Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt-Chapter 41 - 34: Wrestling in the Mud Pit

In the Pittsburgh South District, a brand-new sign was hung in front of a row of simple, prefabricated buildings made from converted white shipping containers.

"Pittsburgh City Revitalization Committee Field Office."

This was Leo Wallace’s current headquarters.

He had moved his desk directly to the front lines of the construction project.

Every day, he wore mud-stained work clothes and ate cheap boxed lunches with the workers on-site.

He personally supervised the paving of every road and inspected the quality of the pipe repairs in every apartment building.

With all political obstacles cleared, the "Pittsburgh Revival One" initiative was advancing at an astonishing pace.

Over the past two months, the community’s appearance had been completely transformed.

Pothole-ridden roads were repaved with smooth asphalt.

An overgrown park was transformed into a community center with a brand-new basketball court and children’s play area.

The exterior walls of old apartment buildings were painted in bright colors.

More importantly, hundreds of steelworkers in the community, who had been unemployed for years, had found work again.

They were earning wages no less than the Union standard and rebuilding their own community with their own hands.

The name Leo Wallace had become incredibly prestigious among the working class of Pittsburgh.

He was no longer just the young man who posted videos online; he was a doer, someone who could bring about real, tangible change for the people.

One sunny afternoon, Leo was on the construction site discussing the next phase of the work plan with the project supervisor.

His phone rang. It was Congressman John Murphy himself.

The man’s tone was filled with anxiety.

"Leo, we’ve got trouble," Murphy said, getting straight to the point.

"The latest polls for the party primary are out. My support and that of that damn radical kid, Alex Cortes, are within the margin of error. He could overtake me at any moment."

Alex Cortes.

The young challenger backed by the American Democratic Socialists.

Over the past month, he had used his immense online influence to launch a ferocious assault on Murphy.

He painted Murphy as a representative of the Establishment Faction, out of touch with the people, who had spent twenty years in the Washington swamp and long ago sold out to special interest groups.

"And the damnest thing is," Murphy’s voice was filled with rage, "he’s calling the two and a half million US Dollars in federal funds I fought so hard to get for you ’irrelevant breadcrumbs.’"

"He says Pittsburgh needs a complete revolution, not to live off handouts from the old men in Washington."

"That bastard is using my own achievements to attack me!"

"Leo, you have to honor your promise, now! I need you and your ’Pittsburgh Heart’ to endorse me and campaign for me, right away! I cannot lose this primary!"

Leo hung up, his brow tightly furrowed.

His ally’s dire polling numbers were only the first of his problems.

The other problem came from City Hall.

Mayor Carter Wright, after his initial defeat, had begun to attack Leo from a different angle.

He couldn’t stop Leo from spending the money, but he could create obstacles to how he spent it.

Over the past few weeks, Leo’s project sites had started to face frequent "routine inspections" from various city departments.

An inspector from the city fire department would issue a stop-work order because a single fire extinguisher on the site wasn’t placed according to the latest regulations.

An official from the city’s environmental protection agency would levy a hefty fine because dust control measures at the site were "insufficient."

A bureaucrat from the city’s building permit office would delay issuing the permit for the next phase of construction, citing the need for "new supplementary technical materials."

Each of these inspections was cloaked in the guise of "legality and compliance."

But Leo knew very well this was all Carter Wright pulling strings behind the scenes.

He was trying to pull the rug out from under Leo, to slow his project’s progress, drain his funds and energy, and prevent him from achieving any more impressive results before the primary.

For the first time, Leo felt the immense pressure of fighting a war on two fronts.

A call for help from his ally on one side, and continuous harassment from his enemy on the other.

That evening, Leo called a meeting with his core team in his simple, prefabricated office.

Sarah, Frank, and Margaret.

"That’s the situation," Leo said, relaying the two pieces of bad news. "We have to fight on two fronts simultaneously."

Sarah was the first to offer her suggestion.

"We should immediately produce a new video to directly counter Cortes’s narrative. We need to tell the people of Pittsburgh that this two and a half million US Dollars isn’t breadcrumbs, but the fruit of our fight. At the same time, we need to clearly express our support for Representative Murphy."

Frank, on the other hand, proposed a ground-game strategy.

"I don’t know anything about media stuff, I just know how to get out the vote," Frank said. "Starting tomorrow, I’ll mobilize all my Union brothers to go door-to-door in Murphy’s district, knocking on doors and handing out flyers. We have to protect our congressman."

Leo listened to their suggestions and, in his mind, relayed the battle plan to Roosevelt.

He had expected Roosevelt’s approval, but what he received from his mentor was a splash of cold water.