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Flower Power 2:
Another Flower


A New Flower Blooms


In January 1992, an actress and model named Gennifer Flowers held a press conference in which she claimed to have had an extramarital affair with Bill Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas and frontrunner for the 1992 Democratic Presidential Nomination. She alleged that the affair took place over an eight-year period, and as proof, she motioned to a twelve year-old girl standing next to her at the podium. It was at that moment that Gennifer Flowers introduced her daughter, Melissa Flowers, to the world. And along with Melissa came Gennifer’s declaration that Clinton was the father.

The effects of the conference were immediate. Soon, the Flowers family was known throughout the United States, as the media descended upon the juicy story. No matter what the outlet, everyone from the television anchors at ABC to the publishers of the Washington Post all had the same question on their minds; could Melissa Flowers really be the daughter of Bill Clinton?


Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, Governor Clinton’s campaign went into damage-control mode and assessed the situation. His entire staff entered into somewhat of a panic. Their candidate had had charges of infidelity leveled against him before, but Clinton had always managed to artfully dodge them. However, most of those previous accusations didn’t have the kind of teeth that this one potentially had. If the story was true, and Clinton had fathered a secret child out of wedlock, it would be a blow that the Governor could not hope to recover from. The campaign’s answer needed to be immediate and it needed to be effective.

Appearing in an interview on 60 Minutes, Bill Clinton sat down with his wife, Hillary, in an attempt to crush the story. In the interview Clinton denied having an affair with anyone and believed that Melissa Flowers was not his child. In response to the interview, Flowers’ attorney requested a paternity test to officially determine if the Governor was Melissa’s father.

Initially, Clinton was reluctant to take such a measure, out of fear of the outcome being that he actually was the father. However, news of the demand from the Flowers team was made public, and polls showed that a majority of Americans believed that Clinton should take the test. The ball was in Clinton’s court as the American people waited to see what the Presidential Candidate would do.

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Springtime for Clinton


New Hampshire was lost. Clinton’s staff knew that even before Paul Tsongas swept the state with nearly a twenty point lead over their candidate. Bill came in second, and his campaign had hoped to utilize that moment to mark his re-emergence as a force to be reckoned with in the race. Unfortunately for them, the Flowers controversy was hanging over their heads like a guillotine.

Calls for Clinton to take a paternity test were growing stronger, as people watching the story unfold were anxious to know the identity of Melissa’s father. That anxiety soon spilled onto the campaign trail, as potential voters began to ask him about the issue at town halls. Although not officially supported by the Senator’s campaign, Tsongas supporters sometimes snuck their way into Clinton events and began to heckle the Governor about Melissa, holding up posters with her face on them and shouting “who’s her dad?”

Although the Clinton camp had initially not responded to Flowers’ request, the pressure being piled on to them was placing them in a tough position and with difficult choices. On the one hand, Clinton could take the test. The results would either end his career in politics forever, or dismiss Gennifer Flowers as being full of crap. On the other hand, Clinton could try to ignore Flowers and try to refocus his campaign on the issues and how necessary it was to defeat President Bush. Though that was not likely to work due to the sheer size of the story, and might lead to voters wondering why Clinton wouldn’t take the test. After all, if he wasn’t the father then what did he have to worry about?

Eventually, almost inevitably, Clinton caved to the pressure from the voters (and, as revealed later on, his wife Hillary) and agreed to a paternity test. Samples of DNA were taken from both Governor Clinton and his supposed daughter and were sent away to a laboratory for testing. Clinton returned to the campaign trail shortly thereafter and tried to pull attention away from the story. Meanwhile, the nation was in a frenzy as the suspense lingered over the results of that test.

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Bubba’s Blues


People make mistakes. It happens all the time. And, one way or another, people end up paying for their mistakes. Bill Clinton learned that the hard way in mid-January 1992, shortly after losing Maine to Jerry Brown and Paul Tsongas, coming in third place. The results of the Flowers test were in, and they were devastating. With a 99.99% accuracy, it was determined beyond a reasonable doubt that Bill Clinton was the biological father of Melissa Flowers. In a sense, everyone (including Bill himself to an extent) knew that he was, but to have reality smack you in the face with such overwhelming evidence made it sink in deep.

Now that the results were in, the question was how to proceed. As per the terms of Bill’s private agreement with Gennifer to take the test, the results were to be kept secret and only accessible to both parties until consent to make them public was given and confirmed by Clinton and Flowers. The American people didn’t know the truth, and that gave the Clinton team a glimmer of hope that they could still salvage the situation. The only people that knew about this were Bill Clinton and his campaign staff, Gennifer and Melissa Flowers, and the Flowers’ legal team.


Acting in secret, the Clinton camp reached out to Flowers to see what she wanted. Perhaps they could avert a strong public reaction by cutting out the middle-man and dealing with the problem directly. They would see if they could reach a private deal so that they could cover up the whole incident and move on with their lives. Clinton suspected that Flowers was after money, and he was right to an extent. They were in the middle of a bargain where Clinton would secretly pay Flowers a large sum of money in exchange for her silence (some say it was as large as a $500,000 settlement) when the story broke, and the dam along with it.

An intern from the laboratory where the DNA had been analyzed had somehow managed to gain a copy of the test results and leaked the information to the press. He wanted his fifteen minutes of fame, and he got it.


Now that everything was out in the open, negotiations between the Clinton and Flowers teams broke down and their original deal was scrapped. Instead, Flowers rolled with it, and denounced Clinton for lying to her and their daughter. She said Melissa had suffered for years without a father in her life, and that Clinton had to step up and accept responsibility for his child. To that end, Flowers also demanded financial aid to help raise Melissa, claiming that her income alone was not enough to do it. Flowers was prepared to go to court to force Clinton into paying child support.


The effects on Clinton’s presidential campaign were fatal. Literally overnight, he went from being in the top three to dead last in the polls. His supporters had abandoned him upon learning the truth, and any chance of him ever reaching elected office again went with them. Two days after the story broke, Clinton called for a press conference at his home in Arkansas, where he announced that he was ending his campaign for the Presidency, and resigning as Governor of Arkansas. Lieutenant Governor Jim Tucker was sworn in as the next Governor that night.

While Bill Clinton’s troubles were just starting, the Presidential race continued, and the rest of the Democratic field was in a mad dash to fill the massive power vacuum left by his exit.

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The Man with the Funny Name


When Bill Clinton left the Presidential race in disgrace, Paul Tsongas and his team were jubilant. The former Senator was fresh off a huge win in New Hampshire, and had come in second place to Jerry Brown in Maine and pulled in a strong third to Bob Kerrey and Tom Harkin in South Dakota. On top of that, the one person in the race that might have been able to challenge his dominance was gone, and the majority of former Clinton supporters were finding themselves at home in the Tsongas campaign.

A new wave of volunteers had sprouted up from the rank and file of former Clinton stalwarts, and even former members of Clinton’s campaign staff had come to work for Senator Tsongas. The most notable among these new recruits was Clinton’s former campaign manager, James Carville, who had been hired as a special advisor to the campaign.

With a larger base of supporters, a larger war chest due to a larger number of monetary donations, and a stronger team managing things behind the scenes, it came as no surprise when Paul Tsongas swept the March 3rd contests, winning five out of the six contests that night. His sole loss for that night was Colorado, which had gone to Jerry Brown.

With his huge win on March 3rd, Tsongas believed that he had the nomination in his pocket. He had a huge lead in delegates, along with the biggest and best campaign in the primary. The idea of him being the inevitable nominee was solidified when he pulled a hat trick and won all three states in the March 7th primary. True, the very next day Jerry Brown had won Nevada, but Tsongas believed he had no reason to be concerned.

What caused the media to finally crown Tsongas the presumed nominee of the Democratic Party in 1992 was his epic win on March 10th. With a total of eleven states up for grabs, it meant a huge number of delegates thrown into the mix. Tsongas won them all, and at that point began to take the nomination for granted. Most of his rivals had already suspended their campaigns, and it appeared that there was no one left to seriously challenge him.

With that, Tsongas began to shift his focus away from the Primary and towards the General Election. His new line of attack went after President Bush directly and criticized him for his handling of the economy, which was in a state of decline at the time.

Tsongas had believed that the fight within his own party was over, but there was a surprise waiting for him just around the corner…

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The Brown Insurgency


When Jerry Brown entered the 1992 Democratic Primary, nobody believed he had a chance at winning. Many in the media, and in his own party, dismissed him as a loser. Brown chose to ignore them, and embarked on a grassroots campaign centered around the issue of campaign finance reform. To go along with this message of populist reform, he made the decision to only accept funding from individuals, and to not accept more than $100 dollars in contributions from anyone.

This decision had its drawbacks. First, Brown didn’t have as many supporters as the other candidates to begin with, meaning his campaign ran into a shortage of money very quickly. Despite this handicap, Brown found a way around it by utilizing alternative methods of media, such as interviews on various cable television networks and talk radio shows. In order to raise funds for his campaign, he took the very unusual step of purchasing a toll-free telephone number that supporters could call to donate. The number was plastered wherever Brown could put it.

As Brown’s campaign grew, he visited and campaigned in a number of primary states, where he began to expand his platform to include populist policies such as a promise to fight for a living wage law and the institution of a flat tax to replace the current system. Brown’s populist theme for his campaign, combined with the moralistic language he used on the trail and the constant repetition of his toll-free number led some to label him with the unique title of a “political televangelist” who preached an “anti-politics gospel.”

Despite poor showings in both Iowa and New Hampshire, where he finished almost dead last, he continued to press on. The first sign of good news for the former Governor came when he was declared the winner in Maine, defeating both frontrunners at the time, Bill Clinton and Paul Tsongas, by a reasonable margin. Two more wins in Colorado and Nevada reinforced Brown’s will to fight on, and he decided not to quit until it was over.

While Paul Tsongas had racked up a very impressive number of wins in the Democratic Primary, the race was technically still not over. There were still plenty of states left, and plenty more delegates up for grabs. When the Tsongas campaign made the decision to shift it’s attention to the general election, they mostly stopped campaigning in the remaining primary states, believing the rest of them would fall in line behind the Senator. Brown, however, continued to campaign.

Even though Tsongas had won those states, what his staff seemed not to pay attention to was the margins by which Tsongas was winning them. Had they taken a look at the margins, they would have seen that the victories they were winning were beginning to be by less and less votes. Take for instance the Illinois and Michigan primaries on March 17th, where Tsongas had defeated Brown by only about eight points in each state. For the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, that was an uncomfortably close way to keep winning.

Jerry Brown was doing surprisingly well for himself on the campaign trail, and was closing the massive gap between him and Tsongas the frontrunner. In addition to what he had already won, he earned victories in Connecticut, Vermont, and Alaska. The best part of it was that Tsongas' team had already thought the race was over, and so paid little attention to the Governor's growing campaign.

Brown's victories despite Tsongas' status as the presumptive nominee gave him hope that he might just be able to pull it off after all and win the nomination. That is, until one day in New York...

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Perennial Failure


Jerry Brown's 1992 Presidential Campaign had seen an appreciative level of success for what it was. He had racked up an impressive number of wins for an underdog candidate, and polls showed him right on Tsongas' heels in both New York and Wisconsin, which would hold their primaries on the same day.

He seemed set for an upset victory in both states, which would be his big comeback moment. It was something that his campaign salivated over. They had the whole state to themselves while Tsongas's men seemed blissfully unaware that they even existed. It appeared that Brown was set to overtake Tsongas in both states, until he made a major gaffe.

While speaking to a group of various leaders of New York City's Jewish community, Brown made the mistake of informing them that, if nominated, he would seriously consider selecting the Reverend Jesse Jackson as his running mate. The announcement horrified his audience and pissed off the very influential leadership of what constituted a very large number of voters in New York City that Governor Brown had to win over.

Jesse Jackson had been reviled in New York's Jewish community since his own Presidential campaign in 1984, when he made a series of antisemetic remarks about both New York City's Jews, and Jews in general. Specifically, he referred to New York City as "Hymietown", with "Hymie" being a pejorative term for Jews. Although Jackson had apologized for his remarks years earlier, he was still despised within the community. And the news that Brown would consider someone like Jackson as his Vice President totally turned off his crowd.

Brown's gaffe is seen as the reason that he lost both New York and Wisconsin to Tsongas. He lost the Minnesota primary as well. With Brown's winning streak over, he lost the momentum that he had slowly been building, and the majority of Democrats saw the primary election as being over. They rallied behind the Senator, leaving the Governor as nothing more than a protest candidate making noise in the background as the party marched on to their convention.

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The Nominee with the Funny Name


The 1992 Democratic Primary ended conclusively with former Massacusetts Senator Paul Tsongas as the party's presidential nominee. At a symbolic roll call, the vast majority of delegates pledged themselves to Tsongas, easily putting him over the top. Some other faithful delegates had seated themselves with other candidates like Jerry Brown, Bob Kerrey, and Tom Harkin, but they didn't matter in the least.


What followed was a massive party filled with everything that a guy could ever want at a political convention. There was music, dancing, good food, live entertainment, boring speeches by old party hands, wide-eyed idealists hoping to find their place in politics or to change the system, protests for a variety of causes like abortion and womens' rights, and everything inbetween.


The party recieved a number of speeches from both new and old members alike. Some saw it as an annual formaility to keep themselves in the spotlight (and in office) while others saw it as their breakout moment where they could gain a bump in the polls in order to earn a seat of their own.


Outside the convention's walls, there was no shortage of civil disobedience (not that there ever is when it comes to true-believers in politics) with the NYPD having their hands full trying to maintain order at the various demonstrations that took to the streets of the Big Apple to have their say. In the end though, arrests were relatively minimal compared to the size of the crowd that the event drew.


Paul Tsongas closed the convention with his speech accepting the nomination, and promising to bring America into a new era of prosperity. He talked about how he would make it easier for American businesses to grow, and how jobs would return to the nation as the economy recovered. His speech was well-recieved by an enthusiastic audience, and the party was united behind it's nominee with very few divisions. Nominated for Vice President was Congressman Lee H. Hamilton, who had decades of experience in government, and whose foreign policy credentials gave the campaign an extra boost needed in the aftermath of the Gulf War. It also didn't hurt that Hamilton was from Indiana, which looked like it might swing to the Democrats in this election due to the state of the economy. The newly minted Tsongas/Hamilton ticket was geared up and ready to face off against the opposing Bush/Quayle ticket in what many Democrats hoped was their chance to take back the White House for the first time in 12 years.
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