Granny D’s American Century

17 | The Wind Shifts

The Wind Shifts T wo days later, Dennis was home in Phoenix when Jim and I called him with the news. “Mom’s thinking about running for the u.s. Senate,” Jim said. “If so, she has the Democratic nomination in the bag. The party will back her.” New Hampshire’s Democratic candidate for the u.s. Senate had dropped out because his campaign manager absconded with all the funds. The party needed someone to run against Judd Gregg, the immensely popular incumbent, and nobody had the nerve to do it at this last minute. When I got on the line, Dennis told me I suddenly sounded ten years younger, which would be eighty-four. He said it would be much tougher than the voter trek, as people would be gunning for me, trying to trip me up, and digging for family skeletons. I wouldn’t get the sweet grandma treatment. The swift-boat thing had happened just a month earlier to smear Kerry’s war record. A ninety-four-year-old candidate running for a six-year term in the u.s. Senate? Could we sell the idea of a centenarian in the Senate? Dennis wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. Jim told him I couldn’t win, and that wasn’t the point, which was right. “She can talk about campaign finance reform and Bush. Gregg will run unopposed otherwise. We can pin him down and maybe swing New Hampshire to Kerry,” he said. Dennis was on a plane the next morning. The woman executive director of the New Hampshire Democratic Party took Jim and me aside on the day I became the party’s candidate. She said she wanted an assurance that I would support the party’s candidate for president. I was floored that she would ask. She said she was asking because of a speech or statement I had made years earlier encouraging people to vote their hearts, that even 17 154 granny d’s american century a vote for a candidate who could not win would build a constituency for later change. The Nader people had circulated the statement, and this woman believed it might have helped divide the New Hampshire vote. If Mr. Bush had not won New Hampshire in 2000, he would not have taken the election as easily. It was a speech of another era, before all the unimaginable damage of the Bush administration. In that earlier era, we wondered if there was really a difference between the parties, both so bought and sold. There was, in fact, a remarkable difference. “My God,” I said to Jim on the way home, “am I responsible for every horror of the last four years?” We looked up the numbers: Gore lost New Hampshire by seven thousand votes. Nader had over twenty-two thousand votes. Had, say, a third of Nader’s votes come to him because of my speech? That was simply not possible. Ten percent at the outside, probably half of that. But it was something to worry about as I tried to sleep that night. I hadn’t caused the Great Depression either, but there is always a nightmare part of you that blames and worries. It is true that the changes we bring forth as activists are never fully under our control. That is a warning to be thoughtful, not to disengage. When I was a young mother I organized a sleigh ride for town children . One little girl was severely injured when she tried to jump on the moving sleigh. That has haunted me, and so I have tried to be thoughtful and careful. Even so, things happen when you take action in the world, and you must accept the fact that sometimes you will do unintended harm. You still must take your part. Friendly fire is what it is called in other parts. It happens. There is a story in the Bhagavad Gita, in which the warrior Arjuna, on a hill with Lord Krishna, hesitates to start the battle because he will be killing some of his own kin. Krishna, in essence, says, hey, nobody really dies, and you have a job to do. You are an imperfect soldier in the great struggle between light and dark. Do your duty. By the time Dennis returned from Arizona, Blue had already rounded up lists of New England volunteers. Jim was on the phone to the party headquarters in Concord—conversations that rarely went well. I made...