Copyright (c) 2000 by Michael Finley

 

Ever wonder where those millions of political dollars go? I didn’t, until I waited with my daughter outside an office building in downtown Saint Paul the other night.

Most of our sleepy downtown was dim. Only night custodians picked their way through the stubby skyscrapers at this hour, filling their plastic carts with the day's debris.

But this building, at 8:51 PM, was still ablaze with lights. It's the telemarketing center for the Republican Party of Minnesota. My 15-year-old daughter Daniele's friend Melodie was just getting off her shift. We were picking her up for a sleepover at our place.

When the clock struck nine, the lights began to go out. You can’t bother people after a certain hour and still expect their vote. A few minutes later, and the night shift workers drifted down to the front doors, inhaled the night air, and dispersed to the bus stops and parking lots.

Guess what -- it was all kids. Three fourths of the people I saw leave the building were under 20. And most of them, like Melodie, had a distinctively unRepublican look about them. In little bits and ways, they were style revolutionaries -- punky or punk-like or punk-lite. Dyed heads, leather and spikes, lots of Goodwill attire. One non-military-looking lad wore an antique military jacket, Sgt. Pepper-style.

Melodie, 15, was wearing, near as I dared look, a sweeping, second-hand, scarlet, strapless ballroom gown with long white gloves. It perfectly matched her pierced eyebrows and bald-growing-out head. Melodie's not a punk, she just likes dressing up.

"Whoa, thanks for the ride!" she said gratefully, after embracing Daniele, in her customary, cheerfully loud voice. She slid into the back seat, where our dog promptly mauled her in greeting. “Beau, you dumb dog, get off me!" she cried, but to no avail. The dog stayed on her.

"So how was the shift?" I asked as I drove, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

She stuck her tongue out in a defeated way. "I can’t talk," she said through her tongue. "I never can talk after a shift." She said she made 1,114 calls in six hours.

"What do you do in there? Ask for money?"

"Sometimes. There are different scripts. Some nights you ask for money. Sometimes you try to persuade people about something. Tonight I did an issues poll. Takes about three minutes."

The dog settled in beside her and yawned.

"You do any of that push polling there?" I asked.

"I don’t think so," she said, unwrapping a stick of gum. "I don’t know what that is."

"So -- what's it like?"

"It's weird. You call and you talk to a little kid, or someone who doesn’t speak English. Sometimes you get an adult, but there's something wrong with them. Millions of numbers are wrong or disconnected. Calls that go, like, according to plan are kind of unusual."

"Do people ever get mad?"

"Yeah. But they seem to sort of get off on it, if you know what I mean."

"Sure. How do you feel when they get mad?"

She shrugged. "I don’t know."

"Do you feel like you're a good salesman for Republican values?"

She shrugged again. "No one takes it seriously. One guy tonight, asking for money, talked all night in a singsong way, like he was crazy. But he did great."

"So, do you like working there?"

Melodie stared out the window, and the light from a service station sign tinted her face green. "You feel like you can’t think after a while. The money's good, though. Where can a kid get a job paying $8.50 an hour? And you can dress the way you like. No one cares" She tugged on one of her elbow-length gloves.

"So, are you a Republican?"

She grimaced. "Get real!"

"A Democrat then?"

She grimaced identically. One was as ridiculous as the other.

"Why don’t they hire people who look like Republicans and think like Republicans to make calls?"

She looked at me and looked at her dress. Then I got it -- she dressed up in country club attire, circa 1955, to call Republicans. That was her statement.

What an odd situation, I thought. In a boom economy, the Republican Party has to recruit underage punk rockers at high wages to call people and complain about what the world's coming to.

"So, Melodie," I asked her, "Do the people you call think the opinions you express are your own?"

She rolled down the window, flipped her wad of gum out, and frowned. "I certainly hope not."