Florentyna was delighted whenever she read these articles, but Edward reminded her that neither the readers nor the writers could pull any levers on any voting machines in America, although he felt for the first time they now had Parkin on the run. He was also quick to point out that there were still 412 of the 3,331 delegates who after the primaries and caucuses remained undecided. The political pundits estimated that 200 of them were leaning toward the Vice President while about a hundred would come out in favor of Florentyna. It looked as if it was going to be the closest convention roll call since Reagan ran against Ford.
After California, Florentyna returned to Washington with another suitcase full of dirty clothes. She knew she would have to cajole, coax and arm-twist those 412 undecided delegates. During the next four weeks she spoke personally to 388 of them, some of them three or four times. It was always the women she found the least helpful, although it was obvious they were all enjoying the attention that was being showered on them, especially because in a month’s time no one would ever phone them again.
Edward ordered a computer terminal so that Florentyna had access to the records at campaign headquarters. The terminal provided information on all 412 delegates who remained uncommitted, along with a short life history of each, right down to their hotel room numbers in Detroit. When he reached the convention city, he intended to be ready to put his final plan into operation.
For five days during the next week, Florentyna made certain she was never far from a television set. The Republicans were at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, haggling over whom they wanted to lead them, no one having excited the voters during the primaries.
The choice of Russell Warner came as no surprise to Florentyna. He had been campaigning for the Presidency ever since he had become governor of Ohio. The press’s description of Warner as a good governor in a bad year reminded Florentyna that her main task would be to defeat Parkin. Once again, she felt it was going to be easier to defeat the Republican standard-bearer than the opposition within her own party.
The weekend before the convention, Florentyna and Edward joined the family on Cape God. Exhausted, Florentyna still managed to beat Edward in a round of golf and she thought he looked even more tired than she felt. She was thankful that the Baron was run so well by its new, young directors, which now included William.
Florentyna and Edward were both due to fly into Detroit on Monday morning where they had taken over yet another Baron. The hotel would be filled with Florentyna’s staff, supporters, the press and 124 of those uncommitted delegates.
As she said good night to Edward and then to the Secret Service men and women—whom she was beginning to treat as her extended family—that Sunday night, Florentyna knew that the next four days were going to be the most important in her political career.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
When Jack Germond of the Baltimore Sun asked Florentyna on the plane when she had started working on her acceptance speech, she replied, “Since my eleventh birthday.”
On the flight from New York to Detroit Metro Airport, Florentyna had read through her acceptance speech, already drafted in case she was nominated on the first ballot. Edward had predicted that she would not secure victory on the first roll call, but Florentyna felt she had to be prepared for any eventuality.
Her advisors considered the result was much more likely to be known after the second or even the third ballot, by which time Senator Bradley would have released his 189 delegates.
During the previous week, she had drawn up a short list of four people whom she thought worthy of consideration to join her on the ticket as Vice President. Bill Bradley still led the field and Florentyna felt he was her natural successor to the White House, but she was also considering Sam Nunn, Gary Hart and David Pryor.
Florentyna’s thoughts were interrupted when the plane landed and she looked out of the windows to see a large, excited crowd awaiting her. She couldn’t help wondering how many of them would also be there tomorrow when Pete Parkin arrived. She checked her hair in her compact mirror; a few white strands were showing in the dark hair, but she made no attempt to disguise them, and she smiled at the thought that Pete Parkin’s hair had remained the same implausible color for the past thirty years. Florentyna wore a simple linen suit and her only piece of jewelry was a diamond studded donkey.
Florentyna unbuckled her seat belt, rose and ducked her head under the overhead compartment. She stepped into the aisle and as she turned to leave, everyone in the plane began applauding. She suddenly realized that if she lost the nomination, this would be the last time she would see them all together. Florentyna shook hands with all the members of the press corps, some of whom had been on the trail with her for five months. A crew member opened the cabin door and Florentyna stepped out onto the staircase, squinting into the July sun. The crowd let up a yell of “There she is,” and Florentyna walked down the steps and straight toward the waving banners because she always found that direct contact with the voters recharged her. As she touched the tarmac, she was once again surrounded by the Secret Service, who dreaded crowds they could never control. She might sometimes think of being assassinated when she was alone, but never when she was in a crowd. Florentyna clasped outstretched hands and greeted as many people as possible before Edward guided her away to the waiting motorcade.
A line of ten small new Fords reminded her that Detroit had finally come to terms with the energy crisis. If Pete Parkin were to make the mistake of being driven in a Mercedes in this city, she would be the Democratic choice before Alabama cast its first vote. Secret Service men filled the first two cars while Florentyna was in the third, with Edward in front by the driver. Florentyna’s personal doctor rode in the fourth and her staff filled the remaining six “Mighty Midgets,” as the new small Ford had been dubbed. A press corps bus followed at the rear with police outriders dotted up and down the motorcade.
The front car moved off at a snail’s pace so that Florentyna could wave to the crowds, but as soon as they reached the highway the cars traveled into Detroit at a steady fifty miles an hour.
For twenty minutes Florentyna relaxed in the back seat during the drive into the midtown New Center area, where the motorcade exited at Woodward Avenue, turned south toward the river and slowed to about five miles an hour as the crowds filled the streets to catch a glimpse of Senator Kane. Florentyna’s organizing committee had distributed 100,000 handbills showing the exact route she would take when she arrived in the city, and her supporters cheered her all the way to the Baron Hotel. The Secret Service had begged her to change the route, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
Dozens of photographers and television crews were poised awaiting her arrival as Florentyna stepped out of her car and climbed the steps of the Detroit Baron, the whole area lit up by flashbulbs and arc lights. Once she was inside the hotel lobby, the Secret Service men whisked her away to the twenty-fourth floor, which had been reserved for her personal use. She quickly checked over the George Novak Suite to see that everything she required was there, because she knew that this was going to be her prison for the next four days. The only reason she would leave that room would be either to accept the nomination as the Democratic Party candidate or to declare her support for Pete Parkin.
A bank of telephones had been installed so that Florentyna could keep in touch with the 412 wavering delegates. She spoke to thirty-eight of them before dinner that night and then sat up until two o’clock the next morning, going over the names and backgrounds of those who her team genuinely felt had not made up their minds.
Next day, the Detroit Free Press was filled with pictures of her arrival in Detroit, but in truth she knew Pete Parkin would receive the same enthusiastic coverage tomorrow. At least she was relieved that the President had decided to remain on the sidelines when it came to supporting either candidate. The press had already treated that as a moral victory for Florentyna.
She put the newspaper down and began to watch the closed circuit te
levision to see what was going on in the convention hall during the first morning. She also kept an eye on all three channels at lunchtime in case any one network came up with some exclusive piece of news that the other two had missed and to which the press would demand her instant reaction.
During the day, thirty-one of the wavering delegates were brought to meet her on the twenty-fourth floor. As the hour progressed, they were served coffee, iced tea, hot tea and cocktails. Florentyna stuck to Perrier water.
She watched in silence as Pete Parkin arrived in Air Force Two at the Detroit airport. One staffer told her that his crowd was smaller than the one that had turned out for her yesterday, while another said it was larger. She made a mental note of the staffer who said that Parkin’s crowd was larger today and decided to listen to his opinions more carefully in the future.
Pete Parkin made a short speech at a specially set-up podium on the tarmac, his Vice Presidential seal of office glistening in the sun. He said how delighted he was to be in the city that could rightly describe itself as the car capital of the world. “I should know,” he added, “I’ve owned Fords all my life.” Florentyna smiled.
By the end of two days under “house arrest,” Florentyna had complained so much about being cooped up that on Wednesday morning the Secret Service took her down in a freight elevator so that she could stroll along the river front, enjoying the fresh air and the skyline view of Windsor, Ontario, on the opposite bank. She had gone only a few paces before she was surrounded by well-wishers who wanted to touch her hand.
When she returned, Edward had some good news: five uncommitted delegates had decided to vote for her on the first ballot. He estimated that they needed only another seventy-three to claim the magic 1,666. On the monitor she followed the program on the floor of the convention hall. A black school superintendent from Delaware expounded Florentyna’s virtues, and when she mentioned Florentyna’s name the blue placards filled the hall with “Kane for President.” During the speech that followed, there was an equivalent sea of red placards demanding “Parkin for President.” She paced around the suite until one-thirty, by which time she had seen forty-three more delegates and spoken on the phone to another fifty-eight.
The second day of the convention was devoted to the major platform speeches on policy, finance, welfare, defense and the keynote speech by Senator Pryor. Time and time again, delegates would declare that whichever of the two great candidates was selected, they would go on to beat the Republicans in November; but most of the delegates on the floor kept up a steady hum of conversation, all but oblivious to the men and women on the platform who might well make up a Democratic cabinet.
Florentyna broke away from the welfare debate to have a drink with two delegates from Nevada who were still undecided. She realized their next stop would probably be Parkin, who would also promise them their new highway, hospital, university or whatever excuse they came up with to visit both candidates. At least tomorrow night they would have to come out finally in someone’s favor. She told Edward she wanted a fence put up in the middle of her room, so that wavering delegates had somewhere to sit when they came to meet her.
Reports flowed in during the day about what Pete Parkin was up to, which seemed to be much the same as Florentyna except that he was booked into the Westin Hotel at the Renaissance Center. As neither of them could go into the convention arena, their daily routines continued: delegates, phone calls, press statements, meetings with party officials and finally bed without much sleep.
On Thursday, Florentyna was dressed by six o’clock in the morning and was driven quickly to the convention hall. Once they had arrived at the Joe Louis Arena, she was shown the passage she would walk down to deliver her acceptance speech if she were the chosen candidate. She walked out onto the platform and stood in front of the banked microphones, staring out at the twenty-one thousand empty seats. The tall, thin placards that rose from the floor high into the air proudly proclaimed the name of every state from Alabama to Wyoming. She made a special note of where the Illinois delegation would be seated so that she could wave to them the moment she entered the hall.
An enterprising photographer who had slept under a seat in the convention hall all night began taking photographs of her before he was smartly ushered out of the hall by the Secret Service. Florentyna smiled as she looked toward the ceiling where twenty thousand red, white and blue balloons waited to cascade down on the victor. She had read somewhere that it had taken fifty college students, using bicycle pumps, one week to fill them with air.
“Okay for testing, Senator Kane?” said an impersonal voice from she could not tell where.
“My fellow Americans, this is the greatest moment in my life and I intend to—”
“That’s fine, Senator. Loud and clear,” said the chief electrician as he walked up through the empty seats. Pete Parkin was scheduled to go through the same routine at seven o’clock.
Florentyna was driven back to her hotel, where she had breakfast with her closest staff, who were all nervous and laughed at each other’s jokes, however feeble, but fell silent whenever she spoke. They watched Pete Parkin doing his usual morning jog for the television crews; it made them all hysterical when someone in an NBC windbreaker holding a mini-camera accelerated past a breathless Vice President three times to get a better picture.
The roll call vote was due to start at nine that evening. Edward had set up fifty phone lines direct to every state chairman on the convention floor so that he could be in constant touch if something unexpected happened. Florentyna was seated behind a desk with only two phones, but at the single touch of a button she had access to any of the fifty lines. While the hall was beginning to fill they tested each line and Edward pronounced that they were ready for anything, that now all they could do was use every minute left to contact more delegates. By five-thirty that evening, Florentyna had spoken by phone or in person to 392 of them in four days.
By seven o’clock the Joe Louis Arena was almost packed, although there was still a full hour to go until the names were placed in nomination. No one who had traveled to Detroit wanted to miss one minute of the unfolding drama.
At seven-thirty Florentyna watched the party officals begin to take their seats on the stage and she remembered her days as a page at the Chicago convention when she had first met John Kennedy. She knew then that they had all been told to arrive at certain times; the later you were asked, the more senior you were. Forty years had passed, and she was hoping to be asked last.
The biggest cheer of the evening was reserved for Senator Bill Bradley, who had already announced he would address the convention if there was a deadlock after the first ballot. At seven forty-five, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Marty Lynch, rose and tried to bring the convention to order, but he could scarcely make himself heard above the klaxons, whistles, drums, bugles and cries of “Kane” and “Parkin” from supporters trying to outscream one another. Florentyna sat watching the scene but showed no sign of emotion. When finally there was a semblance of order, the chairman introduced Mrs. Bess Gardner, who had been chosen to record the votes, although everyone in the hall knew that the results would flash up onto the vast video screen above her head before she even had a chance to confirm them.
At eight o’clock the chairman brought his gavel down; some saw the little wooden hammer hit the base, but no one heard it. For another twenty minutes the noise continued as the chairman still made no impression on the delegates. Eventually at eight twenty-three Marty Lynch could be heard asking Rich Daley, the mayor of Chicago, to place the name of Senator Kane in nomination; ten more minutes of noise before the mayor was able to deliver his eulogy. Florentyna and her staff sat in silence through a speech that described her public record in the most glowing terms. She also listened attentively when Senator Ralph Brooks nominated Pete Parkin. The reception of both proposals by the delegates would have made a full symphony orchestra sound like a tin whistle. Nominations for Bill Bradley and the usual handful of
predictable favorite sons followed in quick succession.
At nine o’clock, the chairman looked down into the body of the hall and called upon Alabama to cast its vote. Florentyna sat staring at the screen like a prisoner about to face trial by jury—wanting to know the verdict even before she had heard the evidence. The perspiring chairman of the Alabama delegation picked up his microphone and shouted, “The great state of Alabama, the heart of the South, casts 28 votes for Vice President Parkin and 17 votes for Senator Kane.” Although everyone had known how Alabama was going to vote since March 11, over four months before, this didn’t stop Parkin posters from being waved frantically, and it was another twelve minutes before the chairman was able to call on Alaska.
“Alaska, the forty-ninth state to join the Union, casts 7 of its votes for Senator Kane, the forty-second President of the United States, 3 for Pete Parkin and one for Senator Bradley.” It was the turn of Florentyna’s followers to unloose a prolonged uproar in support of their candidate, but Parkin led the field for the first half hour until California declared 214 for Senator Kane, 92 for Parkin.
“God bless Bella,” said Florentyna, but had to watch the Vice President go back into the lead with the help of Florida, Georgia and Idaho. When they reached the state of Illinois the convention nearly came to a halt. Mrs. Kalamich, who had welcomed Florentyna that first night in Chicago nearly twenty years before, had been chosen as vice-chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party in the convention year to deliver the verdict of her delegates.
“Mr. Chairman, this is the greatest moment of my life”—Florentyna smiled as Mrs. Kalamich continued—“to say to you that the great state of Illinois is proud to cast every one of its 179 votes for its favorite daughter and the first woman President of the United States, Senator Florentyna Kane.” The Kane supporters went berserk as she took the lead for the second time, but Florentyna knew her rival would create the same effect when the moment came for Texas to declare its allegiance, and in fact Parkin went ahead for a second time with 1,440 delegates to Florentyna’s 1,371 after his home state had given its verdict. Bill Bradley had picked up 97 delegates along the way and now looked certain to gather enough votes to preclude an outright winner on the first round.