Foiled, Again and Again

My back-up plan for the candidate profile was to cover someone in the next City Council district over from Hunts Point. Turns out she was running unopposed in the Democratic primary (and, since Democrats outnumber Republicans five to one in the city, that's the equivalent of running unopposed overall). Still, she had a compelling story -- she was a single teenage mother who put herself through school, became a certified nursing assistant and then a union organizer, and was elected to citywide office at age 31. Pretty cool-sounding, huh?

Let's just say I got nowhere fast.

After a couple of unreturned calls, I finally reached her very protective campaign manager and found out that the J-school was a collective persona non grata among Bronx politicians these days. It seems that a student in last year's class wrote her master's project on Puerto Rican politicians in the Bronx and quoted one of them as saying something that could be -- and ultimately was -- construed to be anti-Semitic. The student sent the story to someone at a local Bronx publication, and he printed a blistering editorial that was picked up by the local tabloids. Did I mention that this is an election year? So, not surprisingly, lots of people were up in arms, denouncing the guy, demanding an apology, and on and on. This all happened maybe 10 days ago.

So, the campaign manager wasn't exactly eager to give me access to his candidate, despite my assurances that I was just looking to do a basic profile and that I thought she had a pretty good story to tell. He even asked me for a list of questions I was planning to ask her. (We were warned about this.) In the end, I told him that I much preferred to have her cooperation but that I'd do the assignment without it if need be. Eventually, he said he'd "reach out" to the candidate and get back to me.

Well, he didn't. (You're shocked, I know.)

Being a savvy journalist for three whole weeks at this point, I decided to try an end-run. I took the train up to the Bronx and went straight to the candidate's campaign office, where I was completely thwarted by a 22-if-she's-a-day-year-old scheduler, who wouldn't even talk to me without the campain manager's permission. (She's the one who referred me to him in the first place.) So I sat in the office for a solid hour, taking absurdly detailed notes on the decor and hoping that something would happen.

It didn't.

I finally left (half convinced that the candidate would show up from her hiding place around the corner as soon as I was safely out of sight) and tried another end-run. This time, I went to the nursing home where the candidate used to work to see if any of her former colleagues would give me the time of day. I made fast friends with the two security guards, one of whom called around to find someone for me to talk to. And lo and behold, he found me an actual source who agreed to be interviewed over coffee (my treat) the next afternoon. Hooray!

So I'm on my way over to the library (free internet access), feeling slightly less desperate, when my cell phone rings, and it turns out to be the candidate herself. Someone from the nursing home must have called her directly, because she said something like, "I hear that you've been to talking to some of my former co-workers." I had been there less than an hour before.

Was I freaked out? Damn straight. But I tried to sound like the cool professional I aspire to be, and I explained that talking to former co-workers was standard practice in profile-writing (it is, right?) and that I didn't really have a choice since I hadn't been able to arrange an interview with her. She reiterated her wariness to talk to a J-schooler in light of recent events. I reiterated what I was (and wasn't) after. And, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, she agreed to have her scheduler set up an interview.

I tried really, really hard not to gloat when I called the scheduler to make the arrangements.