Coming Out

Chapter 1-2

Michael opened the door, getting out of the car, then embraced Brett.

“Well you’re going to be doing a lot less of that and spending a lot more time in Lincoln after tonight, buddy!”

Ethan rolled his eyes as he got out of the car, “I’m going to get some cake. You said there’d be cake here, right?”

“And we’re coming with you!” Michael jawed at him, pulling Brett alongside him as they made their way to the front door.

Michael followed Ethan right into the building, and the room erupted in applause. Michael naturally lifted his right hand up into a wave as he walked in, flashing a huge, effortless smile. He soaked in the room, all friends, family, business acquaintances, even a few faces he didn’t know. All there for him: all there to support him in pushing for his vision in Nebraska. In the corner of the room, he saw a woman with a black and white polka dot dress, and he made his way straight to her, taking her in his arms in a tender, excited embrace.

“It took you long enough,” Jane said, “I don’t know a damn person here. Now look over there,” she added, pointing towards the bar.

Michael turned his head away from her, looking in the direction she pointed. Simultaneously, his eyes were blinded by a camera with a flash that was much too bright for the dimly-lit steakhouse, and his left cheek felt her familiar lips planted firmly upon it. She did always have a flair for the theatrical.

“No results in yet, sir,” Dane said with excitement and a slight quiver in his voice, “but turnout has been very good in our precincts. Downtown was three times over primary turnout numbers.”

Michael put his right hand on Dane’s shoulder.

“Dane,” he said with an exasperated smile on his face, “we’ve been knocking doors and talking field strategy for six months now. Just call me ‘Mike!’”

Dane’s face turned red as he let out a nervous laugh.

“Alright Michael,” he replied.

From behind Dane came Glenn, holding a tall cocktail glass that clearly was not his first.

“Haaappy birthdaaay, Mr. Senator…” Glenn sang, greeting Michael.

Michael would have thought it was the alcohol turning Glenn into Marilyn Monroe if he didn’t know him so well. He was pretty sure Glenn had made the same joke when he had been elected student body president at the University of Nebraska.

“Come over here, Glenny!” Michael said, wrapping his arms as far as he could around Glenn’s large frame.

Glenn then pulled Michael away from Jane and Dane, and his face dropped, his tone becoming serious.

“You know I’m f*****g proud of you, Michael.”

Michael’s grin dropped to a slight smile, and he looked up at Glenn.

“Thanks, bud.”

“No, Michael,” Glenn insisted, eyes wide, staring right into him, “I’m serious. Our community has been looking for a leader like you. There’s a reason PFLAG Omaha voted unanimously to endorse you over one of its own members. People believe in you. People think you’re the one who can get workplace discrimination banned in the state.”

“Glenn,” Michael said back to him, “I can’t promise you that I can do anything. You know how this legislature is, you know how this state is. It’s an uphill battle for all the things we care about. But I can promise you I will try my damnedest. You know that’s the guy I am, Glenn.”

Glenn smiled back at him. They stood there for a moment.

“Glenn,” Michael said, “I want to share that story tonight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. If it’s okay with you.”

Glenn started to tear up a little bit.

“Michael, I’ve been telling you since the start of the campaign you gotta tell people!”

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t want to sound like I was grandstanding, though. Win or lose, tonight the election is over. I can finally say what I want again.”

The feeling of liberation was a high for Michael. Maybe he was four years away from reelection day, maybe he was a couple years away from a race for city council, maybe this was the last election of his life. Whichever of those was true, he knew this campaign was behind him, he had a new adventure in front of him, and that he had one night to spend surrounded by his people.

“So excited to see you here, Michael,” Paul Kemp, president of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce said as he took Michael’s hand in a firm, friendly grip, “you always had a lot of potential, and it’s thrilling to see you stepping up into a life of public service.”

“Thank you so much for being here, Paul,” Michael said, returning the handshake to his supervisor’s supervisor’s supervisor, “I’ve told you this before, but the Chamber has been such a great place to work for the past five years. I feel like I have really got a chance to get a grip on what it is that makes Omaha work, and honestly it’s inspired me to make this run. We have to make Omaha competitive for business or we’re going to keep losing the big companies to Chicago and the small companies to Des Moines…”

He felt as he slipped into autopilot.

“…but hey, we can talk policy after I find out whether I have a vote in the matter or not.”

“I’ll be looking forward to having that talk,” Kemp responded with a smile.

“We’re so excited to be so close to having the first Democratic Socialist on the Nebraska Legislature!” shouted Frank Weckstein, an old, short man with wild white hair and tiny glasses as he shook Michael’s hand. He had a button on his lapel with a red rose on it and the words “chapter president.”

“And I am excited to carry both your chapter’s and the national endorsement,” Michael said back with a smile, “inequality in Omaha is out of control. Even if you take Warren Buffet out, you know that we still have a larger difference between the median income of our top 1% and our bottom 50% than any major Midwestern city?”

“I do know that, but I’m happy we’ll finally have a senator who does, too!” Weckstein retorted.

“Three more clinics. And only two are run by Planned Parenthood,” said Erin Rogers, Omaha field organizer for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, “and they have TRAP legislation just sitting in the wings waiting for a sponsor for this upcoming session.”

“I didn’t take a public endorsement for no reason, Erin,” Michael assured her, “Medicaid expansion, comprehensive s*x education, and access to safe and legal abortion are absolutely core policy priorities for me. Just let me get across the finish line before we start talking about what those look like in bill form!”

“Check it out, Michael!” a short, Hispanic man yells, brandishing a sticker on his chest that reads “¡Viva Miguel!”

He’s there with a bunch of friends, all brandishing the same stickers, all with excited looks on their faces.

“These are awesome, Cesar,” Michael says, with an honest tinge of happiness in his voice, “this is amazing.”

“Who’s got the power?”

“WE GOT THE POWER!”

“What kind of power?”

“UNION POWER!”

Michael belted chants with AFL-CIO members in attendance, worrying his voice might get scratched up before he got the chance to give the speech this night was supposed to end on, wondering who could possibly be at his opponent’s victory party.

“Black child mortality is out of control in this city. I will support legislation that leads to a full review of water sources throughout the state.”

“Big Ag is too powerful in this state. We need to make sure there are protections in place so family farms don’t get run out of town.”

“Sure we’ve underinvested in wind! Why try to dig our way to energy independence when the answer is blowing down Dodge Street?”

Suddenly, the banter in the room quieted to a less pronounced murmur. Michael pulled out his phone to check the time: 8:35pm. He looked around to see the bar empty, people huddled around the television screens throughout the room. Michael excused himself from the conversation he currently was engaged in and squinted his eyes at a television screen as preliminary results started to flash on the bottom ticker, like sports scores on ESPN.

OMAHA PUBLIC SCHOOLS LEVY | YES: 58% | NO: 42%

“I just thought after the first showing he would have a bit more of a lead than this,” he heard a woman’s voice say in the crowd.

MICHAELA HENRY: 38% | RICK JENSEN: 62%

“But he did much better than this in the primary, didn’t he? And didn’t he have more opponents?” another, older woman’s voice murmured around him.

CARRIE TODD: 60% | JAMES TUTTLE: 40%

“It’s early results, they’re small numbers, this doesn’t mean a damn thing,” a gruff male voice said.

DRE HIGGINS: 48% | MICHAEL GALLAGHER: 52%

Michael stared at the preliminary result. He thought something must be wrong.

“We should be up much more than this,” Brett said, seeming to appear from nowhere behind Michael, “our early vote strategy was much more thorough than theirs. It’s 8:30, these are basically all early votes. Where the f**k did all these early votes come from?”

“Where the f**k indeed,” Michael replied, still a bit in shock at the close race, “we’re still up, though, by four points. How much is that cushion worth it for us?”

“Depends,” Brett replied, “we should be in the high 60s right now. I still think we had a better GOTV campaign, but when you have a Democrat versus Democrat campaign like this, things get muddy. Some of our modeling could be really off because we don’t have a lot of precedent for these kinds of races in Nebraska. Clearly some of our modeling is off because this race should be called by now instead of leaving us wringing our hands over a less than 5% lead.”

Michael felt fingers entwine with his right hand.

“Mike,” Jane asked him quietly, “why’s everyone acting so down? You’re up right now.”

Michael closed his eyes, took a deep breath, counting backwards from five as he breathed out, holding Jane’s hand firmly the whole time.

“It’s a lot closer than we thought,” he said quietly to her, “basically if he is going to pull the upset, this is the kind of night he had to start with. We might end up being here a lot later than we thought we would.”

“AND NOW—It’s ‘Election Night in Nebraska’ with KETV’s own Taylor Treadwell,” the television screen flashed a cheap graphic, and a blonde woman appeared on the screen sitting behind an anchor’s desk.

“It’s ‘Election Night in Nebraska’ and I’m Taylor Treadwell. Republican gubernatorial candidate Chet Haswell has come strong out of the gate, leading Democrat Charlie Gilligan 61% to 37% in the preliminary results. Libertarian candidate Rance Furrozzi has 1%. Senate races are shaking out fairly how we would expect them to, with west Omaha Senators Rick Jensen and Carrie Todd leading challengers Michaela Henry and James Tuttle. Open races in north Omaha and midtown have Bennie Jay and Sara Brohn with comfortable leads over Boss Jones and Tammy Natworth, though watch that Brohn-Natworth race: Natworth is still fairly in striking distance. The big news out of south Omaha, though, is that primary favorite and rising Democratic star Michael Gallagher is in a surprisingly close race against insurgent candidate Dre Higgins. Higgins is fighting to be the first openly gay senator in Nebraska legislative history, and is only four points away from pulling that off. We’ll have more results at nine.”