The Man With the Iron Heart

The summer of 1982 was not my best time.

That summer, I worked on my last campaign that wasn't for Turtledove. At the time that Jerry Brown was running against Pete Wilson to be U.S. Senator, Ted Kennedy was running for re-election to a fourth Senate term, and President Reagan's GOP was working to retake Congress, the campaign I worked on was very unknown.

From 1978 until 1982, I was the Chief of Staff for Terry Miler, the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, and the Chief of Staff for his 1982 re-election campaign.

Terry was four years older than me, and while he was Lieutenant Governor, I liked him. He was energetic and willing to do what was needed for the people of Alaska, which was what I liked, even if I wasn't even a citizen of the state. (Laughs)

1982 changed him, though. The beginning of the year, we were 50-50 on his re-election chances. His polling was the source for our doubt. Terry officially began the campaign in February 1982, and asked me to lead the campaign - I gladly accepted.

The campaign was fun at first - it was grassroots campaigning, going out there to the small towns of Alaska, that was fun. We started going back up in the polls, and about June, we were polling 56% ahead of a generic Democrat.

Then, the Democrats held their primary, and Stephen McAlpine came out as the clear winner.

The thing is, McAlpine was just too good. He was witty, kept an eye on our campaign, and generally knew grassroots better. Sometime in July, he held a rally pretty close to one of our secret campaign HQs. So I went there, just to see what it was like at his rallies. He was a real populist, and people in Alaska liked him for that; he would bring up people on the stage, ask them about their concerns, and he'd talk about it in a friendly way. I realized that I sort of liked him, even if I didn't like some of his tax proposals.

So I had my doubts at the beginning of the general election campaign. But very quickly, Terry Miller's campaign was not the place to be. In early August, McAlpine was leading Miller by five points in the polls, and that really upset Terry - foolishly, he'd been expecting an easy re-election. He got really defensive, really mean, and that's when everything just fell. Like dominos. Before he made a campaign speech, he would get really mad at one of his campaign aids, and his anger and overall frustration with the situation leaked into the speech, and he made gaffes. And that just gave McAlpine countless opportunities to blast Terry Miller.

I won't even describe September and October. It was living hell; we were trying everything to beat McAlpine, but nothing was working. And for me, it didn't help that I was personally rooting for McAlpine. Sometime in early October - the 7th, I believe - I quit the campaign. I was so mad at Terry Miller, that I stayed in Alaska another month, registered to vote there, and I voted for Stephen McAlpine for Lieutenant Governor.

McAlpine beat Miller with 58% of the vote. I wasn't disappointed.

Now, you would have thought the experience would have changed a lot about me. You might think it would have changed my politics; perhaps I would have changed parties and become a Democrat. Well, in the end, I didn't - I've always been a Republican as far as policies go, and I've never voted for a Democrat except for that one time in November 1982. You also might have thought I would have left politics. Briefly, I did - I'd had enough with the Miller campaign. December 1982, I spent looking for other jobs.

But then, I made a decision that I believe changed my life. I wanted to move out of Alaska, down to some other state, and see what was available there. At first, I was thinking about New York, then Florida, then Illinois... And then, I decided on an unusual state. I'd been looking at a map, and I saw Kentucky there. And there was just something about moving to Kentucky that, in a cold December winter in Alaska, sounded very nice.

So, on January 5, 1983, I packed up my bags, and I flew to Danville, Kentucky, where I would later meet my longest friend and boss.

"The house we bought is really great - we're still living there. It's a bigger house, with four bedrooms, a good-sized kitchen, and a very big living room; we could barely afford it. Still, it's the perfect country home, and I'm proud of it."

Jim Bunning and I got into a fight on September 6, and I immediately quit the campaign. For my second campaign in a row, I got into a fight with my boss. I thought to myself, 'Third time's the charm.' I couldn't have been more right.

I had heard about Harry Turtledove's unexpected Senate campaign, and I was interested in it from the start. I hadn't heard of his Were-something books before, but he was an outsider - he hadn't gotten fully interested in and absorbed by politics until the previous year, and here he was running his own Senate campaign. Then, I saw an advertisement in the paper - he needed a Chief of Staff. For a guy just without a job and a degree in Poly-Sci, this was perfect, and besides, ever since I'd worked on my first campaign, I'd realized that I had a thing for underdogs. And Harry Turtledove was the perfect underdog to beat Mitch McConnell and go into the U.S. Senate.

We met for a job interview on the twelfth, and it was my best job interview ever. It was scheduled to be about an hour long, give or take depending on how it went. I stayed for three hours as we talked about politics. I liked his political positions, and since I had the experience, he offered me the job, and I took it.

So there I was - the Chief of Staff for the Turtledove for Senate campaign. It was going to be great, I could tell from the start.