August, 2006.
We're deep into the Bush years, the GOP controls both houses, we're four years at war with no end in sight, New Orleans is washed away, the economy is tanking, and Mike Douglas has just died. The upcoming midterms provide a faint glimmer of hope; winning back the House looks possible, but even the absolute best case scenario for the Senate only gets us to a 50-50 split, leaving Cheney as tiebreaker and the Rs still in control.
And then George Allen called a guy "Macaca".
Senator George Allen (R-VA) was a rising GOP star, a shoo-in for re-election and a name being bandied about as a possible presidential candidate. His opponent was Jim Webb, former Republican and Secretary of the Navy under Reagan. Yes, that Jim Webb – the guy who gave this season's worst Democratic presidential debate performance, declared that he might vote for Trump, and just the other day wrote an op-ed in defense of Andrew Jackson.
No one was paying that Senate race much heed - there were true long shots like Jon Tester and Claire McCaskill to back and Rick Santorum to oust. But Allen was cocky, and at a rally decided to poke a little fun at a young Webb campaign volunteer named S.R. Sidarth who frequently showed up at Allen events with a video camera. Quoth Allen:
"This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great. … Let’s give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
Wikipedia defines "Macaca" thusly:
"Macaca" is a direct translation for "female monkey" in the Portugese language... In Portugal and Portuguese speaking countries, racists often call black people "macaco" or "macacos" (plural form) as an insult, because of their African origins.
Allen immediately claimed that it was just a word he made up on the spot and he had no idea it was a racist term, but the fuse had been lit. Amidst a torrent of bad press, suddenly this race looked winnable. Democrat-lite Jim Webb looked like he could be a viable choice for just-starting-to-turn-blue Virginia and could both give us the 51st Senate seat and also knock out a potential Republican presidential hopeful. But it was going to be close.
My good friend Ry, a young battle-hearty veteran of several progressive campaigns and fellow NYC freelancer, suggested we take the last two days before the election and crash with his Cool Activist Aunt in northern VA and volunteer at the Webb campaign office to do GOTV. So we drove down and went to the office Monday morning and said “Put us to work”; we spent several hours phone banking (and I hate making phone calls even to people I know and like), then they sent us out to do flyering at the Metro stations during evening rush (and I hate people who get in my way with their stupid fliers.) The day of the election, two other volunteers rode along and the four of us were sent "flushing" – we rang doorbells in pre-mapped Democratic neighborhoods to make sure people got to the polls.
I know I got at least one extra vote – late in the day we stopped off at a polling place where one of the poll workers needed to get across town to vote in her home precinct and her car battery was dead. But I had jumper cables! Ry got at least two – at one apartment he went to they hadn't voted yet but thought they had until nine. He told them that the polls actually closed at eight, they said "Oh, well then I guess we're going now.”
We ended that day exhausted and spent and went to what we hoped would be the Webb victory rally. But exit polls and early results didn't look good, so we left the party early and dejected along with a lot of other severely depressed volunteers. As the night went on, though, things started to shift. It looked like we might have won. Tester won, McCaskill won, Santorum was out, Sherrod Brown was in – and it was super super super close, but it looked liked Webb had pulled it out and given us seat #51. There was an automatic recount but it held – it was by fewer than 10,000 votes, but we won it. The Senate was ours. The House, too. George Allen was done. George Bush went on TV and declared that his party had received, quote, ”A thumpin’”.
Jim Webb was a waste of a Senator. He wasn't a great candidate to begin with – he took some genuine and deserved heat for an essay he wrote in 1979 called “Women Can’t Fight”. He was a solid Blue Dog. He’s against affirmative action. Ry’s Cool Activist Aunt warned us that we might run into some Democrats who were very anti-Webb, particularly women. She herself was voting for him because of the big picture, but said that she knew some people who simply couldn’t bring themselves to vote for someone they saw as a racist misogynist war hawk and that she could totally understand why. I can, too. He would have never been my choice for a nominee. But the thought of an emboldened George Allen and a GOP Senate was far worse.
Working my ass off to get that jackweed elected is the most proud I have ever been to participate in American democracy. It got us Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. It got us the leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And all the committees. The Democrats were running the show again and the electorate was primed for Edwards or Clark or Gore or whoever it would be in 2008. And it had all come down to a margin of fewer than 10,000 votes. GOTV won it.
Do I feel a little extra-special twinge of pain whenever Webb says or does something cringeworthy, knowing that I worked extra-hard to help him get where he is? You bet I do. Do I regret planting my flag firmly in the ground of that campaign and going way out of my usual social comfort zone for that dillweasel? Not for a microsecond. What we gained was worth so much more. And in the end the system seems to have mostly flushed him out in less than ten years as we’ve moved leftward.
I’m with A United Democratic Front.