On Election Day, Hardest Part of Campaign Starts--the Wait

When it’s all over but the voting, what’s an anxious candidate to do?

Anything but hang around the campaign’s nerve center, their own headquarters, say both Democratic and Republican political consultants.

“A lot of them will be around,” said Marc Litchman, administrative assistant to Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and a veteran campaign tactician. “They’ll be second-guessing you. They’ll be fidgeting. They’re nervous. They’re head cases. And all you want them to do is get out of the way. . . .

“These guys get paranoid on Election Day. They’ll go check polling places. They’ll say: ‘Turnout’s down 20%.’ ”

Litchman’s response: “What would you like to do? Send more mailers? It’s a little late.”

GOP consultant Paul Clarke likened the candidate’s feeling on Election Day to a high school student awaiting that all-important acceptance or rejection letter from the college of his or her choice. The politician’s entire day is a prolonged version of the nerve-racking moments just before the envelope is torn open.

Drastic Action

Sometimes this high anxiety calls for drastic action. A political insider recalled a 1982 contest when the candidate was so crazed that his campaign aides put him in a car and sent him to Lake Tahoe for the day with instructions not to return until the polls closed at 8 p.m.

“We made one mistake,” said the former aide, who demanded anonymity for himself and for the candidate. “We gave him enough money to make phone calls.”

The candidate won and remains in office, having survived several election days since.

So, with the speech-making, debating and door-to-door stumping behind them and little constructive left to do, how do most office-seekers hurry up and wait?

State Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) relieves Election Day tension on the tennis court. Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Tarzana) and his wife often visit the Los Angeles County Art Museum, though one year they took their children on the Universal Studios tour.

Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia), who says his father taught him to “win like a gentleman and lose like a man,” prepares a victory speech, a concession speech or, when the outcome is uncertain, both. And Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda) adopts a Rose Garden strategy: intensely pruning, trimming and feeding his nearly 50 flowering bushes.

“It’s most important to keep them out of everybody’s way because there’s a lot to do, and the clock is running,” said political consultant Richard Lichtenstein. “The candidate who has a lot of pent-up nervous energy is going to cause more problems if he hangs around.”

Volunteer Efforts

There are exceptions. Some candidates, particularly challengers running low-budget campaigns, will reduce themselves to veritable volunteers in the get-out-the-vote effort (“GOTV” in political parlance). They telephone those previously identified as sympathetic to them with a reminder to vote or transport supporters to the polls.

Many candidates, particularly those in competitive races, will seek a final “media hit” on the day’s radio and television broadcasts and in afternoon newspapers by doing what comes naturally: voting. They will do it early and hope they are shown or heard often.

Most also will visit their campaign headquarters briefly to give volunteers a pep talk, including a “thank you” and an exhortation for a last push. That’s generally their last hurrah until the victory or concession speech after the votes have been tallied that evening.

In a rare instance a candidate can play a crucial last-minute role.

In her 1980 race against veteran Democratic Rep. James Corman, Bobbi Fiedler began her Election Day at 6:30 a.m., shaking hands with workers arriving at the Anheuser-Busch plant in Van Nuys. Twelve hours of campaigning later, the Northridge Republican ended it in front of a supermarket in Pacoima. She won by 754 votes.

“She always said that it was just about the number of people that she shook hands with on Election Day that was the margin of victory,” said Clarke, who was her campaign manager then and has since become her husband.

Some candidates respond to electoral uncertainties with personal rituals. An election eve meal at a “lucky” restaurant. Lunch with a particular friend.

Katz, meanwhile, takes 20 dozen doughnuts to post offices throughout his 39th District on election morning, after the last campaign flyer has gone out.

“I say ‘thank you’ for what they’ve had to put up with the last couple of weeks when they had to deliver those tons and tons of mail,” Katz said. “Also, we promise them we won’t do it again for at least 2 years.”