Word: one
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nassau County on Long Island is to Republicans what New York City is to Democrats--a good old boy, down and dirty, no apologies political machine. It is one of the last great political machines in America, living and breathing not in the trenches of urban politics but in the unlikely netherland of the Long Island suburbs...
Running the campaign for Zwirn and his slate of two town council candidate, one candidate for town clerk, and one woman who was purportedly running for district court judge but refused to campaign, I realized that the vicious Republican cycle is also perpetuated by the quality of candidates the Democrats...
Zwirm acted neurotically and would pander to almost any group, no matter how politically repulsive. One of the council candidates was a Republican whom we nominated "for balance," taking the nomination away from an intelligent, articulate Democrat who could have run a much better campaign. The other council candidate was the hardest worker of the bunch. A liberal college professor, he is probably the only one on the slate with a chance...
Frequently, the candidates wouldn't even talk to me. One resented the fact that I was doing too much, because it made her look like she was doing nothing. Zwirn hated me at first because of an old political fight he had with my father. As a result, nothing got done...
...before I left for Harvard, I put together a make-shift campaign headquarters on a shoestring budget with no telephones. It represented one of the only contributions the Democratic organization would let me make to a backward, lethargic campaign. Democrats had gotten so comfortable with idea of doing nothing and losing comfortably that they were completely surprised by the idea of an active (maybe even winning) campaign...