The Duke Campaign Takes Form

It began as a wicked joke but the Duke for School Board campaign is gathering steam of its own accord. Within two days of posting about my visit with the Doctor, several strangers called to make inquiries. At first I thought it was the usual bumbling DEA agents, fishing for the sliver of a lead that would help them nail the Doctor, once and for all. In case you haven’t guessed, Duke is no stranger to the criminal justice system. He’s been arrested several times, hauled into Superior Court to face bogus charges of drug possession for personal abuse; possession with criminal intent to distribute; assault with a moderately deadly weapon etc., etc., and every single time he strolled down the courthouse steps a free man.

But the folks who called checked out: they legitimately wanted to know more about the possibility of a Duke run for School Board; they were tired of at least one fifth of the status quo and wanted a change in style, substance, and most all, tone. I referred all the callers to Betsy, Dr. Duke’s latest personal assistant, a seventy-two-year-old organizational dynamo who lived in a double-wide in Goleta. Betsy could set the record right for the curious. At that point I still believed the Doctor was just bullshitting me. No way in Hell was he going to make a run for an entry level political position like School Board.

Much to my consternation, not to mention a rude interruption of my sleep, the Doctor called at two A.M. the very next night to inform me that he was “seriously contemplating” a run for school board, and that he wanted me to run his campaign.

“Look, Tanguay,” he said. “I got to thinking and came to the conclusion that it might be fun to sit on the Board, make some waves in the local education community. I decided that it’s about time I added some public service to my long and distinguished resume. Now, I haven’t the disposition or patience to plot strategy with some twenty-four year old PolySci major. In politics victory is the only objective. You understand this, and that alone qualifies you to be part of history.”

Duke was talking quickly and somewhat incoherently. I tried to bring him back to Earth: “You’ve got a few things working against you,” I said. “Want me to list them?”

“Go ahead,” he said. “I can take it.”

“OK, first and foremost, you have no standing or connection with the education community. You’re not a teacher or administrator or a parent with an axe to grind. Second, you’re an X factor, an unknown quantity in the law-abiding, tax-paying, traffic-signal respecting world. You know ten times as many drug dealers as you do public movers and shakers. Third, your CV is going to scare the crap out of many voters. Fourth, I don’t know more than basic nuts and bolts of running a political campaign. You need to hire a proven professional. “

“That’s a fine load of crap,” Duke said, his tone measured and reasonable. “I can deal with reality, even though I do my level best to escape its clutches. The reality is that if I get in the race I’m going to find myself running against a Libertarian crackpot with a corncob stuck in his ass, or some privileged parent of a so-called gifted student, or some community crusader looking to make a name for herself. As our Dingbat-in-Chief would say, ‘Bring ‘em on.’ Indeed, we’ll wage a campaign that will send the establishment reeling. Our model will be Hunter S. Thompson’s 1970 Freak Power campaign. That’s why I need you, Tanguay – you know as much about Hunter’s twisted political mind as anyone.”

This was true, though I don’t want to toot my own horn. Freak Power, right. Politically, HST’s 1970 campaign for Sheriff of Aspen is light years away from Bush & Cheney’s America. Hell, in 1978 a man could walk into Bob’s Big Boy with a lit joint dangling from the corner of his mouth and a bunch of counterfeit twenties in his pocket and nobody would raise an eyebrow. Today some misguided cretin would call for a SWAT team and the Fox News helicopter. I think it was Hunter who always asked this rhetorical question: where were you when the fun stopped? These are not happy times for people living on the fringes of society. The government not only tosses thousands of mild offenders in prison every year, it also listens to their phone conversations and monitors the silly e-mail messages they send to their cousin in Indiana. Osama bin Laden has never been sighted in Indiana, but if you’re a member in good standing of George W. Bush’s security state, it’s as reasonable a place to start looking as any.

But the state of our personal liberties is neither here nor there and I don’t know how or why I slipped off on that tangent. The point I was trying to make to the Doctor, the one he refused to listen to another word about, was that guys with baggage as explosive as his didn’t run for any public office.

“Don’t be a wimp. Where’s your sense of challenge, of flipping the middle finger to Power? Have a shot of tequila and get a grip. We’ve got heavy brain work, grasshopper.”