The Campaign

By Trip Powers

Biz Cooper decided long ago that she would be one of the powerful in this incredibly unequal world.  At the tender age of thirty, she is already in charge of the opposition research department at the multi-billion dollar Kallen Corporation, and on the fast track for success, power and wealth.  When she is charged with investigating an unusual response to a normal drunk driving fatality, she has no idea that she is about to embark on a journey that will test her very foundations.

Jackson Turner just lost his entire family in a car crash due to a drunk driver.  What he does, however, is so unexpected that it sets in motion a chain of events that could change the political landscape forever.

Drafted to run for Senator of Maine, Jackson Turner begins an unusual campaign designed at addressing the underlying causes of inequality, human misery, and the lack of social justice in the world.  Biz Cooper infiltrates the campaign with the express goal of destroying it. Yet being around Jackson, and hearing his ideas, forces her to reevaluate everything she thought she knew about the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trip Powers
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393168584

Book preview

Part 1

We often decide that an outcome is extremely unlikely or impossible, because we are unable to imagine any chain of events that could cause it to occur.  The defect, often, is in our imagination.

- Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, quoted from The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

Chapter 1

IT REALLY WAS A TINY news story.   And it was in Maine for chrissakes.  Biz Cooper could not imagine why her superiors were tasking her with this. She knew her corporate bosses at Kallen holding company were paranoid, but this really seemed extreme.  She was used to investigating and figuring out how to derail movements that were a threat to the Kallen’s profits.  She had been all over the country keeping potential risks at bay with threats of lawsuits, damaging personal skeletons, misinformation, just to name a few of the tactics in her tool bag.  Those means could be a bit cruel, she acknowledged; but the end, a strong company, and a strong US economy, were worth it.  As her grandmother was fond of saying, You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

But the title from the Island Falls Gazette did not set off any alarms for her. Local Schoolteacher Forgives Drunk Driver.  Fine.  Some liberal teacher in the outback had watched Gandhi too many times.  Now, Local School Teacher Organizes Mass Demonstration Against Globalization would have been more like it.  A story like that would certainly get the attention of her bosses at Kallen Corp.

Her personal cell ringing brought her out of her reverie.  It was her mother.  She had been avoiding her calls a lot lately and felt guilty.  Right next to the phone was one  of her old papers from grade school entitled How to Save the World.  It got her thinking of how silly and naive she had been, but she had grown older and wiser.  Obviously, the old essay was a message to answer her phone.  As she did have a meeting to go to soon, she realized that she could, guilt free, end this conversation quickly.  Therefore, she decided to answer the phone.  She clicked the accept call button and said, Hi, Mom.

Hi, Elizabeth honey, I thought I might never get through to you, she said in that way that always brought some measure of guilt.  What was it about parents?! Did you get my package, the essay I found? She asked innocently enough.

I did, Mom.  That was very sweet of you to send that along, she lied.

Well, I found it and began thinking of you.  You know, it really is a surprise to us how you ended up working for Kallen, not that there's anything wrong with it.  Now her mother was lying.  This was how it went...every time.  That was why Biz avoided most of her mother's calls.  They truly did wonder how she had come to be so different from them.

Working in the secretive arm of the Kallen Corporation had just kind of happened to Biz.  There was a time when she thought she might end up directly involved in politics. Like any grade schooler presented with horrifying images of third world poverty, she objected to the obvious inequality and lack of social justice in the world.  It is so obvious if you just look. In fact, her mother was always trying to remind her, she thought ruefully.

However, her study of history had kept revealing the same pattern of those with and those without.  Even the so-called ‘workers paradises’ of the former eastern bloc communist countries were highly stratified—in fact more so in many cases—with huge disparities between classes.  It seemed that the idealism of the liberal elite was just that: idealism, that they themselves, the phony hypocrites that they were, didn’t even really try to change.  She liked Feed the World as a song, but dismissed the goal as being simply against human nature.  Hierarchy was ever present in the human history she had learned.  When she was a sophomore in high school, she had set her sights on being at the top of that hierarchy, and began aping conservative political positions.  This had been the beginning of the distance between herself and her parents. 

I wish you were on Facebook at least, so we could keep up with your life, her mother complained.

I know, Mom, but you also know that I value my privacy.  No one would be interested in the boring work I do anyway, she lied right back. Least the pay is good.  That part was certainly true.  Biz was making more money than she could have really imagined at this point in her life, but she certainly had set herself up for this starting back in school.  

She honed her argumentation skills in high school during her academically ambitious schedule, debate club and Model UN.  She was smart, committed, and earned the highest grades.  She attended an elite northeastern liberal college in the NESCAC conference who had given her the best scholarship. There she quickly became the charismatic leader of the few conservative students to attend.  She excelled in scientific inquiry and showed great aptitude for solving complex problems.  She also proved to be deviously clever.  For fun, she had rigged a few college elections with creative ploys to get to a leadership position in the largely left-wing college.  Fact was, she was a huge fan of the movie All the President’s Men, but mainly because she researched and admired the ratfuckers at USC who had become Nixon’s dirty tricks crew.

Her college career allowed her to hone her political skills. Utilizing a ruthless adherence to Machiavellian principles, she was able to lead movements to turn back some of the more outrageous items from the liberal agenda that her fellow conservatives railed against.   She excelled in the use of euphemisms to hide her true intent.  When trying to combat the open displays of homosexuality on campus, she spoke of public displays of affection and the like. Personally, she didn’t really even care that much if two men kissed on the main quad—they could do as they pleased.  It was the challenge that drove her, and in a liberal institution, the challenge was even greater; with an even more rewarding payoff when she won. 

Did you read it again? You were so caring in that piece, her mother sounded like she longed for that innocent and naive young girl to return to her.  However, that naive schoolgirl was a player in the real world of power and influence now.  With her success in college, she knew that she could have a promising career as a smart, good looking, and articulate conservative woman.  This was a good set of qualifications to have in this ever more polarized political climate.  She adopted the free market mantra of the conservative movement.  At this point, she had argued with so many about the merits of conservatism that it no longer felt forced at all.  Certainly there was a price to be paid for a rising tide, but she could see no real alternative. 

Mom, I still am trying to help the world, just in a different way than you.  You know that.  They had had this conversation many times.  Biz was an obvious disappointment, she knew, but her parents would never admit it.  They just did these kind of passive aggressive things to get their message across.  Typical New England liberals. Their bleeding heart worldview hadn’t created a more just world.  As much as she loved them, she couldn’t help but see the hypocrisy of their relatively comfortable lives in the midst of so much inequality.  Did they give it up?  Did they make the ultimate sacrifice to their ideals?  Nope.  

So Biz took a different route to help people.  Her conservative philosophy labeled it economic development.  This was best accomplished by private profit driven corporations like Kallen.  It was fine if it also helped her, right? 

Additionally, she had come to realize that maybe most of it didn’t matter anyhow.  There was ever present poverty in both left or right leaning governments.  Maybe the only thing that really mattered was individual goals.  She was achieving hers, while she didn’t know if her parents actually had any real goals.  

When she saw the extensive sets of doodles on her old essay cover page, she realized that her mother had been talking but she hadn’t been paying attention.  She broke into her mother's monologue. Listen, I have to run to a meeting with my boss.  Kiss Dad for me, okay?

All right Elizabeth, don’t be a stranger.  It’s been so long since we saw you.  More guilt, but this time delivered with a bigger spoon.

Soon, Mom, I promise.  Okay, gotta go.  Love you.  She was in fact not late for the meeting with Tom, but if she didn’t start up to his office soon, she would be.  That may have been the only part of the whole conversation that was mostly the truth, from either of them.  And she hated that they still called her Elizabeth.  She had changed to the more appropriate nickname Biz when she had gotten to college.

She took one last sip of her now tepid coffee.  Conversations with her mother always brought up the memories of how their relationship had deteriorated.  Out of college she went straight into a Republican Senatorial campaign, much to the dismay of her parents who were loyal Democrats.  She soaked up the atmosphere and had proved quite good at opposition research. Her consistent and persistent digging into the dirt of their opponent may have just swung the balance in the left leaning state of Pennsylvania.  Before she even started searching for the next opportunity, Tom Barbutton, her present boss at the Kallen Corporation had come knocking.  

Kallen had largely bankrolled the senatorial contest through, now legal, dark money.  They offered her a generous six figure salary and a job as a researcher at Kallen.  She soon realized that she was in a group of talented ratfuckers.  Quickly showing her skill at analyzing data and influencing her superiors to adjust to her conclusions, she ended up on the fast track for promotion as the most talented of the group.  She could quickly decipher potential problem areas, and problem groups, which might have a negative impact on the corporate bottom line: profit.  Not only could she identify these potential problems, but she also was able to create innovative ways to make those problems disappear.  With each new problem solved, she rose ever higher in the esteem of her bosses.

At the tender age of 31, she was the chief investigator for the opposition research team.  When some civil action lawyers threatened a massive court case, Biz was on the job disarming it.  If Kallen wanted access to Natural Park land for extraction of one resource or another, Biz could kill the opposition.  She never lost.  Tom knew she was the best, and most expensive, investigator he had.  So why was he wasting her time on this story in Maine?  She glanced at the time on her phone and hurried out of her office.

When she arrived at Tom’s office, she was ushered right in.  Tom glanced up, eyes flicking above the reading glasses far down his nose. Tom still had a nice head of dirty blond hair for a man in his fifties, though specks of gray were starting to show.  In fact, Biz always wondered if he had a twin somewhere on a beach, surfing and drinking.  Of course his doppelganger would have a windblown look, and not the ultra-neat haircut of a business executive.  Biz also pondered how someone had never gotten him to ask the question as Tom had remained a bachelor all these years. He was certainly good looking, and as the executive Vice President in charge of Corporate Affairs, he would have been quite a catch.

As he lifted his head from his desk and removed the glasses, it was clear he could read her face.  He sighed and then gave a direct command.  Biz, we need you to go to Maine and investigate this story.  She looked into his eyes to see if there was any wiggle room. She didn’t see any but she had to try.

Tom, I glanced over it.  I will send one of my team, ok? Biz countered.

No, Biz.  I know it may not look like much, but this comes directly from the brothers.  I also questioned this as it seemed like a low priority, but they want you to go, nonetheless.  The brothers was the shorthand for the founders of the corporation.

Maine, in February? She exclaimed with a bitter tone.  Not that Des Moines, where Kallen was located, was much nicer, but she was scheduled to head to the Caymans for a week on Sunday.  This would throw those vacation plans out the window.

I know, I know.  Here.  Look.  He threw one of those knit hats with earflaps at her. That’ll help, he laughed. 

Ha frickin ha. She glanced down at the wool hat. And I would never be caught dead in something like this.  She flung it back at him. I take it my travel is arranged?  She was hoping one of the companies private Gulfstreams was available.

Yup, e-ticket in your name, sorry the jets are unavailable right now, a rental four wheel drive SUV, and the nicest hotel we could find.

I don’t like the sound of ‘we could find,’ she bit off.

It’s Island Falls, Biz. And the super rich who go there don’t rent rooms, they buy mansions.

Chapter 2

ON THE FLIGHT TO PORTLAND, she received an email with the details that Tom had said would come.  Much she knew from the article in the Island Falls Gazette, which was now a few weeks old.  Jackson Turner was a 44 year old Social Studies teacher at the relatively small local combination middle and high school.  He had been teaching there for most of his 19 year teaching career.  He had married his girlfriend from college who also happened to be from Maine, and then proceeded to have two children, Grace and Frederick.  One night in late December, his wife, Sylvia, and their two children had been sideswiped on a mountainous road by a drunk driver causing the car to careen over the guardrail, falling some hundred yards before exploding.  No one, except the drunk driver, a woman named Tess Roland, had survived the crash.  While Jackson knew Tess from school, as he had taught two of her three children, they were not close in any way.  

If this was the whole story it would have been just another terrible accident and tragedy that, save those directly affected, would have been quickly forgotten.  What made this a story was Jackson’s reaction.  He forgave Tess publicly.  Again, fine, he was a forgiving guy, she thought. So she did what came naturally to her and she began investigating.  The first step was always finding information to create a profile on the subject.  In this case, she needed to dig up information about Jackson, his family, and Tess and her family.  With an internet connection and decent hacking skills, she gathered much information on the flights.  

While she had to read between the lines in places, the broad outline of their lives came into relatively sharp focus.  She began her profiles using a voice-to-text feature as she drove the three plus hours from Portland to Island Falls.  She would confirm her facts and assumptions in person when she talked to the people of Island Falls. After she reached her hotel, Biz read and edited the initial profiles.

Biz sighed when she finished editing.  Despite her attempts to intellectualize her problems, she was not yet totally unfeeling inside.  She could recognize this for the tragedy that it was.  Still, malaria kills seven 747’s worth of children every day.  That always seemed to put some perspective on things for her..  Yet, how could this admitted tragedy be of interest to the company?  There had to be more so she dug back into the research and was able to pull up the court's records.

What was not included in the newspaper article, except a few excerpts, was the full transcript from Tess’ arraignment. 

Testimony of Jackson Turner:  This is the worst moment of my life.  My grief is beyond my feeble words to describe.  A future that was so bright and filled with love has been stripped away from me.  I pad around my now quiet house wishing I could turn back the clock.  Like any of you, I also question: Why me?" And I get mad.  I seek to place blame.  And it seems so easy to blame Tess Roland and want vengeance.  It feels almost like there is an instinctual desire for revenge.  But is revenge the same thing as  justice?

"We see this story play out again and again in our novels and movies.  It seems so right, but talk to those who have been here before.  Talk to them about how hollow revenge really is.  My story is all too common.  Twenty-eight people die of drunk driving every day.  That’s twenty eight stories like mine every day.  And we have harsher and harsher sentences which are now mandatory.  Were we in North Dakota Tess Roland could be facing life imprisonment. 

"But this I know - Tess is a good woman.  I taught two of her three children and look forward to the third.  They are very nice kids, smart, with a bright future ahead of them.  They work hard and get good grades.  Tess and Tim have tried very hard to raise those kids as best as they can.  However, the weight of modern life, with its pressures and stressors, was, as it is for so many of us today, too much for them.  Their marriage was ending, and on that night, Tess found Tim with another woman.  How would you react?  Search deep.  

Tess is not even a drinker by all accounts.  Because of this accident, three lives were lost.  The lives of the three people I love the most in world.  But what is the cost if Tess ends up in jail for ten years.  Away from her children, unable to support them through high school and college.  Unable to give them the love and care that I wanted to give my children.  Will that make it better?  Will it make us somehow safer?  Will it prevent this from happening to other families in the future?  If you are honest with yourself, you can’t answer any of those questions with anything other than ‘no’. 

"So what should we do?  I think a crime is a wound in the social fabric.  When one happens, it must be healed.  Locking up Tess Roland will not heal anything.  Let her do her penance in community service and education.  Let her tell her story as I will surely tell mine.  I refuse to be a party to a second ripping apart and more ruined lives.  Tess, Tim, and I have spoken.  She will never be free from