The Prodigal Daughter Read online

  Florentyna dealt with as much of her Senate work as possible between making frequent trips to New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. Edward had chartered a six-seater Lear jet for her with two pilots available around the clock so that she could leave Washington at a moment’s notice. All three primary states had set up strong campaign headquarters, and everywhere Florentyna went she spotted as many “Kane for President” posters and bumper stickers as she did for Pete Parkin.

  With only seven weeks left until the first primary, Florentyna began to spend more and more of her time chasing the 147,000 registered Democrats in the state. Edward did not expect her to capture more than 30 percent of the votes, but he felt that might well be enough to win the primary and persuade doubters that she was an electoral asset. Florentyna needed every delegate she could secure before they arrived in the South, even if possible to pass the magic 1,666 by the time she reached the convention hall in Detroit.

  The early signs were good. Florentyna’s private pollster, Kevin Palumbo, assured her that the race with the Vice President was running neck and neck, and Gallup and Harris seemed to confirm that view. Only 7 percent of the voters said they would not under any circumstances vote for a woman, but Florentyna knew just how important 7 percent could be if the final outcome was close.

  Florentyna’s schedule included brief stops at more than 150 of New Hampshire’s 250 small towns. Despite the hectic nature of each day, she grew to love the classical New England mill towns, the crustiness of the Granite State’s farmers and the stark beauty of its winter landscape.

  She served as starter for a dogsled race in Franconia and visited the most northerly settlement near the Canadian border. She learned to respect the penetrating insights of local newspaper editors, many of whom had retired from high-level jobs with national magazines and news services. She avoided discussions of one particular issue after discovering that New Hampshire residents stoutly defended their right to oppose a state income tax, thus attracting a host of high-income professionals from across the Massachusetts border.

  More than once she had occasion to be thankful for the death of William Loeb, the newspaper publisher whose outrageous misuse of the Manchester Union-Leader had helped destroy the candidacies of Edmund Muskie and George Bush before her. It was no secret that Loeb had had no time for women in politics.

  Edward was able to report that money was flowing into their headquarters in Chicago and “Kane for President” offices were springing up in every state. Some of them had more volunteers than they could physically accommodate; the overspill turned dozens of living rooms and garages throughout America into makeshift campaign headquarters.

  In the final seven days before the first primary, Florentyna was interviewed by Barbara Walters, Dan Rather and Frank Reynolds, as well as appearing on all three major morning news programs. As Andy Miller, her press secretary, pointed out, fifty-two million people watched her interview with Barbara Walters and it would have taken over five hundred years to shake the hands of that number of voters in New Hampshire. Nevertheless, her local managers saw to it that she visited nearly every home for the aged in the state.

  Despite this, Florentyna had to pound the streets of New Hampshire towns, shaking hands with papermill workers in Berlin, as well as with the somewhat inebriated denizens of the VFW and American Legion posts, which seemed to exist in every town. She learned to work the ski-lift lines in the smaller hills rather than the famous resorts, which were often peopled by a majority of nonvoting visitors from New York or Massachusetts.

  If she failed with this tiny electorate of the northern tip of America, Florentyna knew it would raise major doubts about her credibility as a candidate.

  Whenever she arrived in a city, Edward was always there to meet her and he never let her stop until the moment she stepped back onto her plane.

  Edward told her that they could thank heaven for the curiosity value of a woman candidate. His advance team never had to worry about filling any hall where Florentyna was to speak, with potted plants rather than with Granite State voters.

  Pete Parkin, who had a good-luck streak with funeral duty, proved that the Vice President had little else to do: he spent more time in the state than Florentyna could. On the eve of the primary Edward was able to show that someone on the Kane team had contacted by phone, letter or personal visit 125,000 of the 147,000 registered Democrats; but, he added, obviously so had Pete Parkin because many of them had remained noncommittal and some even hostile.

  Later that night, Florentyna held a rally in Manchester which over three thousand people attended. When Janet told her that tomorrow she would be about one fiftieth of the way through the campaign, Florentyna replied, “Or already finished.” She went to her motel room a little after midnight followed by the camera crews of CBS, NBC, ABC and Cable News and four agents of the Secret Service, all of whom were convinced she was going to win.

  The voters of New Hampshire woke up to drifting snow and icy winds. Florentyna spent the day driving from polling place to polling place thanking the party faithful until the last poll closed. At eleven minutes past nine, CBS was the first to tell the national audience that the turnout was estimated at forty-seven percent, which Dan Rather considered high in view of the weather conditions. The early voting pattern showed that the pollsters had proved right: Florentyna and Pete Parkin were running neck and neck, each taking over the lead during the night but never by more than a couple of percentage points. Florentyna sat in her motel room with Edward, Janet, her closest staffers and two Secret Service agents, watching the final results come in.

  “The outcome couldn’t have been closer if they had planned it,” said Jessica Savitch, who announced the result first for NBC. “Senator Kane thirty point five, Vice President Parkin thirty point two, Senator Bill Bradley sixteen point four percent and the rest of the votes scattered among five others who in my opinion,” added Savitch, “needn’t bother to book a hotel room for the next primary.”

  “If the result of the New Hampshire primary turns out to be satisfactory…”

  Florentyna left for Massachusetts with 6 delegates committed to her; Pete Parkin had 5. The national press declared no winner but five losers. Only three candidates were seen in Massachusetts, and Florentyna seemed to have buried the bogey that as a woman she couldn’t be a serious contender.

  In Massachusetts she had fourteen days to capture as many of the 111 delegates as possible, and here her work pattern hardly varied. Each day she would carry out the schedule that Edward had organized for her, a program which ensured that the candidate saw as many voters as possible and found some way to get onto the morning or evening news.

  Florentyna posed with babies, union leaders and Italian restaurateurs; she ate scallops, linguine, Portuguese sweet bread and cranberries; she rode the MTA, the Nantucket ferry and the Alameda bus line the length of the Mass Pike; she jogged on beaches, hiked in the Berkshires and shopped in Boston’s Quincy Market, all in an effort to prove she had the stamina of any man. Nursing her aching body in a hot tub, she came to the conclusion that had her father remained in Russia, her route to the Presidency of the USSR couldn’t have been any harder.

  In Massachusetts, Florentyna held off Pete Parkin for a second time, taking 47 delegates to the Vice President’s 39. The same day in Vermont, she captured 8 of the state’s 12 delegates. Because of the upsets already achieved by Florentyna, the political pollsters were saying that more people were answering “Yes” when asked “Could a woman win the Presidential election?” But even she was amused when she read that 5 percent of the voters had not realized that Senator Kane was a woman. The press was quick to point out that her next big test would be in the South, where the Florida, Georgia and Alabama primaries all fell on the same day. If she could hold on there she had a real chance, because the Democratic race had become a private battle between herself and the Vice President. Bill Bradley, having secured only 11 percent of the votes in Massachusetts, had dropped out because of lack