Chapter Twenty-Two
Disclaimer: if you disagree with my political views, feel free either to skip this chapter or substitute the name of your preferred candidate.
The first time I dipped my toe into the waters of a presidential campaign professionally had been in 1972 when Lou asked me to perform in a concert he and Warren Beatty were putting on for Senator George McGovern. Lou had called the concert “Four 4 McGovern.” With not a single conservative among us, the “Four” were Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Quincy Jones, and me.
In the fall of 1983 I reached out to everyone in the Idaho congressional delegation for help with my road fight. A staffer in every office sent me back a standard form letter over the senator’s or representative’s mechanically reproduced signature thanking me for writing and saying he sincerely appreciated hearing from me, but the courts were the appropriate jurisdiction.
Thank you, I thought. I’m already in court.
I tried writing to senators from other states, but the universal response was that they couldn’t help me; I needed to write to my own senators. I remained in a bureaucratic circle until one of my letters reached Oliver Henkel, who was then managing Senator Gary Hart’s campaign for president of the United States. Oliver, whom everyone called “Pudge,” wrote back immediately to say that although Senator Hart couldn’t help with my road fight because it wasn’t in his state, would I consider supporting the senator’s bid for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination?
When Pudge asked me to support Senator Hart’s campaign in 1983 I knew three things about the candidate: he was the junior senator from Colorado, he was running for president, and he had hired a campaign manager with chutzpah. When I told Pudge I needed to know more about Senator Hart, he sent me some position papers, speeches, and Senator Hart’s recently published book, A New Democracy, in which he presented his plan for governing the United States. I was sufficiently impressed to ask Pudge what he wanted me to do. He was prepared with an answer.
In December of 1983 Senator Hart’s campaign was in desperate straits. Volunteers were stuffing envelopes by candlelight with freezing fingers in an unheated office in Washington, D.C. The phone and power companies hadn’t been paid for several months. The power was already cut off, and the phones—the lifeline of a campaign—would be next. Pudge said that if I did a concert for Senator Hart in Denver it would raise enough money to keep the campaign going until the New Hampshire primary in February. When I agreed to do it, Pudge put me in touch with a volunteer in Manchester, New Hampshire, who would put the concert together.
In addition to being a deeply committed supporter of Senator Hart, Will Kanteres was a realtor in a family-owned business. He had no experience in promoting concerts, but he was willing to learn. I hooked him up with Barry Fey, a professional concert promoter in Denver. Together Barry, Will, and others from the campaign managed to pull together a concert that raised enough money for the campaign to pay its past-due bills and cover other basic necessities until February. When I asked some of my musician friends to participate, all were generous enough to donate their time.
When I met Senator Hart after the concert, he was appropriately appreciative. After that, whenever our paths crossed on the campaign trail I was impressed every time by how intelligent and visionary he was. He would continue to be both as we moved into the next century. After taking himself permanently out of contention for the presidency, Senator Hart would continue working to educate elected officials about how they could improve our government. Notably, Senator Hart and Senator Warren Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, would submit a bipartisan comprehensive report several years before September 11, 2001, with detailed suggestions for how the United States could prepare more thoroughly and effectively to avert a terrorist attack.
After the concert in Denver I was so inspired by Senator Hart’s ideas that I agreed to do several more concerts in Iowa and New Hampshire early in 1984. My commitment to the campaign attracted others, including a man whose name at birth had been Wolodia Grajonca. Born to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1931, nicknamed Wolfgang in his early childhood, the boy was lucky enough to get out of Germany before the rise of the Nazis. Eventually he arrived in the United States, where he would become known as Bill Graham. Among Bill’s accomplishments were that he had founded both Fillmores (East and West) in the sixties, and he also managed the Grateful Dead. In 1984 he was a legendary promoter in San Francisco. If an artist wanted to play in any venue in the Bay Area, Bill was the guy to call.
A couple of weeks before the New Hampshire primary, Will and I met with Bill about booking the Warfield Theater in March for another concert for Senator Hart. Though Bill knew nothing about the candidate, he looked me in the eye and asked, “Do you know him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you really think he’d make a good president?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. On your say-so, I’ll hold the Warfield Theater.”
This was not a corporate decision made by a committee. This was a personal commitment involving some risk. But Bill Graham wasn’t afraid of risk.
On February 28, 1984, less than a month before the concert at the Warfield was scheduled, Senator Hart roared past the pack of eight Democratic candidates to win the primary in New Hampshire. The next day, Bill Graham called me.
“I don’t know how you knew,” he said, “but I’m glad I trusted my instinct. We’re gonna put on a terrific concert in March, and our guy’s gonna win!”
He was right about the first part. It was a terrific concert. By June my band and I had done a total of twelve concerts that raised more than a million dollars for the Hart campaign. This startling number impelled the journalist Bryant Gumbel to inform me, during a morning interview on national television, that I qualified as a special interest. I told Bryant that I was simply bringing people in to learn more about my candidate.
“Once they hear from Senator Hart,” I said, “the voters will be his to keep or lose.”
Knowing that the Democratic National Convention would be held in San Francisco that year, Bill decided to book another concert for Senator Hart at the Warfield. This show would take place during the week of the convention and would feature multiple artists.
The frustration of the road fight had been temporarily eclipsed by my enthusiasm for the campaign. With both these projects in my life, any hope I had for peace and tranquility in the near future was virtually gone. If I had any brain cells left, the gathering of energy and ambition at the Democratic National Convention that week overpowered them all. Delegates from every state, having vied aggressively at home for the opportunity to attend, showed up with costumes, bells, whistles, flags, hats, balloons, signs, and enough vigor to party for five days and five nights while working every room they were in to collect hearts, minds, names, and ideas.
As I walked from one state delegation to the next on the convention floor to make my case for Senator Hart, I had the opportunity to observe how complicated a convention can be, and that was in the 1980s. It seemed as if every fourth person was a voting delegate, with at least two members of the press for each delegate. The rest were people working the floor on behalf of the competing campaigns, as I was doing. The maneuvering of the minions was as unceasing as the flow of the Sacramento River toward San Francisco Bay. Simply moving through the crowd required the skills of a New Yorker with experience navigating Macy’s the morning of a white sale. Luckily, I still possessed those long-neglected skills.
That week I also got to see for myself how little control we voters have concerning information we receive from the news media. Early in the morning on the first day of the convention, I had just turned the news on at low volume in my hotel room when I saw a video clip that appeared to show demonstrators outside the Moscone Center being beaten with clubs by a team of S.W.A.T. policemen. By the time I got to the TV and turned the volume up, the anchor was introducing the next story.
Oh no, I thought. I hope this doesn’t turn into another 1968.
It wasn’t another 1968, but not for the reason you might think. In 1968 most news programs reported news wherever they found it. By 1984 the news media had become more savvy about selecting what they would and would not report. Editors and producers had learned that showing demonstrations, especially those involving violence, had the potential to encourage others to demonstrate and possibly, God forbid, start a movement. To my knowledge, not one subsequent news program on that or any other station reported the Moscone Center story or showed that clip again. It was as if the demonstration and the beatings had never happened.
A little after noon I was being interviewed about my support for Senator Hart by an anchor at the station on which I’d seen the clip. I said as much about my candidate as I could squeeze into the short time allotted between commercials, then, during a break, I asked the anchor why her station had suppressed the news of the beating of demonstrators by the police. She was obviously aware of it, because she looked extremely uncomfortable. Finally she said, “The producers believe they’re being more responsible by not showing it.”
I said, “It’s news. You need to show it.” She disagreed. When we came back from the commercial, she marshaled all her skills as an interviewer to make sure that she retained control of the conversation until my segment was over. But her vigilance was unnecessary. I wasn’t there to embarrass the news media. I was there to tell people why I thought Senator Hart would be a great president. I had felt compelled to mention the news suppression off air only because I was hoping to appeal to her conscience and possibly get her to air the clip. Ha! Color me naïve.
Senator Hart lost his bid for the 1984 Democratic nomination to Walter Mondale. The former vice president had had years to solidify his intraparty following, which, along with his “Where’s the beef?” commercial, made Mondale’s nomination inevitable. In hindsight, I doubt that it would have mattered who won the Democratic nomination in 1984. Saint Peter probably couldn’t have defeated the popular Republican incumbent, President Ronald Reagan.
Of course I had known there was a chance Hart might not win, but I had never allowed myself to think about that as a possibility. Gary Hart was going to be inaugurated in 1985. Period. When that hope vanished, I went back to Idaho and vowed to stay out of politics—a vow I didn’t keep. I would be drawn into politics again and again by my joy in finding common purpose with other Americans who loved their country as much as I did, who had come to politics not out of fear, hatred, or greed but because they wanted to make the world better. I did take one thing away from the Hart campaign that no defeat will ever diminish: the friendship of more than a few exceptional people. The time I spent on the campaign trail in 1984 had made me stronger for the battles that lay ahead in Idaho.