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Venus Vector Chapter 35: Are you gonna let them do that to me?
Venus Vector Chapter 35: Are you gonna let them do that to me? The Independent
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| Chapter 35: Are you gonna let them do that to me? |
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| Written by Wally Gordon | |
| Wednesday, 28 May 2008 | |
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Venus 35: ‘Are you gonna let them do that to me?’ By Wally Gordon Chaos is the normal state of affairs on Election Day in New Mexico. Voters are registered in the wrong precinct. Election judges don’t show up for work. Not enough paper ballots are printed. Election workers have forgotten how to handle challenges. Machines break down. Replacements can’t be found. Repairmen are nowhere in evidence. So polls that are supposed to close at 7 p.m. stay open two hours later to give all those thousands of good citizens waiting in line a chance to vote. So counts that are supposed to be completed by 10 p.m., or 11 p.m. at the latest, or midnight come hell or high water, are still not done when exhausted workers are sent home at 4 a.m. Nor are they finished the next day. And then the challenges begin, and the deciphering of illegible ballots, and the filing of suits and counter suits. In a good year, 10 days later everybody knows who won the election. But this was not a normal election, and it wasn’t a good year for anybody, least of all for Chief Deputy Ted Jefferson. “God damn it, I warned you,” the sheriff swore at his right-hand man. “I told you to take it easy, watch your step, make sure you had your act together and not to act until after the election—if at all. I told you, and now look what you’ve gone and done. And the worst of it is I can’t even fire you because it’d look like some kind of political fix.” It had seemed like a brilliant move to Jefferson. Arresting Gabriel Goodrich, the Republican candidate for governor on Election Day and charging him with murder would be sure to grab national headlines, and when the guy was convicted, as Jefferson had been certain he would be, the chief deputy would be the hero of the national press. He was no longer thinking about succeeding the sheriff. How about star of his own TV series? How about director of the FBI? The sky was the limit. The sheriff was just too cautious for his own good. It was an old man’s caution, a fear of taking risks, lack of ambition and contentment with mediocrity. He’d show the sheriff. He’d show his own father, who had told him he was too stubborn for his own good. He’d show all those who had put him down. So he quietly got a warrant and went to the candidate’s house, told him hew as under arrest, read him his Miranda rights, slipped on the cuffs as smoothly as you please, and prep walked him out to his police car. Sirens blaring and lights beaming, he raced down to the courthouse and booked him in; then over coffee and three donuts, he gloated. It’d be the last time for years that Jefferson gloated. Goodrich used his one call to fetch his lawyer, who demanded an immediate bond hearing. As luck would have it, he drew the only Republican magistrate in Santa Fe, Jose Padilla. The lawyer told Padilla his Republican client was obviously not a flight risk since he owned 100,000 acres of New Mexico soil and at least 20 companies incorporated in the state. He said his Republican client—just to be sure he’d be around for trial—would post a $1 million cash bond. The Republican judge agreed, and Goodrich wrote out a $1 million check on the spot. He wrote the check on his Republican candidacy bank account, but who was checking such details then? Gabriel Goodrich was a free man. And it was still only 9 a.m. on Election Day. What Goodrich did then was a stroke of genius. He called up every TV station and every radio station with more than a token audience and bought all their airtime between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. All of it. It cost him $13 million for one’s day advertising, but who was keeping count? Certainly not Goodrich. He went to the studio he’d had built in his Santa Fe mansion and sat down and started broadcasting, and kept on broadcasting, and kept on. He lambasted the sheriff and the deputy, the independent candidate and the Democrat, the good ole boys who ran the state and the elite whippersnappers who were trying to get into the game. He scorned the Legislature and the Congress and the president. He attacked the state’s economy and the nation’s. He criticized just about every institution and person in the world except one: “The guy who’s getting stripped and raped and lynched is the average Joe like you and me, the hard-working guy with not enough money and too many debts and not enough hours in the day to do everything he’s gotta do.” He continued, “Now let me tell you what these guys got together and tried to do to me today.” After recounting the saga of his arrest, he added, “Are you gonna let them do that to me? I wouldn’t let them do it to you. Now it’s up to you to get your sorry asses to the polls today and stop them cold.” Apparently he forgot to mention that he was about as far from an average Joe as anyone could get. It also seemed that a lot of his listeners forgot too, because that day saw a higher Republican turnout than ever before in New Mexico history. While Democrtas and independents fretted away time trying to decide whether it was worth voting, more than 95 percent of registered Republicans trooped to the polls. And they did for Gabriel Goodrich what all his months of vituperative campaigning had not been able to do. |
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 May 2008 ) |
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