Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America (3 page)

The crowd was in a raucous mood as Romney walked onstage. He pointed with both arms to the other end of the arena to acknowledge Kid Rock. The deafening noise continued to crash over him. They chanted, “Mitt! Mitt!” After almost a minute of applause, he began to speak, but they wouldn’t let him. He tried again, but it kept coming. He stepped away and laughed, throwing his head back. The ovation continued for another minute and the audience broke into chants of “USA! USA! USA!” He tried to yank the microphone loose, thinking he wasn’t close enough to be heard. But it wasn’t the microphone; it was the crowd that was drowning out almost everything he was saying. Finally, after almost three minutes of nonstop sound, the audience quieted enough for him to begin.

His last two days had begun Sunday morning in Des Moines, where the size and enthusiasm of the crowd caught him and the staff by surprise. On this morning the room was filled to overflowing, and as Romney worked the rope line, his traveling aide, Garrett Jackson, kept tugging on him. Gov, he said,
we’ve got to go. The schedule was incredibly tight, and time lost would be difficult to make up. From there he was on to Ohio—always Ohio. Mike Leavitt, the former governor of Utah and former Health and Human Services secretary, was aboard that morning. Romney had put him in charge of transition planning. As the charter headed east from Des Moines, Romney slid into the seat next to Leavitt, and for the rest of the flight the two were in deep conversation about the new government that Romney hoped—believed—he would be putting in place starting in three days. Along the way that day, Katie Packer Gage, the deputy campaign manager, asked Romney how he felt: “He said, ‘I’m excited,’ and I said, ‘Why, do you think we’re going to win?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to win, but if we do win I’m excited because I know exactly what it’s going to take to turn this thing around and I can’t wait to get started.’ He said, ‘If we don’t win I have a great life, I have a great family, I have a great wife, and I get to just spend more time with them, and I haven’t had enough of that in the last year and so I’m excited for that. So whatever comes on Wednesday, I’m excited for the outcome.’”

Pennsylvania was a late addition to Romney’s Sunday itinerary. His advisers saw something in the polls that made them think it was worth sending the candidate in for a rally outside of Philadelphia, which long had been a killing ground for Republican presidential candidates. By the time they arrived in Philadelphia, they were more than an hour behind schedule because of a fire at the airport. Romney hated to be late to anything. Once he was coming into New York from the airport for a meeting and got caught in Midtown traffic. He paid the driver, hopped out of the taxi, and with luggage in tow ran ten blocks in the summer heat to his meeting. Thirty thousand or more people were waiting for him when he finally arrived in Morrisville. It was a cold day—so cold, someone said, that you couldn’t feel your feet after an hour standing on the grass. People had waited three, four, five hours for the candidate. But it was like this everywhere Romney was going in the final days. Big crowds at many stops and an outpouring of emotion and enthusiasm the candidate had never experienced. Then he was on to Virginia, arriving in Newport News at 9:30 p.m.—still way behind schedule. He had phoned in to the rally before leaving Philadelphia to tell them he was running late but would be there soon. The crowd cheered wildly simply at the sound of his voice. He ended the day just after 1 a.m. after a last flight to Orlando. He was on the move again seven and a half hours later.

Florida was a battleground state Romney had to win if he hoped to become president, and he was confident he would. Backstage before his morning rally in Orlando, he joked and laughed with Jeb Bush and others. At one point, the crowd interrupted and began to chant, “One more day! One more day!” He
made eye contact with Garrett Jackson, who had been his constant companion on the road for three years and was standing in the buffer area. It was as if to say, “Can you believe it? One more day!” Next stop was Lynchburg, Virginia, and then he was on to northern Virginia, which was Obama territory. As the motorcade arrived at George Mason University, Romney’s team could see streams of people walking to the event, so many that the fire marshal had to close the doors. Thousands were directed to an overflow area, and the Romneys spoke to them from a makeshift public address system after the main rally.

Then it was back to Ohio one last time for a rally at the Columbus airport. The advance team had commandeered a hangar in the general aviation area, and it too was packed when Romney’s charter touched down at 6:38 p.m. The plan called for a dramatic entry, with the plane supposed to pull its nose inside the hangar just near the back of the stage. It took the pilot several tries to line it up properly, and then, as the plane stopped, the flight attendant could not make the door open. Romney was impatient to get out there—“champing at the bit,” an aide recalled—as the flight crew struggled with the door. Finally it popped open and there was a huge roar from the crowd. Everyone had come for this one. The Marshall Tucker Band provided the warm-up act. Golf legend Jack Nicklaus, a native of Columbus, spoke. Governor John Kasich was there too, as was Senator Rob Portman, who had become one of the campaign’s most valuable assets—a vice presidential finalist and the person who masterfully played President Obama in Romney’s debate preparations. And then finally he was in New Hampshire to close his day as Obama was ending his. “This is where the campaign began,” he said. “You got this campaign started a year and a half ago. Tomorrow your votes and your work here in New Hampshire will help me become the next president of the United States.”

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At 4 a.m. on election day, eighty members of the Obama team got a robo-call: Wake up! It’s election morning! Polls in Virginia opened at 6 a.m. eastern time, 5 a.m. in Chicago. The campaign had set up its war room on the seventh floor of One Prudential Plaza, and it was open for business before sunup. Messina had briefed everyone the day before. Tomorrow will be the most amazing day of your life, but also the hardest, he told them. Whatever happens, we’re ready. He gave three instructions: First, no panicking; if something goes wrong, fix it. Second, understand the goal for the day, which is to turn out every vote in every precinct in every battleground state. Everyone’s job on election day is to help the field team. Third, he said, hydrate. It will be a long day. And no drinking tonight. Tuesday morning, Axelrod arrived in the war room after a round of television appearances. Can I say something? he asked Messina. This is the last campaign I’m ever going to work on, he told those assembled, and I just
want to tell you that you’re the best I’ve ever seen and I’m proud of each and every one of you. But as I look around, you all look terrified, and I want to tell you one thing that’s going to make you feel better. If we lose, everybody is just going to blame Messina, and if we win, everyone wins, so come on! The room broke up with laughter.

Obama’s team was supremely confident as the polls opened. Dan Wagner’s analytics team had done its modeling, and it showed Obama winning between 50 and 51 percent of the popular vote. Of the battleground states, only North Carolina was pretty much gone. Joel Benenson’s final polling matched the findings of the analytics team. Everybody had written down predictions. Plouffe said Obama would win 332 electoral votes that night.
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Messina, ever cautious, predicted 291. Earlier, Messina had asked Wagner to remodel the battlegrounds. The Obama team could see the size of Romney’s rallies and the enthusiasm of the crowds. Messina wanted Wagner to ratchet up their estimate of Republican turnout well above the campaign’s projections. What happens if that happens? he wanted to know. On Sunday morning, Wagner came back with the answer. Even if the Republicans were five points above what Wagner’s models were predicting for turnout, Obama would still win at least 270 electoral votes. Jim, he said to Messina, we’re going to win.

In Boston, there was optimism tempered with concern. The campaign’s final poll in Ohio, conducted Sunday night, showed Romney down two points. He had slipped there. In other places he was competitive but not over the hump. Neil Newhouse, the campaign’s pollster, called the mood “cautiously optimistic.” They knew that it was still uphill, as many analysts were predicting, but that Romney had a genuine chance to win. The reason was not just what they were seeing in their polls but also what they could see and feel on the ground. Enthusiasm among Republicans was incredibly strong. Hurricane Sandy a week earlier had set the campaign back, they believed, as Romney and running mate Paul Ryan were forced to the sidelines as the president carried out his responsibilities to help organize the cleanup and comfort the victims. Chris Christie’s warm embrace of the president hadn’t helped either, nor had Christie’s decision not to attend a rally with Romney across the New Jersey border in Pennsylvania in those final days. But the feeling in Boston was that if they were a point or two down they could overcome that with a surge of votes on election day.

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Obama had voted two weeks earlier, so there was no ritual visit to mark his ballot that morning. Instead he visited a field office near his home to thank the volunteers and make calls. “Hi, is this Annie?” he asked. “This is Barack Obama. You know, the president.” When he hung up the phone, he said, “She was very nice to me even though she initially didn’t know who I was.” He made brief remarks to the press pool and cameras. “I also want to say to Governor Romney, congratulations on a spirited campaign. I know that his supporters are just as engaged and just as enthusiastic and working just as hard today. We feel confident we’ve got the votes to win, that it’s going to depend ultimately on whether those votes turn out.” From there he was taken to the Fairmont Hotel for a round of satellite interviews to Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington, D.C., for voters in northern Virginia. Just after 1 p.m., he arrived at the Attack Athletics facility on West Harrison Street for his traditional election day basketball game. He was home for dinner before 6:30 p.m.

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Romney began his day at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts, with several radio interviews. Ann, he said to his wife after he was done, it’s trash day. The candidate didn’t want to miss the trash pickup, and before he left the house that morning he started to clean out the refrigerator. This is bad, he would say as he pulled a jar from the refrigerator and tossed it in the trash bag. An aide watched, thinking, By the end of the day this man could be president-elect and he’s worried about missing trash day. At 8:40 a.m., his motorcade arrived at the Beech Street Center, where he cast his ballot. Tagg Romney and his wife had just voted in another part of town, and as they were taking their children to school they noticed a traffic jam. He realized his father’s motorcade was going to the Beech Street Center. He and his wife decided to go watch. They arrived just after his father had voted. Romney was getting into his car and looked over. Do you want to come along? Tagg had not spent a day on the road with his father during the entire general election. With his wife’s assent, he and his eleven-year-old son, Joe, jumped in for the day’s quick fly-around to Ohio and Pennsylvania. Romney felt good. On the plane, he and Bob White sat next to each other, and one of the other staffers took a photo of the two business partners with big smiles on their faces. White asked how Romney had slept. “I slept great,” Romney replied. “I feel good. I feel like I’ve done everything we could do to put ourselves in a position to win.”

Romney’s first stop was Cleveland, where he joined up with Paul Ryan for a visit to a campaign office in Richmond Heights. “Thanks for your work,” he said. “It’s all coming together today.” As he spoke, some of the campaign volunteers standing in the hallway began to sing “God Bless America.” Romney
whistled for everyone to come into the main room, where Ryan introduced him as “the next president of the United States.” “We are about to change America,” Romney said. “The country has been going in the wrong direction. We are going to steer it back onto a course that is going to help the American people have a brighter future.” The crowd chanted, “Rom-ney! Rom-ney!” As Romney worked a makeshift rope line outside, an Obama supporter standing nearby shouted, “Four more years!” A Romney supporter turned to her as everyone was leaving and said, “You will be flushing Obama down the toilet.”

Romney’s plane landed at the Pittsburgh airport at 3 p.m. As the plane taxied to a stop, the traveling party looked out in amazement. On the edge of the airport, fenced off from where they were, was a parking garage. Hundreds and hundreds of people—maybe even a thousand or more—were standing in the garage cheering and applauding. They had heard that Romney was coming to Pittsburgh and spontaneously created a welcoming committee. Romney quickly exited the plane and with a swift step went over to the fence to thank them for coming out. He turned to the press pool accompanying him. “Well, that’s when you know you’re going to win,” he said. He got into his car with his son and grandson and Garrett Jackson. Boxed pizza was on the seat. Romney was overcome with the emotion of the moment. He repeated what he had said to the press pool. It was the first time he had openly shown his confidence about the outcome. Tagg Romney too was moved by what he had witnessed. He had rarely seen such passion in the campaign. “That was the first moment where I let myself believe we’re going to win,” he said. He was hardly alone in that belief, though by most objective measures his father’s chances were hardly good at that point.

Romney’s charter left Pittsburgh about 4:20 p.m. and touched down at Logan Airport in Boston about 5:45 p.m. A cheer erupted from the staff and reporters to mark the charter’s last flight. As the plane was landing, everyone aboard checked cell phones. Romney switched on his iPad. The first round of exit polls was now ricocheting across the blogosphere. The numbers were not good. In the staff van, the mood turned grim. Senior adviser Ron Kaufman spit out an expletive. “This is not going to end up where we want it to end up,” he told the others. Romney was taken to the Westin Hotel, where he would have dinner with his family. He had talked with campaign manager Matt Rhoades and political director Rich Beeson. He knew what the numbers meant but tried not to show any emotion. Tagg’s wife was excited when the group arrived at the hotel, but she could instantly sense something was wrong.