Point to Point Navigation

THIRTEEN

In the twenty-two years since the race for Congress the American political landscape had entirely changed. Issues, never a strong suit in our politics, were seldom alluded to. Only money—who had raised how much and from whom—interested the media, and the politicians. Senator Cranston explained the facts of the new politics to me. “Say you’re elected to a six-year term as senator. Say you would like to be elected to a second term. Unless you sell out to one of the great lobbies, you will be obliged to raise ten thousand dollars each week for every week of your first term. That’s 312 weeks.” This explains why so many senators are now funded by corporate America. Lately, I gather, the Internet has made fund-raising somewhat easier and less corrupt but it is a great burden for anyone who would like to be useful to be obliged to ring up strangers and ask them for money to run for office. It was not something I was ever able to do, and so did not even try. The admirable Cranston was himself rather good at it.

In the course of the 1982 primary I talked to numerous journalists. Most were only interested to know how much money I had raised. When I said, accurately, “practically nothing,” they concluded that I was not “serious.” Yet I was going up in various polls without running many of those TV ads made gratis for me by well-wishers in television. One journalist in San Francisco, Richard Rapaport, had an interest in California history and here is what he wrote some time after the election. During the buildup to the primary, Rapaport: “had been disappointed to watch the varying degrees to which political writers supped on Gore’s spectacular repartee and witty commentaries and then go on to question his electoral bona fides. Inevitably, a hugely amusing and news-desk-pleasing campaign appearance would be chilled by the stopper, ‘but really Mr. Vidal, are you serious?’

“A writer from the San Francisco Chronicle named Randy Shilts billed himself as the nation’s first openly gay mainstream newspaper reporter, and he would soon gain immense fame as the author of And the Band Played On. This 1988 history of the ravaging AIDS epidemic would ironically and tragically claim Randy within a few years. Somewhat blinded—I felt—by the light of his own coming-out celebrity, Randy had confronted Gore over the fact that he would not declare himself America’s first openly gay Senatorial candidate. Gore had asked me to stay on several occasions as he took Randy aside and patiently explained to him that although it was no secret, his sexuality was his own damn business and not a thing gentlemen of his generation comfortably advertised.

“Each time, Randy took it a little more badly, and then took it upon himself to punish Gore with some unnecessarily, pointedly nasty reportage. I had made it my own brief to make sure that Randy understood that his behavior and critique were neither fair nor professional. Several noisy confrontations occurred between Randy and me to little effect. His Chronicle stories continued to damage Gore’s campaign and helped, I felt, secure the nomination for Jerry Brown.”