The Personality of a Politician

 

I don't think you have to be crazy to be a politician, but a little screwball logic can solidify your base. On the other hand you don't want voters suspecting you might be completely loony. And navigating a path between those two alternatives can be tricky at times.

For example, in the 1980's a 5'1” tall combative obsessive/compulsive fire cracker named Ruthann Aron (above) dreamed big dreams.  Always big. She earned advanced degrees in both microbiology from Cornel and a law degree.  A college boyfriend remembered, "If she was angry, you knew it... There was nothing left to the imagination."  

Ruthann was even admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court - although she never did. Instead she took a quicker route to wealth, earning millions by developing shopping centers. She didn't make a lot of friends, of course. Just a lot of money.

Her urologist husband Barry (above), the father of her two children,  admitted at the time, “She gets in people’s faces in a very straightforward way and doesn’t tap dance too much.”  

But Ruthann's story really begins in the “Washington, D.C.” adjacent enclave of Montgomery county, Maryland (above), one of the richest and best educated counties in America. Everybody here, it seems came from some place else – the county was even named for a Revolutionary War hero who never set foot in the state. This is one of those big ponds where little fish either get eaten or grow big  And in 1994 it had not voted for a Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan retired. 

As Barry Rascovar noted for the Washington Post in mid-August of 1994, “...the last time there was a truly contested GOP Senate primary was in the early 1960s.”  It was here that our diminutive mother of two faced her first public test when, after just two years on the County Planning Board, Ruthann Aron decided to run for the United States Senate. She was a pro-choice member of the John Birch Society, who boasted, "I'm not a career politician. I'm a businesswoman."

It was a clever move. The dysfunctional Maryland G.O.P had little hope of beating the popular Democrat, Paul Sarbanes (above) who had held the Senate seat since 1976 and seemed a shoe-in for re-election. Even if she lost the primary, Ruthann could still lay a foundation for a future in politics.

The only drawback was that there were seven candidates vying for the Republican nomination, so Ruthann decided to stand out, by attacking her best known fellow Republican opponent, the  multimillionaire candy heir, ex-Senator from Tennessee, and ex-GOP Chairman, the handsome Bill Brock III.

Ruthann spent nearly a quarter of a million of her own dollars buying radio ads, in which two “hillbillies” laughed about the way Maryland voters were being fooled by the “tax-raising, carpetbagging, career politician”, Senator Brock (above).   The ex-Senator chose to not even mention Ruthann in his few radio ads. No since giving the little lady free publicity. 

Then, a poll released on Labor Day weekend found Brock leading, as expected, but with just 23% of the vote. And in second place and well within the margin of error for a tie was Ruthann, at 20%.

With just two weeks to go before the primary, Brock decided he could no longer ignore the tiny upstart, and called an afternoon press conference for Thursday, 8 September, 1994, on the Rockville courthouse square (above). His stated intention was to attack his female opponent. That was sure to draw the media.

As the Baltimore Sun noted, “The minutes preceding yesterday's news conference had the feel of a mock thriller....About 2 p.m. the (Ruthann) Aron camp entered...About 10 minutes later, Mr. Brock arrived with his contingent of sign-wavers.” 

Neither Senator Block (above), nor his supporters had expected Ruthann to make an appearance. The Washington Post observed, “As reporters and photographers soaked up the awkward silence, the two camps stared mutely, and the whirring of (film) cameras was all that was heard.”

With the "little lady" just a few feet away, Senator Block decided to tone down his attacks, but retired Congresswoman Marjorie Holt (above), fired the shot across Ruthann's bow, describing, “...the aura of fraud and breach of contract that constantly surrounds the other candidate.”  After that,  the press conference devolved into two competing impromptu verbal slug fests,  during which Brock built on Holt's charge. According to the Post, Brock said, “She has been convicted by a jury of fraud, more than once," 

The reporters were having a ball,  bouncing "between the two candidates like pin balls.” Brock backed up the theatrical press conference with $220,000 in new radio ads, 800 ads in just 5 days, claiming that Ruthann had been convicted of fraud “more than once”, and had to pay “hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines”. Said his narrator in the ad, "Before Ruthann Aron starts attacking anybody, maybe she ought to look in the mirror.”

On Tuesday, 13 September, Ruthann lost the primary by 50,000 votes. Even worse, a poll released just before the election showed that rather than laying a foundation for her future, her campaign style had raised her negatives within the Republican Party to 16%.  Her reputation was not even helped when Block was easily beaten by the Democrat Sarbanes in the November general election. So, finding herself in a hole, Ruthann decided to keep digging.  She sued Brock for defamation of character. No politician had ever done that before.  I wonder why?

It took over a year for what the Baltimore Sun called Ruthann's “frivolous lawsuit” to work its way to trial, which it did in early 1996. “Jurors have been schooled”, wrote the Sun, “in subliminal suggestion...the role of Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky in an effective campaign commercial....harked to the tonal difference between a major chord and a slamming jail door, listened again and again to the definition of "Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment" (Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican) and been told that staff members look at members of Congress the way undertakers look at corpses.”

Chief witness for Brock was Arthur G. Kahn (above), a lawyer in a 1984 suit against Ruthann's real estate company, Research Incorporated. And he compared Ruthann to an octopus. When it was attacked, he said, "... it emits a dark fluid, a black fluid,  and it escapes in the darkness and muddies the waters." More specifically, Kahn testified that Ruthann had betrayed investors in one of her shopping malls. 

The mall had never been built, because Ruthann sold the rights to the project to a third party for $200,000. And kept that money. The jury decided she  had violated her agreement with the investors and awarded them $175,000, which Ruthann paid only after Arthur Kahn agreed to request the judge wipe the verdict from the record.  Which the judge had done.  

It had been a civil suit. Ruthann had lost it, but there had been no conviction, and the civil verdict had been wiped away, so technically what Senator Brock had said at the press conference had been a lie. But ...

....this new jury decided that was splitting hairs, and, besides, my bet is they just did not like Ruthann very much. Who did? Her own father, who had died during her campaign,  had written Ruthann out of his will. "I specifically and unequivocably leave absolutely nothing for my daughter...and direct my executor to reject any claim that she may make..."

The new jury found for Brock. Ruthann's claims were denied. That made two defeats in one election. Now she was really, double-dog-done in politics And that should have been the end of Ruthann's political dreams,  unless she had thrown herself into charity work or earned a Nobel Peace Prize or saved a sinking sack of kittens. Instead she switched to the Democratic Party and raised the curtain on Ruthann, act two. 

On Saturday, 7 June, 1997, Ruthann Aron was arrested for hiring a hit man to murder her old nemesis,  Arthur Kahn. And, as an afterthought, her own husband Doctor Barry Aron, who had finally asked for a divorce. 

The little lady had walked into the lobby of a Marriott Hotel, disguised in a trench coat, a wig, a floppy hat,  dark glasses and carrying the $500 down payment  to pay for a double murder. She must have looked like a munchkin spy. On tape she spelled out the names of her intended victims. "B like in boy, A-R-R-Y", she was heard saying.  The hitman/cop asked if Ruthann wanted her husband's death to look like a suicide.  Ruthann replied, "If it would pass muster".  It was an open and shut case. Mostly shut.

Ruthann insisted at both of her trials (the first jury hung, 11-1 for conviction) that she was crazy. Nine doctors argued she had a borderline personality disorder, had suffered a brain injury as a child, had 

been molested by her father.  But explaining her vindictive personality did  not justify her maniacal approach to politics and interpersonal relationships.  Let's just say she was nuts and let it go at that.

All 12 members of the second jury found Ruthann guilty of all counts. At her sentencing Ruthann's lawyer pointed out what her brief career in politics had cost the little lady. "She's lost her credibility, her reputation, her family as she knew it, her dignity, her lifestyle, her husband, almost everything she had”, he said.  She still got three years in jail,  with a suspended sentence of ten more years hanging over her head. Barry the urologist not only filed for divorce, he sued Ruthann for $7.5 million. So she counter-sued him for $24 million. Some people never learn. 

After she got out of jail in 2001, Ruth Ann moved to Florida, and changed her last name to Green.  And then she wrote her autobiography, in which she blamed everything on Barry. She called her self-published book, “Corrupted Justice: A Killer Husband,”   The jury didn't buy it, why should anybody else? 

And that is the end of the sad story of Ruthann  Aron-Green, She is still worth between $1 and $5 million. Her son died in the World Trade Center attack on 9/11.  Her daughter no longer speaks to her. The lesson from our little tale of this little lady is that if you sleep with a politician, you may or may not find love, but you will defiantly get screwed. Those people are nuts.

- 30- 

BATTLE OF THANKSGIVING

 

I should begin by pointing out that American Thanksgiving is mostly one myth piled upon another. The truth is our Puritan forefathers were a humorless bunch who outlawed Christmas and showed their devotion to God by going hungry, not by eating.  And the only feasts they had were in the late  summer, when food was plentiful. By late November they were already deep into their grain stores, and watery stew.  These Protestant pessimists would only say thanks if they were staving to death!

The real mother of Thanksgiving was actually a widow who wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and other innocent poems, Sarah Hale.  She was the 19th century version of Martha Stewart. For forty years Sarah was the editor of the prestigious “Godey’s Lady’s Book” magazine. And each November Sarah would bombard her 150,000 subscribers with recipes for Roast Turkey, Turkey stuffing, Turkey gravy, and Turkey stew. Now a lot of selling and some kitchen chemistry were required because 19th century turkeys were scrawny and almost exclusively dark meat. Sarah championed the turkey because her middle class homemakers were on tight budgets, and per pound the randy, strutting bird-brain turkey cost less than half what a chicken might.

But the real revolution came when, in 1934, the United States Department of Agriculture discovered the key to making turkeys palatable; artificial insemination.  In 1932, before the breeding revolution, the average American ate just two pounds of turkey a year. Today, that amount is closer to twenty pounds. Turkey farmers across America, are very thankful for that big government intervention. So are most turkey eaters, although they don't seem to know it.

But the increased popularity of turkey has come at a price - no sex for the turkey.  Today’s buxom white breasted Tom Turkey is too obese to climb atop an equally buxom white breasted hen. Without human intervention, the Thanksgiving turkey would have have gone extinct - Ah, ceste se la guerre. But this brings us to my real topic, which is the year when Thanksgiving became a political de la guerre; 1939

It was the third year of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second term as president. And Republicans were determined (read terrified) that he might want to seek a third term. However they were not in a good position to prevent it, holding only 177 seats in the House of Representatives (to 252 Democrats) and a paltry 23 seats in the Senate (to 69 Democrats). But then in August, Roosevelt handed Republicans an early Christmas present.

In July Franklin had received a visit from Fred Lazarus (above), head of the Federated Department Stores, at the time the single biggest retail chain by volume in America. He controlled Macy’s and Bloomingdales department stores in New York City, Filenes in Boston, and Strauss in Brooklyn. 

Fred pointed out to the President that in 1939, November would have five Thursdays; the second, the ninth, the sixteenth, the twenty-third and the thirtieth. And Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation calling for a day of Thanksgiving -  first issued after the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and re-issued by Presidents every year since - specifically designated Thanksgiving as the final Thursday in November. That final Thursday would be, in the case of 1939,  the 30th . The previous time Thanksgiving had fallen on the fifth Thursday in November had been 1933. 

That year the Christmas shopping season, which traditionally began the day after Thanksgiving, was just 20 shopping days long, and had proven disastrous for retailers. Of course, the Great Depression had also bottomed out that year, but retail business folks are like farmers, who always worry about the rain. Is it too little or too much? Too late or too early? And in 1933 had the shopping season been to short late to save the economy?  Anyway, Lazarus, and lobbyists from the National Retail Dry Goods Association, as well as executives from Gimbels and Lord & Taylor,  wanted Roosevelt to move Turkey Day back one week, to give merchants another week to tempt customers into spending.

Being a life long politician, Roosevelt listened to the business community. And at a Press Conference held on Monday, 14 August,   he made a little speech.  “I have been hearing from a great many people", he began, "complaints that Thanksgiving came too close to Christmas”. 

Roosevelt reminded the press corps that Thanksgiving was still not an official holiday, and that each year the President picked the date for it.  And, since business "experts" believed that adding another week to the shopping season would increase sales by 10%,  Franklin announced that this year of 1939,  he was moving Thanksgiving to Thursday,  November 23rd., the fourth Thursday in November. Not the last Thursday.

The first alarm went off  the very next day, when Fred Lazarus ran into his younger brother. Simon Lazarus was ranting over the change because it had disrupted his Ohio State Universities’ Thanksgiving day football game. “What damn fool got the president to do this?” Simon barked at his brother, who, in fact, was the damn fool himself. But that was just the beginning.

The Republican attorney general for Oregon, turned to poetry. “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; All the rest have thirty-one; Until we hear from Washington.”  A shopkeeper in Kokomo, Indiana preferred to protest in prose. He put up a sign in his shop window which read, “Do your shopping early. Who knows, tomorrow may be Christmas.” 

Republican Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire urged the President to simply abolish winter by fiat. And Methodist minister Norman Vincent Peal got very outraged, charging it was  “…contrary to the meaning of Thanksgiving for the president of this great nation to tinker with the sacred religious day with the specious excuse that it will help Christmas sales. The next thing we may expect Christmas to be shifted to May 1st to help the New York World’s Fair of 1940.”  Did anybody point out to Norman, that the bible never mentioned which Thursday Thanksgiving should fall on?  If they did, it seems Norman was not paying attention.

Twenty-three governors went with the President’s switch, and twenty-two did not. 

Texas and Colorado couldn’t make up their minds and neither could Mississippi. They all recognized both days as the holiday in question, although the Republican Governor of Colorado, Ralph Carr, announced he would eat no turkey on the 23rd. 

The 30th was labeled as the Republican Thanksgiving, while the 23rd became the Democratic Thanksgiving, or, as "Nucky" Johnson, the recently indicted Republican mayor of Atlantic City called Franklin Roosevelt’s holiday, “Franksgiving”.

There were a few real problems hidden under this haze of invented political outrage. Calendars could not be changed in time for the 1939 switch over. And schools were suddenly uncertain of vacation schedules. Some families found their bosses forced their holiday dinners to be split between the two dates. But it turned out that the real problem had been identified by Simon Lazarus, the angry brother - American football.

The headline in the New York Times said it all; “PRESIDENT SHOCKS FOOTBALL COACHES” The coach of Little Ouachita college in Arkansas warned, “We'll vote the Republican ticket if he interferes with our football.'” Chairman of the Athletic Board at New York University wrote to Roosevelt, “…it has become necessary to frame football schedules three to five years in advance, and for both 1939 and 1940 we had arranged to play our annual football game with Fordham on Thanksgiving Day…” And then Roosevelt had changed the date!

A Gallup poll found that 62% of Americans wanted the President’s decision reversed. But it was too late for Roosevelt to change his mind in 1939. And FDR was too stubborn to admit defeat in November 1940, which also had five Thursdays, and was a Presidential election year. 

Despite the addition of even more politics into the mix, in 1940 nine states switched from the Republican Thanksgiving (the fifth Thursday) to the Democratic one (the fourth Thursday). 

That left just sixteen celebrating the “old” Thanksgiving. And that seems to have been enough of a victory for Roosevelt, that looking ahead to November 1941 (which surprisingly also had five Thursdays), he asked New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to study the sales figures. Was that extra week of shopping really helping the economy? In fact it had, but not very much; certainly not enough, considering all the angst and confusion the move had cost.

In early May of 1941, LaGuardia’s report informed the White House that “the early Thanksgiving date has not proved worthwhile".  So on  20 May 1941, Roosevelt set Thanksgiving 1941 back to the last Thursday in November. And in a rational world, that would have settled that. But, of course, politicians are not rational beings, anymore than the people who vote for them.

Being lawmakers the politicians in the House of Representatives decided to get involved by writing a law. House joint resolution 41 justified itself by pointing out that there was nothing to designate the day as a holiday except the annual President's Proclamation (which Roosevelt had mentioned at the start of this mess!). Henceforth, said the Representatives, the last Thursday in November would legally be Thanksgiving.  But when HR 41 got to the Senate, those gentlemen felt compelled to improve upon the fix.  

They did this by changing one little word. Thanksgiving would now be not the last Thursday in November as the House had intended, but the fourth Thursday in November, as Fred Lazarus had wanted.  As Connecticut Senator John A. Danaher pointed out, in four out of five years, the last Thursday in November was the fourth Thursday in November, anyway. The House went along and Roosevelt signed the new law into effect on 26 December, 1941. And amazingly, since that date, the Republicans had been determined not to notice that Roosevelt and the merchants had won.

Money always wins political arguments. And most moral arguments, too.  And the great political storm of 1939 - 1940 seems quaint and gentle, in a world where the Christmas shopping season begins shortly after Halloween!

- 30-