Politics Requires a Strong Constitution

Republican dogs, Armenian surnames and other hazards on the campaign trail

By Suzanne Schlosberg

PASADENA, Calif., Sept. 10 –You may be wondering why I chose to spend a week volunteering for California State Senator Adam Schiff, a Democratic Congressional candidate who is not running for office in my district.

Although it appears that Adam Schiff and I are discussing Medicare reform and other important topics, in fact I am asking him whether he watches "Sex and the City."

I can assure you that it wasn’t out of a personal affinity for politicians. And here, I am not referring to any arrogant Texas governors or hypocritical leaders of the free world. No, I am referring to the fact that one of my top 10 worst blind dates of all time was with a politician.

His name was Bob and we were set up in Bend, Ore., by mutual friends. Bob, whose car was plastered with "Save the Whales," "Save Our Schools" and numerous other bumper stickers, told me he’d wanted to be president since age 12. He had recently lost an election for the State Legislature but assured me that his political career was not over.

Bob took me to perhaps the worst restaurant in Bend — the dark, dingy Beef ’n Brew, where patrons under age 70 are a rare sight and the lightest item on the menu was a T-bone steak with a side of fettucini alfredo. During dinner, Bob besieged me with tales of his civic involvement. He was a member of the school board, the parks and rec board, the board of Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and the board of Habitat for Humanity. He was even participating in the local hospital’s "Cuddler" program for premature newborns.

"I’m a doer!" he said.

After dinner, Bob and I went bowling with my friends Tom and Susannah. We had not made it through the first frame when Bob began correcting Tom’s technique. Tom’s inadequate follow-through was apparently another problem that Bob — in all of his student-body-presidentness — felt compelled to rectify.

Meanwhile, I — a bowler with the skills of your average first-grader — was having an astonishing reaction to this episode. You hear about assault victims channeling their rage into anti-crime activism. Well, I managed to channel the tragedy of this blind date into an unprecedented four-game average of 163, with a high of 190. I smoked Mr. Future President, who became less presidential and more irritated with every strike I bowled. By the end of our date, I knew this much: Bob may have been a doer, but he certainly was not going to do me.

So, you can understand why I did not join the Adam Schiff campaign with the best impression of politicians. But, of course, I was not there to date Adam, who — although, at age 40, is in the right age range — is married and has an adorable 2-year-old daughter, Alexa, a.k.a. "Pookie." I was there because this is one of the most important and hotly contested races in the Democrats’ battle to regain control of the House of Representatives. I was there because I wanted to see Adam depose his smarmy Republican incumbent, James Rogan, a Clinton impeachment zealot who believes that teaching evolution in the schools amounts to "lying to the children."

Plus, Adam Schiff is the name of the beloved district attorney on Law & Order, my favorite one-hour TV drama, so that gave me even more enthusiasm for the cause. (The L&O connection may be the reason I was so comfortable calling him "Adam"; I somehow felt like I knew the man, even though the fictional Adam Schiff is a crusty, bald 78-year-old with the posture of Strom Thurmond.)

I spent one day phoning Armenian voters on Adam's behalf. I kept hoping I'd get voice mail so I wouldn't have to embarrass myself attempting to pronounce names like Baghei Kouyoumdjian.

Also, I should probably mention that I joined the Schiff team because my friend Tracy is the campaign’s finance director and she promised me access to the candidate.

Despite this lucky connection, I did have to pay my dues for a couple days before meeting Adam in person. My first day on the job, I was assigned to the campaign’s Glendale office, where I worked alongside a high school freshman named Lizzy, stapling "SCHIFF FOR CONGRESS" yard signs. Lizzy said she would love to go into politics but she feared nobody would vote for her. "I’m too out there — I’m almost a Communist," she explained.

Lizzy had won a political essay contest sponsored by the Kiwanis Club and had recently presented the speech in front of the mostly conservative, mostly retired Kiwanis members. "One lady was so old it was, like, open the coffin right now," Lizzy said. Her speech — in support of gay marriage and in opposition to the mention of "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance — was apparently not met with much enthusiasm. "There was mostly silence," she said. "No one really knew what to do."

The highlight of our sign-making stint was when a Law & Order rerun came on TV (the office was taping campaign commercials on cable), and Lizzy and I got to watch the fictional Adam Schiff while stapling signs for the real Adam Schiff. Lizzy said she is also a big L&O fan, although she favors the "super-creepy episodes, like with child serial killers and stuff."

After the sign project ended, I joined a flyer-folding/envelope-stuffing assembly line for mailers to the district’s influential Armenian community. At the end of my eight-and-a-half-hour day, I felt I’d been useful, but I had to admit to myself that I had been avoiding the one job for which the campaign needed volunteers the most: the phones. Knowing how poorly I tend to treat telemarketers — and I’m probably more polite than most — I didn’t feel like spending my time getting yelled at and hung up on by strangers who had every right to be annoyed by this invasion of their privacy.

But then I had to remind myself: The purpose of M:I isn’t for me to do what’s fun and easy. The idea is to help others and venture outside my comfort zone. So the next day I forced myself to join the phone bank, calling Republican and independent households to invite them to a coffee to meet Adam.

I was presented with a script to follow: "Hi _____. I’m _____ from Adam Schiff’s campaign for Congress. I’m calling to invite you to a coffee held on Sunday the 17th at Robert Holmes’ home … It’s an opportunity for you to meet Adam and discuss the issues that are important to you."

I rehearsed my lines a few times in my head and edited the script slightly to make it sound more spontaneous and natural. (I also had to switch to "the home of Robert Holmes," since "Holmes’ home" was impossible to say.) In addition, I experimented with the various ways to place the emphasis on each sentence. For instance: Would I say, "…the issues that are important to you" or "the issues that are important to you" or "the issues that are important to you" ? I listened to the other phone bankers and discovered there was no consensus.

Another divisive issue was whether to ask for the resident by first name or last —whether to say, "Hi, is this Margery?" or "May I please speak with Mrs. Snodgrass?" My instinct was to go for the casual and familiar, so the residents wouldn’t immediately realize that I was a stranger who wanted something from them. The moment you’re pegged as a telemarketer, I figured, you’re dead in the water.

Not only did I get the satisfaction of working for a good cause, but while filing documents for Adam Schiff, I also learned about a nifty gizmo called an alphabetizer.

But the phone banker sitting next to me, Edie Taylor, disagreed with my approach. Edie, who appeared 70ish, addressed the people on her list with courtesy titles. She told me she personally would feel uncomfortable if a stranger called her by her first name. I supposed it was a generational difference, because whenever anyone calls me Ms. Schlosberg — or the dreaded Mrs. Schlosberg (excuse me? Mrs. Schlosberg is MY MOTHER) — I know something’s fishy.

I was doing okay with the informal approach — most people were at least pleasant — when I was stopped in my tracks by a slew of Armenian names. No matter how many times I practiced it, "Hi, is this Traksya?" was not going to roll off my tongue. So, I tinkered with my strategy. I decided I would use first names unless:

If both the first and last names were unpronounceable — Bagheri Kouyoumdjian, to name one — I would skip the greeting altogether and start with, "Hi! My name is Suzanne Schlosberg…"

Overall, the phone banking went better than I had expected. I had only one hostile resident — "I wouldn’t vote for Adam Schiff if he was the only guy running" — and a few even thanked me for the invitation.

At the end of the day I was finally going to meet Adam himself, serving as his assistant for two hours of precinct walking in Burbank, near his home. Michael, the volunteer coordinator, explained that Adam’s strategy was to visit homes with at least one Republican — no sense in preaching to the choir at this late stage in the campaign. My job would be to hold the list of addresses and names and brief Adam as we approached each house. For instance: "Okay, 803 Elmwood, Ruth and Murray Klezmer. Ruth is a Democrat, Murray is a Republican. They’re both 75." While Adam would give his spiel, I would note whether the residents indicated support for Adam, no preference or support for his opponent.

I arrived at Adam’s house in Burbank before he did, so I chatted with his wife, Eve (they met on a blind date; someone found the "Adam and Eve" idea amusing), while playing with Alexa’s Etch-a-Sketch.

A few minutes later Adam arrived home. He was wearing that familiar I’m-not-an-uptight-politician uniform: khaki pants, a white Oxford shirt and wingtips. His boyish face and obvious adoration for his daughter made him seem approachable. Still, I was a bit nervous and, once we got in his car, I wasn’t sure what to say. Should I ask him about HMO reform? Gun control? The future of Social Security?

My first day on the job, I got to watch the fictional Adam Schiff on "Law & Order" while making signs for the real Adam Schiff.

Momentarily flummoxed, I asked the first question that came to mind: "So, how often do you watch Law & Order?" Adam took the question and ran with it. He said he doesn’t have much time to watch TV, but he did watch the show once to make sure the Adam Schiff character was a nice guy. He also knew that Adam Schiff was going to be written off the show this season and replaced as D.A. by the annoying Dianne Wiest. But he didn’t think Schiff’s departure would damage his own political career. "My name recognition will still live on in reruns," he said.

When we arrived at our destination, a mile or so from his home, Adam asked me to tell him the names in each household twice: once at the bottom of the driveway and again as we rang the doorbell. And so we began knocking on doors, Adam deftly adjusting his greeting for retired people, Armenians, young parents, and so on.

Each speech started the same way: "Hi, Mr. Klezmer. I’m Senator Adam Schiff." Then he’d look my way and say, "And this is Suzanne, one of my volunteers." I’d smile and either wave or shake hands.

Some people didn’t want to talk; others wouldn’t stop, including 96-year-old Edward George, who had just lost his wife of 76 1/2 years. I don’t remember what Mr. George blathered on about because I was so busy marveling at his agility and physical fitness. His next-door neighbor told us he cuts his grass with a pair of scissors.

On Day 3 of my campaign job, I did more phone banking and another couple hours of precinct walking with Adam. One Armenian family was so friendly that they insisted we come in and have coffee and nearly used physical force to sit Adam down on their couch — which he would have been a bit more eager to do if these people had been, say, CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES. (The one registered voter in the household wasn’t home.)

The scariest visit was at a house with a "Stop Hillary" sign outside. Adam rang the bell and a 60ish woman came to the door with two runty, shrieking dogs that barked with such hysteria that you’d have thought the house was on fire. (On a related note, I will say that, on the whole, the dogs we encountered did nothing to endear me to the canine community. They would NOT shut up, and poor Adam was forced to talk over them. Maybe this lack of consideration is just a characteristic of Republican dogs, but they were very, very rude.)

Oddly, many of the Republicans were more receptive to us than were the Democrats. One Democratic woman pledged her support for Adam and chatted on for a good while, but she absolutely refused to open the door, talking instead through a rectangular opening that was slightly smaller than her head. She kept leaning forward to add a few more words, and I feared her head might actually get stuck in the opening.

Overall, I thought I did a good job with precinct walking, except for when I tripped on a sprinkler and fell on my butt as we were approaching one house. Fortunately, I managed to hang on to my campaign literature and pop right back up.

I spent my fourth and final day in Adam’s Pasadena office, typing and filing and writing nametags and stamping envelopes. It wasn’t glamorous work, but I felt like I had done something useful — although I’m not sure I’d qualify as a doer by the standards of Mr. Future President.

 

Election Epilogue

One Adam Schiff may be gone,
but the other is headed for Congress

Adam Schiff talks on his cell phone while awaiting election returns at the Pasadena Hilton.

PASADENA, Calif., November 8 – Not that my usefulness was ever in doubt, but election night brought great news: Adam Schiff beat incumbent James Rogan by a huge margin, 52.7 percent to 43.9 percent, in California’s 27^th Congressional District.

Two days before the election, I rejoined the Schiff campaign for one final get-out-the-vote push. Several hundred volunteers met at a union hall in Burbank, where we were handed pro-labor buttons ("Don’t let your wages get Bushwacked!") and Democratic campaign literature to distribute in the district. With the exception of me, my friend Tracy and her friend Michael, everyone in attendance was a union member, from machinists to postal workers to film industry camera people. I cringed when one woman turned to me and said, "So which union are you with?" (The union of Santa Monica Jews?)

I walked several blocks delivering pamphlets to union households. It was a mostly uneventful afternoon, although I did get a bit of a shock when I knocked on one door and encountered a resident with the EXACT SAME HAIRDO as the Rev. Al Sharpton.

On election night I joined Schiff’s party at the Pasadena Hilton, where supporters jammed into a small, stuffy room and ate beef tacos while awaiting the returns from the Congressional race and watching the Presidential drama unfold on TV. Every so often, Adam, his wife, Eve, and daughter, Alexa (a.k.a Pookie), would come down from their hotel room and mingle with the crowd. At one point, I ran into Schiff in the hallway but couldn’t think fast enough to say anything intelligent. "The new ‘Law & Order’ is nothing without Adam Schiff!" I blurted out. I believe I also added, "God, it’s really hot in here."

By midnight the tacos were long gone and the Congressional race was still hours from resolution. I hated to miss Adam’s victory speech, but I was sleepy, so I drove home, confident Schiff’s lead would hold.