clear to the Judge, perhaps as good a judge of political talent as anyone, that McCormick was a very skilled fish in the small Minnesota political pond. He needed a bigger body of water to play in and the Judge was only too happy to provide it when he coaxed Thomson into running for president.
Shelby was working for the governor when the Judge started coaxing Thomson to run. Thomson spoke highly of her and the Judge quickly came to agree with the governor’s assessment. Despite a lack of political experience on the national stage, he made her a deputy campaign manager working under McCormick. The Judge had come to learn that “under McCormick” meant something else the last few months, but he didn’t mind. The two of them together created an impressive political machine. If McCormick was the Judge’s right-hand man, Shelby was clearly number three in the campaign hierarchy.
However, it wasn’t just James Thomson that brought the Judge and McCormick together. A mutual friend also played a role in that merger. McCormick went to college at Virginia with a bright young woman named Dara Wire. The two briefly dated but in the end they became good friends with interests in politics and the law. While McCormick went to law school and then into politics, Wire was induced to skip law school as she was recruited into the FBI. In the FBI, as a very young agent, she caught the eye of Judge Dixon while he finished his time as attorney general. At a young age, Wire went undercover with the bureau working against organized crime along the east coast. It was work that led to her needing the help of McCormick and the Judge years later. It was that help that now led to her service to the Thomson presidential campaign. A topic the Judge was now discussing with her.
Wire called the Judge in the morning about what she witnessed in Kentucky. His radar immediately went off when told the details, particularly the shots fired. There was something going on at that meeting, something related to the election and something Heath Connolly couldn’t allow to get into the open. Ever since the campaign finance scandal two months ago, the Judge had worried that Connolly would go even blacker in trying to win the election. Kentucky made him worry he was right.
“Did you track down the rental car?” the Judge asked.
“Yeah, your Justice Department guy helped me out—car was rented to a Jason Stroudt of Alexandria, Virginia. Does his name ring a bell?”
The Judge leaned back in his chair and looked to the ceiling. After a minute, he said, “Kinda. It’s a name I know I’ve heard before for some reason.”
“I figured you might have. Stroudt, along with Adam Montgomery run …”
The Judge snapped his fingers: “… The Congressional Page. I know Montgomery’s name. He’s a writer for some of the political publications that interest the ‘inside the beltway crowd.’ I guess Stroudt probably does some of that as well, but I’ve heard of Montgomery more. They probably run the blog as another form of business.”
“Looks like it,” Wire answered, “at least based on my research today.”
“Montgomery, he’s had some articles show up on RealClearPolitics from time to time, lately commentary on campaign finance, Citizens United and Super PACs. Historically, the blog tended to mostly cover congressional issues, the progress of bills in the House and Senate, committee issues, real inside baseball kind of stuff with a focus on good government. They tend to lean a little right politically, David Brooks Republicans as opposed to the Tea Party types. I’ve seen Montgomery interviewed a few times on C-SPAN. He’s not a real dynamic personality. He’s more or less a grinder who works Capitol Hill.”
“If you say so, Judge,” Wire replied. “The blog page is down today. I haven’t been able to pull it up and I’ve gone back to it several times. No go. Calls to their offices are just rolling to voice mail, nobody is picking up. So I did some further Internet research on them. I noted the inside politics stuff as, well, pretty bland, I could use it to cure my insomnia.” She flipped through her notes. “However, if you go back far enough, they appear to have another pet issue.”
“Which is?”
“Voter and election fraud.” Wire handed over copies of the articles printed off the web.
“Voter suppression and voter ID issues?” the Judge inquired.
“No, more like actual fraud in elections,” Wire answered, handing printouts of the articles