novelnext Chapter 35 The Gaps of Saints
Chapter 35 The Gaps of Saints
Sarah is very efficient.
She quickly assembled a small team of four volunteers.
They were all students at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, majoring in sociology, political science, or computer science.
Like Sarah, they share Leo's ideals and are disappointed with the current political landscape in the United States.
This small "adversary research" group set up their makeshift war room in an unused storage room in the community center.
They started with "money".
They downloaded all of Alex Cortez's publicly available campaign finance records.
Then, the source of each donation was traced.
But the result was disappointing.
Cortez's campaign funds are indeed very clean, just as he claims.
He did not accept any donations from corporate political action committees.
All his funds came from small individual donations.
The team cross-checked all his donations and found no shell companies originating from special interest groups.
"This guy is financially impeccable," a computer science student in charge of data analysis told Sarah, frustrated.
The "money" route is blocked.
They can only turn to "speech".
The team began a thorough search for Cortes on the internet.
They went through all his posts on social media over the past few years, all his speeches at various public events, and all the news reports about him.
The result was the same: nothing was gained.
Cortez's public statements are impeccable.
He always stood with the working class and always spoke out for ethnic minorities and vulnerable groups.
His image is perfect, like a political icon meticulously crafted by a public relations team.
Time passed day by day.
There are less than three weeks left until the party primary election.
Senator Murphy's campaign team calls several times a day, urging Leo to fulfill his promises as soon as possible.
Cortes' approval rating continues to rise.
The atmosphere within the research team became increasingly oppressive.
Just when everyone was about to give up.
An intern, Ben Carter, a freshman who was responsible for going through old documents, made an unexpected discovery.
He expanded his search from the public internet to the internal archives of the elite private university Cortez had attended.
It was an expensive liberal arts college in Massachusetts called Amherst College.
Ben Carter found a final paper Cortes wrote in his sophomore year for a course called "Introduction to Urban Economics" in the university's electronic archive.
A scanned copy of that paper was saved in the archives as an example of an outstanding student's work.
Ben Carter downloaded the paper and sent it to Leo.
Leo opened the PDF file.
The paper is titled “Creative Destruction: The Only Path to Urban Transformation in the Post-Industrial Era – A Case Study of Pittsburgh.”
After reading only the first paragraph, Leo's breathing became rapid.
The views expressed in the entire paper are in stark contrast to the pro-labor radical left-wing stance that Cortes is now demonstrating.
In this article, the young Cortez, in a cold, neoliberal elitist tone, praised economist Schumpeter's theory of "creative destruction."
He believes that "for old industrial cities like Pittsburgh, the demise of traditional industries that cannot adapt to global market competition, such as the steel industry, is a historical inevitability. Any government effort to protect these outdated production capacities is hindering the city's progress."
He even cited a large amount of data to argue that "strong labor unions and excessively high labor benefits are shackles that drag down urban economic vitality and reduce businesses' willingness to invest."
At the end of the article, he concluded.
"Pittsburgh's future lies in attracting highly educated, knowledgeable talent and developing finance, healthcare, and high-tech industries. In this process, the unemployment of a segment of the traditional working class is a necessary growing pain and price the city must pay for its rebirth."
Leo mentally presented the paper to Roosevelt, whose voice was filled with the thrill of a hunter discovering his prey.
"Gotcha, little fox!"
"This is his Achilles' heel! A radical politician who rose to power by winning workers' votes through rust, yet deep down he believes these workers are a burden that should be eliminated by history!"
"His approachable image and his stance of advocating for the working class were all just a performance to win votes!"
"How should we use this material?" Leo asked.
"Should we just publish it?"
"No," Roosevelt immediately rejected. "That would be too wasteful and too crude. We need to turn it into a public issue, into a political event that can continue to gain traction."
Roosevelt designed a detailed detonation plan for Leo.
"You have Frank arrange for an absolutely reliable person of his own, someone who looks like an ordinary steelworker but is clear-headed and articulate."
"Have this person attend a community voter meeting that Cortez will be hosting later."
"Give him the opportunity to ask a question during the final Q&A session, and then, as if casually quoting a line from this article, ask Cortez a question he cannot avoid."
"What's the problem?"
"Let him ask this: 'Mr. Cortez, I've read an article you wrote in college about the economy of Pittsburgh. I'd like to ask you, do you really agree that for the future of Pittsburgh, we steelworkers are the price our city must pay?'"
Leo immediately understood the viciousness of this move.
"What will he say?" Leo asked.
Roosevelt smiled.
He only has two choices.
"If he admits it, then the next day, all the workers in Pittsburgh will know his true thoughts, he will immediately lose all his workers' votes, and his political life will be over on the spot."
"If he denies it, or even lies and says he never wrote such an article, then the very next day we will package the full text of the article, along with his student photos from his time at Amherst College, and send it to all the media outlets in Pittsburgh."
"We will portray him as a hypocrite who would betray his true beliefs and openly deceive voters for the sake of votes."
"No matter what he chooses, he's destined to lose."
Everything is ready, just waiting for Cortez's voter meeting in two weeks.
Late that night, Leo's phone suddenly started ringing incessantly. It was Frank calling, his voice filled with terror: "Leo! Something's happened! Our construction site... is on fire!"