Chapter 10 - Elena Takes The Reins
They were able to have the Zoom call the next day, which was duly recorded and ready for posting. All of the Writing Group thought that much went well. Each of the others spoke for about 2 minutes in introducing themselves to the public. Elena spoke last and in addition to talking about her background explained that she would be replacing Caroline while Caroline was on vacation. The entire video was under 10 minutes in duration. The bio sketches with accompanying photos were also made ready.
Elena let Michael know that the video was ready for posting as were the supporting materials. Michael said there would be delay in doing that work. With the office move, the security people were making him take added precautions in setting up the computers and phones at the new site. This was also true of the Website. They needed to be tracking hits from unusual IP addresses. They hadn’t been doing that so far. There were a variety of other precautions that the security people wanted him to take that he could implement, but it would take some time to do so. Elena told Michael to accept fully what the security people were telling him. There was no time pressure in getting the video posted.
Elena now found herself in a funny position. The moving folks would be there later in the afternoon. In the meantime, while she was in charge, until they settled into their new office there wasn’t anything for her to do. She would just get in the way of the security guys, who were working quite diligently to make sure the new place was bug proof and resistant to physical entry. And it seemed that Nicole had the other details that needed to be taken care of well in hand. They had already gotten Elena signatory authority for the bank account. There really was no business function that needed Elena’s attention at that moment.
So she decided to commandeer what had been Caroline’s office and use it for some quiet time to mull things over. As a writer, she often spent quiet time, planning out the writing - subject matter, tone, and imagined audience. She often did this in advance of meeting with Jackie. But most of this quiet time was for writing that she had been tasked to do. It was rare for her to task herself, just to get a focus. She would luxuriate in that new found freedom on this most unusual of days.
She began by thinking back to the Presidential election of 2016. Were there lessons from that experience that are relevant now? She recalled being surprised that the vast majority of women who were registered Republicans ended up voting for Trump. This offered up a puzzle of sorts, since Trump’s misogyny was heavily reported, particularly his relationship with Stormy Daniels, the porn star. Knowing that, how could women vote for him, even Republican women? Yet they did and in large numbers. To solve the puzzle she tried to create a list of reasons as to why it happened, hoping that at least one item on the list really would give the true solution, or perhaps a few of the items in combination.
Almost immediately, she started to think of the Republican demonization of Hillary Clinton. It began well before Clinton announced her candidacy for President, but Elena wondered, how much earlier did it really begin? Frequently in the past, she would take these mental sojourns while sitting at her desk in front of her computer. She’d then do some searches on the computer to answer questions like this. But now the security guys had taken away all the computers which were to move to the new office. Elena still had a phone that was functional, but she imagined that searching on the phone would hamper her thinking and it would not make the security guys happy. She set aside all the details for the time being, so that they might be filled in later. What she was able to come up with without much effort at all is that the House investigation of the Benghazi affair seemingly went on forever. It appeared to be about blowing smoke regarding Clinton’s management of the fiasco, with the hope that the public would conclude - where there’s smoke there’s fire. And if she remembered correctly, all the hullabaloo about Hillary Clinton’s emails stemmed from the investigation by this Congressional Committee. There seemingly was negative news about Clinton every day during the election season. Maybe that was enough to outweigh the negatives that Trump had, at least in the minds of Republican voters. Elena recalled that at some pro-Trump rallies, Trump himself would lead the crowd in calling her, “Crooked Hillary.” To a thoughtful person, that charge should not in itself exonerate Trump from his own misdeeds. But maybe its purpose was other than that, to deflect the audience from considering Trump’s misdeeds entirely.
Elena then immediately brought that back to the present. Was there negative news about The Minute Women or about Caroline? It was Elena’s impression that there wasn’t. The news she was aware of was quite positive. Even the Wall Street Journal gave Caroline a positive review, owing to her level way of presenting ideas. And they concurred that with so much attention on the Big Lie and Republicans in Congress being sycophants of Trump, it would not be hard to conclude that he committed many other crimes while in office, which he could get away with because Congressional Republicans gave a wink and a nod. This wasn’t a difficult argument to agree was plausible, even if in a real court of law plausibility was insufficient grounds to pronounce guilt of the defendants. And they concurred with Caroline’s assessment, that the Justices nominated by Trump should have publicly expressed their concerns for the circumstances that buttressed their nominations, if not reject the nominations outright. Yet there was no such expression of concern. It was right to worry about that.
Elena was a stickler for detail in whatever final product she produced. Now she wondered whether there were fringe publications or social media groups that had articulated fierce criticism of Caroline and The Minute Women. Recent experience suggested that what appeared in fringe publications might very well enter more mainstream venues in the not too distant future. Elena had to admit that she was ignorant about this possibility. She needed to have it investigated. She decided that she’d hire some media people to take a pulse of right-wing fringe media and keep doing so till The Minute Women reached their ultimate goal. They would need to be more than a step ahead of such potential opposition and have strong ways to refute such arguments, should those arguments be forthcoming.
Elena took her own ignorance in this case to take up a different question. Might many Republican women themselves be largely ignorant of national politics, with their attentions focused on family or other more personal matters. Instead, might they leave the worrying about politics largely to their husbands? As before, Elena found herself ignorant of what really was going on. She needed to understand this much better, as did the other Writing Group members. How could they learn about this in a way where they had a much deeper understanding of what was going on?
Elena knew that the Web-form Michael had cooked up for people who made comments on the Website had an optional area for demographic information. This included age, location, and whether the person would be willing to participate in follow up conversation. Party affiliation was another of those identifiers. Most responders didn’t include that information. Among those who did, the vast majority indicated they were Democrats. Yet, given the very large number of comments they received, there still were a good number of respondents who said they were Republicans. Elena wondered whether those respondents might know a lot more about how their family voted in 2016 and why they voted that way. Could they teach the Writing Group, not just about this but also about what might get them and their families to have voted differently? If they could attract these folks to participate in a focus group, could Alice design a session that would be informative this way? Maybe they would need many focus groups of this sort to get a good picture of this.
Elena then began to wonder whether restoring Roe might be an issue that would divide Republican families, mainly with the wife in favor and the husband against. Would Republican wives willingly go against their husbands in how they vote because of the importance of this issue? Again, Elena felt ignorant about providing a realistic answer. But she intuited that focus groups wouldn’t be informative on this question. Perhaps she would need to hire some social psychologists as consultants and get them to help determine how to address this particular question and what The Minute Women might do to encourage Republican women to be more assertive in this case.
She put that issue on hold for a while and took up another. How would anyone outside the family know whether these families were having discussions about restoring Roe? If such families tended to be quite private in their discussions about politics, how could an outsider penetrate that shield? Elena mulled on this a while. She doubted that normal polling would shed any light on the matter at all, as these families would likely simply not respond to the pollsters. Might there be somebody else with whom they’d be comfortable enough to open up?
The questions Elena posed to herself seemed so enigmatic that they were beginning to put a damper on her mood. Recognizing this, she allowed herself to stop being purely rational, replacing that with some elements of fantasy, which still might contain a few grains of truth, entirely leaving out the issue of how to get there from here. She envisioned a large group of Minute Women Liaisons who lived in the same communities where they went door to door and engaged the people living there in the issues that The Minute Women focused upon. The Liaisons would play an educational role only, to avoid making the hard sell, which would surely turn off the people who answered the doorbell. And they would try hard to make the education bi-directional, asking if they could make a return visit in a week or so, to see how the homeowners thinking advanced after some reflection on the issues. Elena wondered whether having the Liaison from the same political party as the homeowner would matter. It was something to learn about if the approach actually were implemented.
Elena thought this approach might work in suburban areas and even in urban areas which had single-family dwellings. She then puzzled some over what to do about connecting with voters who lived in apartment buildings, gated communities, or in rural areas.
Elena knew that Caroline had been approached by the TV networks on multiple occasions, asking her to make an appearance. Caroline had turned them down each time. She was already under a great deal of stress. Going on TV would be overwhelming. But if and when those invitations were extended to Elena, maybe she should say yes to a few of these, with a strong preference for appearing on afternoon TV. That way the stress wouldn’t be quite as much and it might better for connecting with the targeted audience.
Elena also wondered about an online presence for the Liaisons. They could market this on the Website and in YouTube. Then individuals could invite the Liasons, not vice versa. Change the logic of who initiates contact so it becomes an opt in approach. Have the initial contact be a one-on-one conversation, to see if the person was legit and to learn what the person had in mind about follow up beyond the initial conversation. Small group conversation online might very well be the next step, with a focus on The Minute Women’s themes, but also a bit about becoming a Liaison.
Elena indulged herself that such a multi-prong approach might be very effective and have the numbers who support The Minute Women rise dramatically. In the back of her mind, she expected many to have a follow-the-crowd mentality. It would be far easier to embraceThe Minute Women’s themes if they knew many others were already doing it. This was likely true for both Democrats and Republicans. So reporting out on the numbers, especially if they did show growth, might make the growth self-reenforcing.
Elena went further still in imagining that Republican husbands might willingly let go of control of politics within the family, now preferring to offer support for their wives instead. And if this started to happen, Republicans in Congress might be willing to support The Minute Women as well, feeling it was a way both to survive through the next election cycle and to fully abandon Trump. In each of these cases, the follow-the-crowd mentality likely would matter a lot.
Elena now wore a smile of contentment. If only it would actually play out this way. At least she had the ideal situation to serve as a target and to provide motivation in making all the practical decisions that she’d be making in the near future. It had been such a luxury to have Caroline make those decisions. Elena knew that Caroline had a very clear initial goal which motivated her. But Elena wondered whether Caroline took up additional targets as The Minute Women made progress toward that initial goal.
* * * * *
It was now the third day in the new digs for The Minute Women. The video of the Writing Group and Elena, along with related materials, had been posted on the first day, so there had been some time for the the public to become acquainted with the news about who the staff actually were. Elena had been engaged in hiring the media consultants, which turned out to be a rather straightforward thing to do, as there apparently is a cottage industry for monitoring extremist groups via their media sites. The agreement that Elena made with the consultants was first, that they needed to coordinate, since some overlap might be useful but there was so much to monitor that they needed to divide up what each would be watching carefully. Then, second, spotting a set of negative comments about The Minute Women, especially comments that seemed to accompany threats, would trigger an alert among them that would also be made known to Elena. They needed to backtrack those comments as best as they could to identify the source. But they needed to be careful in this work. Mere disagreement with what the themes advocated by The Minute Women should not trigger such a response. Some subtlety would be required to separate the one from the other. Then, third, in the absence of threats being spotted a weekly report would be produced to document the work that had been done. In the presence of an evident threat they would go on high alert, notify the security people, and then also monitor whether mainstream right wing media had picked up on this messaging. It was possible that such a threat would not spread widely and remain only within this fringe group. But they couldn’t take the chance that it would be otherwise.
Less progress was made in hiring social psychologists. Those they identified were either full time academics or worked for think tanks. In either case, they were so wrapped up already in ongoing projects that they simply didn’t have the time to provide the consultation that Elena needed. So, Elena instructed Nicole to identify political scientists who worked for consulting firms the work. This was a stretch, but she didn’t see an alternative. She had an interview with one earlier in the day. It was rather discouraging. He kept on mentioning small-sample bias and that you couldn’t trust a few focus groups to get clearly established themes. But Elena was after something else - language that might persuade rather than hypotheses the should be tested. After the interview, she wondered if speech writers would do well at this job and, in particular, whether Jeffrey could be persuaded to take it on. She would discuss it with him later this evening, when there would be a face-to-face meeting of the Writing Group.
Elena turned her attention to preparing for this meeting. She thought they should begin with talking about their experience since they could be be publicly identified on the Website and they could be watched in the group video on YouTube. That video now had almost six million hits. What would being publicly recognizable entail? Would there be any shock to it that required making additional adjustments that were not yet implemented? Elena wasn’t sure she should frame it this way. Maybe it would be enough simply to get each of them to report on their experiences since the video went live. Elena knew her own experience when out in public would be somewhat different than theirs, since when she went out she was accompanied by a security guy, who was evident to anyone who looked at Elena. She had gotten a lot of hand waves from people, but very few people came up to talk with her. Elena imagined they were intimidated by the security guy, though perhaps there was some other explanation for their apparent shyness.
As she was mulling over the rest of the agenda of this evening’s meeting, Nicole entered the office and said, “Excuse me Elena. I have Caroline on the phone. She wants to talk with you. Should I put her through?”
“Caroline! That’s a surprise. Yes, Nicole, put her through.”
“Elena, this is Caroline. How are you doing? I have some important matters that we need to discuss.”
“Caroline, this is quite a surprise. Before getting down to business, please tell me how you are doing. That last time I saw you it seemed you were very distraught.”
“I’m a good deal better, though still feeling a lot of stress. After my father passed away, I found that reading became my salvation. I was able to escape into the book I was reading and forget about everything else. Over time I healed that way. So I tried it again. But this time around it was far less satisfying. I couldn’t let go fully of thinking about The Minute Women. I saw a psychiatrist when I was struggling after my father died. So I called him a few days ago to see if he would give me a consultation on the phone. Under the circumstances he agreed to do that.
He explained to me that the grief I experienced after my dad’s passing was quite different from the overwhelming stress I was facing while running The Minute Women. The reading allowed me to go through the stages of grief while I was in mourning, but it wouldn’t do anything to manage the stress I was facing. There, I needed to take steps to permanently reduce the stress. Yet going cold turkey on The Minute Women wasn’t an option, since I’m the founder and its work is my passion. I needed to find some middle way, where I still could be involved but not have responsibility for everything. Even if the death threats were only a temporary issue, I couldn’t go back to how we were doing things before. That may not surprise you at all. But how we are going to go about this might be something you haven’t considered yet.”
“It’s true. I knew you needed to substantially reduce your stress burden but at the same time that you needed to stay involved. How that would happen, I wasn’t sure.”
“Well, let me begin with the easy stuff first. You and I should do a weekly call. I’m probably more flexible time-wise than you are. So you can set up the schedule for that with Nicole.”
“Wait, are you implying…?”
“Let me get to that. First, here is something you may not realize. The Minute Women has a Board of Directors. I’m the Chairwoman. As an NGO, it needs this structure to be legally constituted. One other member is a lawyer friend who helped me draft the Board documents and get them approved by the IRS. When we started out, the other members of the Board were those in the Writing Group, including you, Elena. You may not recall this when you did the paperwork to sign on with The Minute Women, but one of the documents you signed was an agreement to serve on the Board. As a matter of fact, the Board was dormant until we started to get sufficient donations flowing in that our funding no longer needed to come from my personal account. This more or less coincided to when we began posting videos to YouTube. Soon after that, I started to receive big bucks donations from high rollers. My lawyer friend said the Board needed to be reconstituted to deal with this large money flow. At the time The Writing Group members were rotated off and a few of the high rollers came on, to represent themselves and others like them. You actually signed a document agreeing to this though you may never have read the fine print to know what it was about. My primary role, from here on out, will be with the Board of Directors, assuming what I say next meets with your approval, Elena.”
“Caroline, are you offering me the job of CEO?”
“I am, but let me explain this fully. First, our Board of Directors has agreed to online meetings. We have regularly scheduled quarterly meetings and we also have meetings as needed when the situation arises. We had such a meeting yesterday. You were the sole topic of discussion. They endorsed everything else I’m about to say. “
Caroline continued. “Second, this is not an interim offer. You will be the permanent CEO. If you agree to this, we will take down the part on the Website where we say we are looking for a leader of national prominence. We have found that leader. It is you.”
“Third, if you agree to this offer I will release a video that I’ve already recorded, which I hope will make your job somewhat easier. After that meeting with the Writing Group, where I left in quite an emotional state, Jackie called me and relayed your concern about being perceived as a shill for the Democratic party. The video will say that you have my full confidence and that we will have weekly consultations so that I can endorse your work plans and you can become aware of any Board concerns. The video will also talk about the huge stress I’ve been under, including the death threats, which is why I couldn’t just continue as before. I expect the video to be taken as proof that you are the new me, so to speak.”
Elena smiled at that one.
“Fourth, the appointment calls for a salary of $260,000 per year or $5,000 per week, along with a full benefits package. It doesn’t specify how much personal time you can take nor does it specify any specific performance measures other than I have to be generally happy with the progress you are making. Otherwise you have freedom to do as you see fit. You will be an Ex Officio member of the Board. From the little I garnered about the business you will bring to the Board from the call with Jackie, it will be about financing the next phase of the operation. So it’s good for the Board members to have a relationship with you. Otherwise, I will try to steer you clear from much of their inside baseball conversation, which I think will just be a distraction for you. Doing that steering will create the stress that I’m still willing to bear to see the work go forward.”
Elena replied, “Caroline, that’s quite a hefty salary, especially relative to what the Writing Group members are paid. Do you have some explanation for such generous pay.”
Caroline said in response, “Elena, you should expect other high rollers to go directly to you with their various schemes, which will almost always include some payment to you directly. If you think the scheme benign or will actually aid The MInute Women in pursuit of its mission, then go right ahead with it. My experience is that you’ll often want to give a polite no to the offer. Turning down money directed to you personally requires character, sure, but it also helps if you don’t need the money for the necessities of life. The Board had no problem whatsoever with this salary amount.”
Elena replied, “I see. Might some of the high rollers go directly to members of the Writing Group? If so, should their pay be adjusted accordingly, as well as some modification in the work rules so they report such contact to me?”
Caroline said, “Yes. This is just the sort of issue that should be brought to the Board of Directors. I’m sure they’d approve pay increases for the Writing Group. We’ll have to figure out whether the work rules issues is also in their bailiwick or something for you to control fully. I need to ask my lawyer friend about it.”
Elena was nodding her head. Then she said, “I’m beginning to see the whole picture. Is there anything else that’s part of the offer?”
Caroline shook her head. “The paper work will be sent to you in a few minutes. You should read it over carefully.”
Elena then made a comment that Caroline fully anticipated. “I will need to meet with the Congresswoman and with Jackie separately to let them know about this offer. I suspect they will be happy that it is happening, but if there is anything urgent going on at the Congresswoman’s office that needs my attention, I’ll need to work on it before signing the agreement.”
Caroline asked, “Do you have any questions, Elena?”
“Yes, I do. It’s about our weekly calls and any other ancillary material that you want me to send along, either in preparation for the call or as a consequence of the call. I don’t want to contribute to your further stress, Caroline. You’ve been through so much already. Sometimes, there is going to be bad news. Everything won’t go according to plan. For example, this morning I had an interview with a political scientist which didn’t go well at all. Do you want to hear about the bad as well as the good? Or should I shield you from most of that?”
Caroline smiled. “Elena, it is not the bad outcomes that are stressful to me. It’s having to deal with the mess after the bad outcome that is very stressful. I think you’ll come to the same conclusion, and very quickly. To the extent that you are comfortable in delegating the work, you should do that. Then the stress is shared more broadly. That should be an implicit goal in what we do. Are there other questions?”
“Do you think that upon occasion you’ll want to visit the new office and talk with folks? And what about them contacting you directly, the way Jackie did? Will that be okay with you in the future?”
“Elena, I really like that you come up with questions I hadn’t yet considered. If I could make a scheduled visit to see everyone, perhaps once a month, of that I’m not sure, I would love that. The security guys would have to okay it first. I think direct calls that are work related shouldn’t occur in the future. But I wouldn’t make a big deal about it. It may be, for example, that Jackie wants to call me on a purely personal matter but then some work stuff gets mentioned in the call.”
“Then we’ll play it by ear for now. I will let you know tomorrow if I’m taking the job. I would say it is very likely, barring something unforeseen with the Congresswoman.”
“That’s great. I will wait till I receive the signed documents before I have Michael post the video I made. This will be a big day for all of us.
“Goodbye, Caroline.”
“Goodbye, Elena.”
After getting off the phone Elena could not contain herself and told Nicole the gist of what was discussed in the call. She instructed Nicole to keep this to herself. Elena would tell the Writing Group about it at the meeting this evening. Then she tasked Nicole with going to the database of responses to the Website and asked her to compile a list all the Republican responses and put them into an Excel spreadsheet. If she had time time she should also score the comments on these responses as positive, negative, or neutral. When this was done, which might still be after the meeting this evening, there would need to something similar done for the Democratic responses, though there might be too many to fit into one Excel document. There would be no need to score the comments then. Nicole should work with Michael as to how those records could be presented to the Writing Group.
Elena let Michael know that the video was ready for posting as were the supporting materials. Michael said there would be delay in doing that work. With the office move, the security people were making him take added precautions in setting up the computers and phones at the new site. This was also true of the Website. They needed to be tracking hits from unusual IP addresses. They hadn’t been doing that so far. There were a variety of other precautions that the security people wanted him to take that he could implement, but it would take some time to do so. Elena told Michael to accept fully what the security people were telling him. There was no time pressure in getting the video posted.
Elena now found herself in a funny position. The moving folks would be there later in the afternoon. In the meantime, while she was in charge, until they settled into their new office there wasn’t anything for her to do. She would just get in the way of the security guys, who were working quite diligently to make sure the new place was bug proof and resistant to physical entry. And it seemed that Nicole had the other details that needed to be taken care of well in hand. They had already gotten Elena signatory authority for the bank account. There really was no business function that needed Elena’s attention at that moment.
So she decided to commandeer what had been Caroline’s office and use it for some quiet time to mull things over. As a writer, she often spent quiet time, planning out the writing - subject matter, tone, and imagined audience. She often did this in advance of meeting with Jackie. But most of this quiet time was for writing that she had been tasked to do. It was rare for her to task herself, just to get a focus. She would luxuriate in that new found freedom on this most unusual of days.
She began by thinking back to the Presidential election of 2016. Were there lessons from that experience that are relevant now? She recalled being surprised that the vast majority of women who were registered Republicans ended up voting for Trump. This offered up a puzzle of sorts, since Trump’s misogyny was heavily reported, particularly his relationship with Stormy Daniels, the porn star. Knowing that, how could women vote for him, even Republican women? Yet they did and in large numbers. To solve the puzzle she tried to create a list of reasons as to why it happened, hoping that at least one item on the list really would give the true solution, or perhaps a few of the items in combination.
Almost immediately, she started to think of the Republican demonization of Hillary Clinton. It began well before Clinton announced her candidacy for President, but Elena wondered, how much earlier did it really begin? Frequently in the past, she would take these mental sojourns while sitting at her desk in front of her computer. She’d then do some searches on the computer to answer questions like this. But now the security guys had taken away all the computers which were to move to the new office. Elena still had a phone that was functional, but she imagined that searching on the phone would hamper her thinking and it would not make the security guys happy. She set aside all the details for the time being, so that they might be filled in later. What she was able to come up with without much effort at all is that the House investigation of the Benghazi affair seemingly went on forever. It appeared to be about blowing smoke regarding Clinton’s management of the fiasco, with the hope that the public would conclude - where there’s smoke there’s fire. And if she remembered correctly, all the hullabaloo about Hillary Clinton’s emails stemmed from the investigation by this Congressional Committee. There seemingly was negative news about Clinton every day during the election season. Maybe that was enough to outweigh the negatives that Trump had, at least in the minds of Republican voters. Elena recalled that at some pro-Trump rallies, Trump himself would lead the crowd in calling her, “Crooked Hillary.” To a thoughtful person, that charge should not in itself exonerate Trump from his own misdeeds. But maybe its purpose was other than that, to deflect the audience from considering Trump’s misdeeds entirely.
Elena then immediately brought that back to the present. Was there negative news about The Minute Women or about Caroline? It was Elena’s impression that there wasn’t. The news she was aware of was quite positive. Even the Wall Street Journal gave Caroline a positive review, owing to her level way of presenting ideas. And they concurred that with so much attention on the Big Lie and Republicans in Congress being sycophants of Trump, it would not be hard to conclude that he committed many other crimes while in office, which he could get away with because Congressional Republicans gave a wink and a nod. This wasn’t a difficult argument to agree was plausible, even if in a real court of law plausibility was insufficient grounds to pronounce guilt of the defendants. And they concurred with Caroline’s assessment, that the Justices nominated by Trump should have publicly expressed their concerns for the circumstances that buttressed their nominations, if not reject the nominations outright. Yet there was no such expression of concern. It was right to worry about that.
Elena was a stickler for detail in whatever final product she produced. Now she wondered whether there were fringe publications or social media groups that had articulated fierce criticism of Caroline and The Minute Women. Recent experience suggested that what appeared in fringe publications might very well enter more mainstream venues in the not too distant future. Elena had to admit that she was ignorant about this possibility. She needed to have it investigated. She decided that she’d hire some media people to take a pulse of right-wing fringe media and keep doing so till The Minute Women reached their ultimate goal. They would need to be more than a step ahead of such potential opposition and have strong ways to refute such arguments, should those arguments be forthcoming.
Elena took her own ignorance in this case to take up a different question. Might many Republican women themselves be largely ignorant of national politics, with their attentions focused on family or other more personal matters. Instead, might they leave the worrying about politics largely to their husbands? As before, Elena found herself ignorant of what really was going on. She needed to understand this much better, as did the other Writing Group members. How could they learn about this in a way where they had a much deeper understanding of what was going on?
Elena knew that the Web-form Michael had cooked up for people who made comments on the Website had an optional area for demographic information. This included age, location, and whether the person would be willing to participate in follow up conversation. Party affiliation was another of those identifiers. Most responders didn’t include that information. Among those who did, the vast majority indicated they were Democrats. Yet, given the very large number of comments they received, there still were a good number of respondents who said they were Republicans. Elena wondered whether those respondents might know a lot more about how their family voted in 2016 and why they voted that way. Could they teach the Writing Group, not just about this but also about what might get them and their families to have voted differently? If they could attract these folks to participate in a focus group, could Alice design a session that would be informative this way? Maybe they would need many focus groups of this sort to get a good picture of this.
Elena then began to wonder whether restoring Roe might be an issue that would divide Republican families, mainly with the wife in favor and the husband against. Would Republican wives willingly go against their husbands in how they vote because of the importance of this issue? Again, Elena felt ignorant about providing a realistic answer. But she intuited that focus groups wouldn’t be informative on this question. Perhaps she would need to hire some social psychologists as consultants and get them to help determine how to address this particular question and what The Minute Women might do to encourage Republican women to be more assertive in this case.
She put that issue on hold for a while and took up another. How would anyone outside the family know whether these families were having discussions about restoring Roe? If such families tended to be quite private in their discussions about politics, how could an outsider penetrate that shield? Elena mulled on this a while. She doubted that normal polling would shed any light on the matter at all, as these families would likely simply not respond to the pollsters. Might there be somebody else with whom they’d be comfortable enough to open up?
The questions Elena posed to herself seemed so enigmatic that they were beginning to put a damper on her mood. Recognizing this, she allowed herself to stop being purely rational, replacing that with some elements of fantasy, which still might contain a few grains of truth, entirely leaving out the issue of how to get there from here. She envisioned a large group of Minute Women Liaisons who lived in the same communities where they went door to door and engaged the people living there in the issues that The Minute Women focused upon. The Liaisons would play an educational role only, to avoid making the hard sell, which would surely turn off the people who answered the doorbell. And they would try hard to make the education bi-directional, asking if they could make a return visit in a week or so, to see how the homeowners thinking advanced after some reflection on the issues. Elena wondered whether having the Liaison from the same political party as the homeowner would matter. It was something to learn about if the approach actually were implemented.
Elena thought this approach might work in suburban areas and even in urban areas which had single-family dwellings. She then puzzled some over what to do about connecting with voters who lived in apartment buildings, gated communities, or in rural areas.
Elena knew that Caroline had been approached by the TV networks on multiple occasions, asking her to make an appearance. Caroline had turned them down each time. She was already under a great deal of stress. Going on TV would be overwhelming. But if and when those invitations were extended to Elena, maybe she should say yes to a few of these, with a strong preference for appearing on afternoon TV. That way the stress wouldn’t be quite as much and it might better for connecting with the targeted audience.
Elena also wondered about an online presence for the Liaisons. They could market this on the Website and in YouTube. Then individuals could invite the Liasons, not vice versa. Change the logic of who initiates contact so it becomes an opt in approach. Have the initial contact be a one-on-one conversation, to see if the person was legit and to learn what the person had in mind about follow up beyond the initial conversation. Small group conversation online might very well be the next step, with a focus on The Minute Women’s themes, but also a bit about becoming a Liaison.
Elena indulged herself that such a multi-prong approach might be very effective and have the numbers who support The Minute Women rise dramatically. In the back of her mind, she expected many to have a follow-the-crowd mentality. It would be far easier to embraceThe Minute Women’s themes if they knew many others were already doing it. This was likely true for both Democrats and Republicans. So reporting out on the numbers, especially if they did show growth, might make the growth self-reenforcing.
Elena went further still in imagining that Republican husbands might willingly let go of control of politics within the family, now preferring to offer support for their wives instead. And if this started to happen, Republicans in Congress might be willing to support The Minute Women as well, feeling it was a way both to survive through the next election cycle and to fully abandon Trump. In each of these cases, the follow-the-crowd mentality likely would matter a lot.
Elena now wore a smile of contentment. If only it would actually play out this way. At least she had the ideal situation to serve as a target and to provide motivation in making all the practical decisions that she’d be making in the near future. It had been such a luxury to have Caroline make those decisions. Elena knew that Caroline had a very clear initial goal which motivated her. But Elena wondered whether Caroline took up additional targets as The Minute Women made progress toward that initial goal.
* * * * *
It was now the third day in the new digs for The Minute Women. The video of the Writing Group and Elena, along with related materials, had been posted on the first day, so there had been some time for the the public to become acquainted with the news about who the staff actually were. Elena had been engaged in hiring the media consultants, which turned out to be a rather straightforward thing to do, as there apparently is a cottage industry for monitoring extremist groups via their media sites. The agreement that Elena made with the consultants was first, that they needed to coordinate, since some overlap might be useful but there was so much to monitor that they needed to divide up what each would be watching carefully. Then, second, spotting a set of negative comments about The Minute Women, especially comments that seemed to accompany threats, would trigger an alert among them that would also be made known to Elena. They needed to backtrack those comments as best as they could to identify the source. But they needed to be careful in this work. Mere disagreement with what the themes advocated by The Minute Women should not trigger such a response. Some subtlety would be required to separate the one from the other. Then, third, in the absence of threats being spotted a weekly report would be produced to document the work that had been done. In the presence of an evident threat they would go on high alert, notify the security people, and then also monitor whether mainstream right wing media had picked up on this messaging. It was possible that such a threat would not spread widely and remain only within this fringe group. But they couldn’t take the chance that it would be otherwise.
Less progress was made in hiring social psychologists. Those they identified were either full time academics or worked for think tanks. In either case, they were so wrapped up already in ongoing projects that they simply didn’t have the time to provide the consultation that Elena needed. So, Elena instructed Nicole to identify political scientists who worked for consulting firms the work. This was a stretch, but she didn’t see an alternative. She had an interview with one earlier in the day. It was rather discouraging. He kept on mentioning small-sample bias and that you couldn’t trust a few focus groups to get clearly established themes. But Elena was after something else - language that might persuade rather than hypotheses the should be tested. After the interview, she wondered if speech writers would do well at this job and, in particular, whether Jeffrey could be persuaded to take it on. She would discuss it with him later this evening, when there would be a face-to-face meeting of the Writing Group.
Elena turned her attention to preparing for this meeting. She thought they should begin with talking about their experience since they could be be publicly identified on the Website and they could be watched in the group video on YouTube. That video now had almost six million hits. What would being publicly recognizable entail? Would there be any shock to it that required making additional adjustments that were not yet implemented? Elena wasn’t sure she should frame it this way. Maybe it would be enough simply to get each of them to report on their experiences since the video went live. Elena knew her own experience when out in public would be somewhat different than theirs, since when she went out she was accompanied by a security guy, who was evident to anyone who looked at Elena. She had gotten a lot of hand waves from people, but very few people came up to talk with her. Elena imagined they were intimidated by the security guy, though perhaps there was some other explanation for their apparent shyness.
As she was mulling over the rest of the agenda of this evening’s meeting, Nicole entered the office and said, “Excuse me Elena. I have Caroline on the phone. She wants to talk with you. Should I put her through?”
“Caroline! That’s a surprise. Yes, Nicole, put her through.”
“Elena, this is Caroline. How are you doing? I have some important matters that we need to discuss.”
“Caroline, this is quite a surprise. Before getting down to business, please tell me how you are doing. That last time I saw you it seemed you were very distraught.”
“I’m a good deal better, though still feeling a lot of stress. After my father passed away, I found that reading became my salvation. I was able to escape into the book I was reading and forget about everything else. Over time I healed that way. So I tried it again. But this time around it was far less satisfying. I couldn’t let go fully of thinking about The Minute Women. I saw a psychiatrist when I was struggling after my father died. So I called him a few days ago to see if he would give me a consultation on the phone. Under the circumstances he agreed to do that.
He explained to me that the grief I experienced after my dad’s passing was quite different from the overwhelming stress I was facing while running The Minute Women. The reading allowed me to go through the stages of grief while I was in mourning, but it wouldn’t do anything to manage the stress I was facing. There, I needed to take steps to permanently reduce the stress. Yet going cold turkey on The Minute Women wasn’t an option, since I’m the founder and its work is my passion. I needed to find some middle way, where I still could be involved but not have responsibility for everything. Even if the death threats were only a temporary issue, I couldn’t go back to how we were doing things before. That may not surprise you at all. But how we are going to go about this might be something you haven’t considered yet.”
“It’s true. I knew you needed to substantially reduce your stress burden but at the same time that you needed to stay involved. How that would happen, I wasn’t sure.”
“Well, let me begin with the easy stuff first. You and I should do a weekly call. I’m probably more flexible time-wise than you are. So you can set up the schedule for that with Nicole.”
“Wait, are you implying…?”
“Let me get to that. First, here is something you may not realize. The Minute Women has a Board of Directors. I’m the Chairwoman. As an NGO, it needs this structure to be legally constituted. One other member is a lawyer friend who helped me draft the Board documents and get them approved by the IRS. When we started out, the other members of the Board were those in the Writing Group, including you, Elena. You may not recall this when you did the paperwork to sign on with The Minute Women, but one of the documents you signed was an agreement to serve on the Board. As a matter of fact, the Board was dormant until we started to get sufficient donations flowing in that our funding no longer needed to come from my personal account. This more or less coincided to when we began posting videos to YouTube. Soon after that, I started to receive big bucks donations from high rollers. My lawyer friend said the Board needed to be reconstituted to deal with this large money flow. At the time The Writing Group members were rotated off and a few of the high rollers came on, to represent themselves and others like them. You actually signed a document agreeing to this though you may never have read the fine print to know what it was about. My primary role, from here on out, will be with the Board of Directors, assuming what I say next meets with your approval, Elena.”
“Caroline, are you offering me the job of CEO?”
“I am, but let me explain this fully. First, our Board of Directors has agreed to online meetings. We have regularly scheduled quarterly meetings and we also have meetings as needed when the situation arises. We had such a meeting yesterday. You were the sole topic of discussion. They endorsed everything else I’m about to say. “
Caroline continued. “Second, this is not an interim offer. You will be the permanent CEO. If you agree to this, we will take down the part on the Website where we say we are looking for a leader of national prominence. We have found that leader. It is you.”
“Third, if you agree to this offer I will release a video that I’ve already recorded, which I hope will make your job somewhat easier. After that meeting with the Writing Group, where I left in quite an emotional state, Jackie called me and relayed your concern about being perceived as a shill for the Democratic party. The video will say that you have my full confidence and that we will have weekly consultations so that I can endorse your work plans and you can become aware of any Board concerns. The video will also talk about the huge stress I’ve been under, including the death threats, which is why I couldn’t just continue as before. I expect the video to be taken as proof that you are the new me, so to speak.”
Elena smiled at that one.
“Fourth, the appointment calls for a salary of $260,000 per year or $5,000 per week, along with a full benefits package. It doesn’t specify how much personal time you can take nor does it specify any specific performance measures other than I have to be generally happy with the progress you are making. Otherwise you have freedom to do as you see fit. You will be an Ex Officio member of the Board. From the little I garnered about the business you will bring to the Board from the call with Jackie, it will be about financing the next phase of the operation. So it’s good for the Board members to have a relationship with you. Otherwise, I will try to steer you clear from much of their inside baseball conversation, which I think will just be a distraction for you. Doing that steering will create the stress that I’m still willing to bear to see the work go forward.”
Elena replied, “Caroline, that’s quite a hefty salary, especially relative to what the Writing Group members are paid. Do you have some explanation for such generous pay.”
Caroline said in response, “Elena, you should expect other high rollers to go directly to you with their various schemes, which will almost always include some payment to you directly. If you think the scheme benign or will actually aid The MInute Women in pursuit of its mission, then go right ahead with it. My experience is that you’ll often want to give a polite no to the offer. Turning down money directed to you personally requires character, sure, but it also helps if you don’t need the money for the necessities of life. The Board had no problem whatsoever with this salary amount.”
Elena replied, “I see. Might some of the high rollers go directly to members of the Writing Group? If so, should their pay be adjusted accordingly, as well as some modification in the work rules so they report such contact to me?”
Caroline said, “Yes. This is just the sort of issue that should be brought to the Board of Directors. I’m sure they’d approve pay increases for the Writing Group. We’ll have to figure out whether the work rules issues is also in their bailiwick or something for you to control fully. I need to ask my lawyer friend about it.”
Elena was nodding her head. Then she said, “I’m beginning to see the whole picture. Is there anything else that’s part of the offer?”
Caroline shook her head. “The paper work will be sent to you in a few minutes. You should read it over carefully.”
Elena then made a comment that Caroline fully anticipated. “I will need to meet with the Congresswoman and with Jackie separately to let them know about this offer. I suspect they will be happy that it is happening, but if there is anything urgent going on at the Congresswoman’s office that needs my attention, I’ll need to work on it before signing the agreement.”
Caroline asked, “Do you have any questions, Elena?”
“Yes, I do. It’s about our weekly calls and any other ancillary material that you want me to send along, either in preparation for the call or as a consequence of the call. I don’t want to contribute to your further stress, Caroline. You’ve been through so much already. Sometimes, there is going to be bad news. Everything won’t go according to plan. For example, this morning I had an interview with a political scientist which didn’t go well at all. Do you want to hear about the bad as well as the good? Or should I shield you from most of that?”
Caroline smiled. “Elena, it is not the bad outcomes that are stressful to me. It’s having to deal with the mess after the bad outcome that is very stressful. I think you’ll come to the same conclusion, and very quickly. To the extent that you are comfortable in delegating the work, you should do that. Then the stress is shared more broadly. That should be an implicit goal in what we do. Are there other questions?”
“Do you think that upon occasion you’ll want to visit the new office and talk with folks? And what about them contacting you directly, the way Jackie did? Will that be okay with you in the future?”
“Elena, I really like that you come up with questions I hadn’t yet considered. If I could make a scheduled visit to see everyone, perhaps once a month, of that I’m not sure, I would love that. The security guys would have to okay it first. I think direct calls that are work related shouldn’t occur in the future. But I wouldn’t make a big deal about it. It may be, for example, that Jackie wants to call me on a purely personal matter but then some work stuff gets mentioned in the call.”
“Then we’ll play it by ear for now. I will let you know tomorrow if I’m taking the job. I would say it is very likely, barring something unforeseen with the Congresswoman.”
“That’s great. I will wait till I receive the signed documents before I have Michael post the video I made. This will be a big day for all of us.
“Goodbye, Caroline.”
“Goodbye, Elena.”
After getting off the phone Elena could not contain herself and told Nicole the gist of what was discussed in the call. She instructed Nicole to keep this to herself. Elena would tell the Writing Group about it at the meeting this evening. Then she tasked Nicole with going to the database of responses to the Website and asked her to compile a list all the Republican responses and put them into an Excel spreadsheet. If she had time time she should also score the comments on these responses as positive, negative, or neutral. When this was done, which might still be after the meeting this evening, there would need to something similar done for the Democratic responses, though there might be too many to fit into one Excel document. There would be no need to score the comments then. Nicole should work with Michael as to how those records could be presented to the Writing Group.
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