Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt

Chapter 295 - 147: Declaration of Independence

Leo picked up the coffee cup in front of him and took a sip.

"Are you finished?"

He stood up, rounded the long table, and walked over to Ron Smith. He pulled up a chair and sat opposite Smith, their knees almost touching.

"Ron," Leo began. "You just mentioned Senator Warren and your Republican voters. You’re worried that if you work with me, they’ll think you’ve betrayed your principles."

Smith didn’t deny it.

"But I want you to think back," Leo said, staring at Smith’s wrinkled face. "When the Erie Machine Tool Factory announced its layoff plan, how many people were gathered outside your office? Five hundred? A thousand?"

The corner of Smith’s eye twitched.

"Those workers were holding signs, shouting slogans. They were asking you for jobs, asking you to put food on their tables. Back then, did a single one of them ask you, Mr. Mayor, if you were a Republican or a Democrat?"

"Did any of them say, ’Because you’re a Republican, we’re willing to go hungry’?"

Leo turned his head, his gaze sweeping over every mayor present.

"Gentlemen, we all live in the real world."

"In this world, a pothole in the asphalt has no party affiliation. It doesn’t flatten out because a Republican drives over it, nor does it get deeper for a Democrat. When a sewer gets clogged, the filth that backs up doesn’t distinguish between voters’ political leanings."

"When a worker loses his job, when he can’t pay his rent, when he looks at his child’s lunchbox and sees only two slices of dry bread, he doesn’t care if the person sitting in Washington or Harrisburg is an elephant or a donkey."

"He only cares about one thing: who can give him a paycheck."

Leo looked back at Smith.

"Senator Warren is indeed powerful. He pontificates in Washington, he defends traditional values on television. But can he give you orders? Can he buy the thousands of tons of steel piling up in your warehouses? Can he get that machine tool factory of yours, the one on the brink of collapse, back up and running?"

"He can’t."

Leo answered his own question.

"He’ll just tell you it’s the law of the market, a necessary sacrifice. He’ll tell you to endure, to appease those angry voters for the sake of the so-called bigger picture."

"But I can."

Leo pointed to his own chest.

"I have five hundred million US Dollars in hand. I have a revitalization plan, I have the Inland Port project, and I have massive demand. I can buy your steel, I can hire your workers, and I can get your city working again."

"Ron, your constituents elected you Mayor to fix their roads and find them jobs, not to be a loyal soldier in a partisan war."

"If you go back with a ten-million-dollar order, if you tell them the factory doesn’t have to close... do you think they’ll refuse it because the money comes from a project led by a Democratic Mayor? Or will they see you as the hero who saved the city?"

Smith was silent.

Leo then turned to Byers.

"Joe, you’re worried about the State Attorney General prosecuting you?"

"Have you worried about the fact that Scranton’s budget deficit has already hit the warning line this year?"

"If you don’t get the tax revenue from this order, you won’t be able to make police payroll next month."

"When that happens, you won’t need the Attorney General to take you down. Public safety in your city will collapse, and you’ll go down in history as Scranton’s most incompetent mayor."

Leo stood up and walked back to the map.

His shadow fell across the map of Pennsylvania, like a hawk with its wings spread.

"You’re also worried about Washington’s reaction, worried they’ll cut off transfer payments."

Leo sneered.

"Gentlemen, open your eyes and look around. Washington forgot about us long ago. In the eyes of those elites, the Rust Belt is just a burden, a bottomless pit that only knows how to hold its hand out for money."

"They won’t give us more money willingly. If we want resources, we have to go out and take them for ourselves."

"John Murphy is running for Senator."

Leo threw down a heavyweight bargaining chip.

"He’s not just my ally; he’ll be this alliance’s representative in Washington. If this alliance comes together, if all of us here can join forces and send Murphy to the Senate..."

"...then we will have our own voice in Washington."

"We’ll no longer be lambs to the slaughter."

"Murphy will fight for more federal projects for this alliance, for more favorable policies. Because this is his base. This is the source of his power."

The atmosphere in the conference room began to shift subtly.

The temptation of personal gain, the pressure of survival, and the gamble on the future—a war was raging in each of their minds.

But it wasn’t enough.

Leo knew these men were wily old dogs. They were used to waiting and seeing, used to sitting on the fence.

If he didn’t back them into a corner, they would never place their bets.

"Of course."

Leo reached out and jabbed a finger hard on the western side of the map, right on the border between Pennsylvania and Ohio.

"I also understand your difficult position. After all, party discipline is strict, and the pressure from the State Government is immense. If you truly feel the risk is too high, that you don’t dare join this alliance, I completely understand."

Leo turned to face them, a look of regret on his face.

"But, the work in Pittsburgh can’t stop. My money has to be spent, and my roads have to be built."

"Since my brother cities here in our own state don’t want to take the contract, I guess I’ll just have to find friends elsewhere."