses into town. Ride to the sound of the guns. Our people are scared. I hate that.”
    Eddie continued. “Attached is a list of the alternates and key influence points we ran on each using our own circle-of-influence logarithms. As you know, each alternate, like most delegates, is not legally bound to support the vice president and can switch allegiance to any candidate. That includes candidates not in the race.”
    “So these sumbitches can really vote for whomever the hell they want?” Dick Shenkoph asked. “Even if they were elected as Hilda Smith alternate delegates, they can flip on us and go to that bastard George?”
    “Pretty much. But there are technicalities in some state laws that we might be able to contest,” Eddie responded.
    Every state party had its own rules for electing delegates, approved by the national party. It was a complicated, confusing mess. We had a staff of eight election law specialist lawyers who did nothing but focus on what it took to get Hilda Smith on the ballot—not an easy process—and tracked the frequently changing rules for each state’s