A Woman First: First Woman by Selina Meyer

Author:Selina Meyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2019-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

One of the worst aspects of elective office is the “elective” part. You have to run for the godd-mn things, which means you either have to dislodge an incumbent, which is next to impossible, or find an open seat and win it, which, though slightly easier, is still extremly hard. You have to raise money; you have to hire people and recruit volunteers; you have to meet the disgusting voters and talk to some of them; and you have to get the support of the party establishment. Everybody wants something from you, whether it’s influence, loyalty, or just some of your time, and believe me, if you do get elected, they will not be shy about coming to claim it. Still, I knew that the Senate was better than the House, and I didn’t really feel like returning to private life just yet. I mean, sometimes I did, but I’ve always been moody and whimsical, and the important thing is that I know that about myself.

As luck would have it, at just about the same time as my “get me the f-ck out of here” panic attacks about being stuck in the Hellhole of Representatives were becoming unbearably acute, the senior senator from Maryland, Bobby Esposito, was shot to death by his wife after he had attempted to blame a corruption scandal involving kickbacks for federal infrastructure construction grants on her, and also f-cked her sister. That left an open seat with just a short time to go before Election Day.

I waited a decent interval to allow the party elders time to come to me and ask me to run, and when they did not, I went to them. I pride myself on a particularly acute sense of emotional intelligence, and from their restless milling around and early departure, I could tell that they were less than enthusiastic about my candidacy. I understood their hesitancy, I really did. I had been in the House for a little over three years and, because of lingering sexism, had not made much of a mark.

Nevertheless, despite not having their blessing, I went ahead and took all the steps necessary to run, eventually announcing my candidacy at the Glory Hole, a Western saloon-themed bar in Bethesda whose owner had taken a shine to me and had guaranteed me a full house by offering two-for-one backbar shots. The optics were pretty good, at least until things got utterly out of hand, and the subsequent press coverage of the wave of disorderly conduct arrests that followed kept me in the news and the public eye. At least twenty others threw their hats in the ring, which also helped, and when the dust had settled on Election Night, I had beaten the party’s annointed candidate, a lifelong public servant with an extremely lackluster personality, by a handful of votes and won the election with the smallest number of votes in Senate history. Still, I was making history, and that’s what is important.

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