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Chapter 30 Bad News from Washington
A week later, Leo received a call from Kevin, an aide to Senator Murphy.
The voice on the phone was filled with exhaustion.
"Leo, I'm sorry, we've run into a bit of trouble," Kevin said bluntly. "Your grant application has been stuck in the initial review stage at the Department of Housing and Urban Development."
Leo's heart sank.
"What happened?"
"An undersecretary named Robert Coleman rejected the application outright because the materials did not comply with their latest internal guidelines," Kevin explained.
"Internal guidelines?" Leo pressed. "What are those? The materials we submitted fully comply with all the provisions of federal law."
"I know," Kevin said, his tone filled with helplessness. "That so-called internal guideline was never made public. It's a trick Washington bureaucrats excel at; they can always find an internal regulation that you'll never find to veto any project they don't want to approve."
"This is a typical bureaucratic barrier; they're trying to use it to drag us down."
"But that's not the main reason," Kevin continued. "The deeper reason is that this Deputy Secretary Coleman was a caretaker official appointed by the previous Republican administration. His only political goal is to create trouble for any projects that are led by our Democrats."
"Especially community projects like yours, which have a clear welfare component, are a thorn in his side."
"But that's not the most crucial point." Kevin lowered his voice even further. "We found out that this Coleman has a very close relationship with our Republican Senator Warren from Pennsylvania."
"And you should know very well who's behind Senator Warren."
Leo instantly understood the whole story.
This is not as simple as Washington bureaucracy.
This was a precise long-range sniping operation by local forces in Pittsburgh.
Although Mayor Cartwright outwardly compromised, the real bigwigs behind him wouldn't let Leo off so easily.
Senator Warren is one of the most powerful figures in the Pennsylvania Republican Party.
His biggest campaign donor was the local Pittsburgh conglomerate, Morganfield Sr., the head of Morganfield Industries.
Leo remembered what his father had once told him.
In Pittsburgh, mayors may change, but the Morganfield family will always be there.
They are the true rulers of this city.
Mayor Cartwright, Summit Development Group, and Alan Wechsler are all just public agents of this vast interest group.
"Do you see that, Leo?" Roosevelt's voice rang out. "This is the combination of the deep government and local oligarch networks."
"You think you're just fighting a small bureaucrat in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but in reality, you're challenging a huge community of interests that spans Washington and Pittsburgh."
"Although Senator Murphy has some influence in the House of Representatives, his words don't carry enough weight in the Senate. He alone can't withstand the combined pressure from Senator Warren and the Morganfield family."
Kevin said helplessly on the other end of the phone, "John is trying his best to find a solution. He's preparing to contact several other Pennsylvania congressmen in the House of Representatives to put pressure on the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But he needs time; it could be several months before we see any results."
Several months.
This time was far too long for both Leo and Murphy.
Months later, Murphy's party primary was long over.
If he cannot deliver any tangible results for the voters before then, he will undoubtedly lose.
And Leo's Pittsburgh revitalization plan will be completely stillborn due to this endless delay.
Leo hung up the phone and fell into deep thought.
He knew it was now his turn to act.
His alliance with Murphy was based on mutual exploitation.
If he cannot help Murphy solve this problem, then their alliance will be nothing but empty words.
Murphy would not hesitate to abandon this worthless ally.
"What should we do?" Leo asked Roosevelt.
He found it somewhat tricky.
They cannot directly confront a federal deputy minister based in Washington, let alone confront deeply entrenched local oligarchs like Senator Warren and Morganfield.
Roosevelt smiled.
"My child, never use your weaknesses to confront the enemy's strengths head-on. What we need to do is drag them from their strong fortresses to a battlefield that is most advantageous to us."
"We must draw them into a people's war."
"Remember, what bureaucrats fear most is not a more powerful opponent, but endless trouble. It's the kind of trouble that's unpredictable, comes from the bottom, and doesn't play by the rules at all."
Under Roosevelt's guidance, Leo began to develop a completely new operational plan.
A completely open and aboveboard conspiracy.
The first step is to redefine the enemy in this battle.
Leo immediately had Sarah set up the camera; he wanted to record a special video about "The Heart of Pittsburgh."
In the video, Leo sits in front of the familiar fireplace, but the expression on his face is no longer one of anger, but rather a mixture of sadness and confusion.
"My brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh."
He spoke to the camera in a low voice.
"Today, I have to be here to announce some bad news to everyone."
"Our urban revitalization plan, which had the support of Representative Murphy and could have brought millions of dollars in federal investment to our Pittsburgh working-class community and created hundreds of new jobs, was rejected in Washington."
He paused, giving the bad news enough time to settle.
Then, in an extremely absurd tone, he gave his so-called reason.
"The reason for the rejection might be hard to believe. An official from the Washington Department of Housing and Urban Development told us that the application report, which represented the culmination of all our hard work, was returned because of a trivial document formatting issue that did not comply with their latest internal guidelines."
He simplified a complex political issue involving partisan struggles and local interest groups into an absurd bureaucratic joke that any ordinary person could understand.
That's enough.
The next step is to mobilize the masses.
At the end of the video, Leo gave a seemingly "apolitical" mobilization speech.
"Friends, I know you will all feel angry and disappointed when you hear this news."
"But we can't give up; we've just encountered a minor technical problem."
"I believe that the gentlemen in Washington simply do not understand the true situation in Pittsburgh, nor do they understand how much we need this plan."
"So, I would like to ask everyone for a small favor here."
He had Sarah type out the public contact number for the office of Robert Coleman, the Undersecretary for Housing and Urban Development, and his official email address on the screen in the largest font size.
"Let's communicate with the staff of Deputy Secretary Coleman's office in the most polite, peaceful, and rational way."
"Let's tell them that we are citizens of Pittsburgh and that we support this urban revitalization plan."
"Please ask them to give our application report another chance."
Before the video was released, Leo confirmed the feasibility of the plan with Roosevelt.
"We don't attack him, we don't insult him, we just get thousands of Pittsburgh residents to 'greet' him. Does that really work?"
"My son, you still don't understand bureaucracy," Roosevelt explained. "A citizen's petition call will be politely recorded by his secretary and then thrown in the trash. Ten calls will annoy them a little. A hundred calls will bring their normal work to a standstill."
"When more than a thousand, or even ten thousand, calls from the same city simultaneously bombard all the lines in their office, it is an absolute political disaster."
"Deputy Secretary Coleman will be drowned in this flood of phone calls from Pittsburgh."
This special video from "The Heart of Pittsburgh" was released that evening.
The video's effect exceeded everyone's expectations.
The steelworkers, who were already seething with anger due to unemployment and hardship, were completely enraged when they saw this absurd "file format problem".
Frank and his old buddies from the union were among the first to take action.
They wrote down the Washington phone number on a piece of paper and distributed it to everyone in the community.
"Brothers, don't say anything, just make this call and tell them you're a steelworker in Pittsburgh and you need that money!"
The residents of the community center, including the retired elderly, also picked up their phones.
They have plenty of time.
They can play from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon.
Some local small business owners joined in after seeing the plan, which could bring investment and jobs to the community, being thwarted.
They instructed their employees to dial that number during their work breaks.
A blitzkrieg of telephone attacks, remotely directed by Leo from his small office in Pittsburgh, has officially begun.
Inside the headquarters building of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C.
The office of Deputy Secretary Robert Coleman was thrown into chaos precisely at nine o'clock the next morning.
The four telephones in the office have been ringing non-stop since 9:01 a.m.
Coleman's secretary, a young girl named Susan, felt like she was going crazy.
She answered a phone call.
"Hello, this is Deputy Secretary Coleman's office."
"Hello, I'm George, a steelworker from Pittsburgh. I'd like to ask why our city regeneration plan was rejected?"
Susan could only respond with official statements.
"Sir, your application materials do not comply with our internal guidelines..."
"What kind of bullshit policy is this! I didn't see this many rules when I was fighting in Vietnam! Give the phone to your boss!"
Susan was forced to hang up the phone.
But as soon as she hung up, another phone rang immediately.
She answered it hastily.
"Hello, this is..."
"Hello, I'm a single mother from Pittsburgh. I want to know, why are you taking away my child's hope of going to college?"
All morning, Coleman's office phone line was constantly ringing off the hook.
His email inbox was also being flooded with hundreds of emails per minute from Pittsburgh.
By the afternoon, things had spiraled out of control.
Some angry Pittsburgh residents began searching online for Coleman's personal information.
His private cell phone number, his wife's social media accounts, and even the phone number of his children's school were all exposed online.
Coleman had to turn off his phone.
His wife was also forced to shut down all social media accounts.
This phone storm from Pittsburgh has severely impacted his work and personal life.
And this was only the first day.
The situation worsened the next day.
The video of "The Heart of Pittsburgh" began to circulate nationwide.
Several national left-wing news websites and bloggers with millions of followers began sharing the video.
They packaged this incident as a classic example of "Rust leading the people to resist Washington bureaucracy."
The telephone blitz in Pittsburgh began to receive support from all over the United States.
Detroit auto workers, West Virginia coal miners, Ohio unemployed...
These same people, who also lived in the Rust Belt and harbored the same resentment towards Washington, also began dialing that phone number.
Deputy Secretary Robert Coleman's office was completely paralyzed.
His secretary, Susan, tearfully submitted her resignation to the human resources department at 10 a.m. the following day.
Coleman had to personally borrow two interns from other departments to specifically handle this tsunami of phone calls.
But that was completely useless.
This matter quickly attracted the attention of Washington's astute political journalists.
That afternoon, the well-known political news website "The Hill Insider" published a report.
The title is "How a community project from Pittsburgh sparked a tsunami of phone calls to federal departments."
The report details the "Heart of Pittsburgh" video and everything that followed.
The author wrote in a half-joking tone.
"It seems that in future elections, candidates will no longer have to worry about their opponents' TV glitches, but rather about the angry army of people from the rust belts who will bombard their office phones."
Robert Coleman's name made it into the political news in a way he never wanted.
Leo, far away in Pittsburgh, watched all of this unfold from his office.
"Now it's time for our allies to step in," Roosevelt said.
In John Murphy's office on Capitol Hill.
Senator Murphy seized the opportunity that Leo had created for him.
He immediately instructed his press secretary to contact reporters from all the mainstream media outlets and announce that an emergency press conference on the "Pittsburgh incident" would be held in half an hour.
At the press conference, Senator Murphy portrayed himself as a tragic hero who spoke out for the people but was ruthlessly obstructed by the bureaucratic system in Washington.
"I am incredibly proud of my constituents!" Murphy declared emphatically to the camera. "Their voices are powerful, filled with love for this land! Their voices deserve to be heard by everyone in Washington!"
"I am personally extremely disappointed and outraged by the actions of that bureaucrat in the Department of Housing and Urban Development! I cannot understand why a plan that could bring hope to Pittsburgh would be rejected for such an absurd reason!"
"I will go to the Department of Housing and Urban Development immediately and demand that they provide Pittsburgh with a reasonable explanation!"
Murphy's performance was nothing short of perfect.
He successfully transformed himself into a warrior who dared to challenge federal bureaucrats on behalf of his constituents.
His poll numbers in Pittsburgh surged by ten percentage points the very next day.
Meanwhile, the pressure reached the office of Republican Senator Warren.