Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [31]
After Dennison lost, I went to work for Congressman Robert Griffin, a Republican from Michigan. I also enrolled in Georgetown Law School. But Dave Dennison called me back to Ohio to help him try to win back his congressional seat. Joyce was pregnant again at the time, but she was also a tough battler for causes and people she believed in. When I asked her about going back to Ohio and getting involved in another tough political race, she quickly replied, “Let’s do it.” She gave birth to our second daughter, Marcy, while we were on the campaign trail in Warren, Ohio, in March 1960.
Once again, Dennison’s dedication wasn’t enough to turn the tide, and he lost by a narrow margin, while Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy edged out Richard Nixon in the race for president. I was now 0 for 2 in political campaigns. I felt like I’d had enough of politics for the time being, so we returned home to Illinois, ready to start doing something else, or so I thought.
I had been settled at the Chicago-based investment banking house A. G. Becker for about a year when a rare opportunity presented itself. In late 1961, the incumbent Republican congresswoman in our district, Marguerite Stitt Church, announced that she was not going to seek reelection. Her husband, Ralph, was first elected to Congress in 1934, when I was two years old, and when he died in 1950, his wife was elected to the seat and held it subsequently.
Since the seat was open for the first time in almost three decades, it was seen as an opportunity for both parties that was not likely to be open again for the foreseeable future. The Republican candidate had an advantage because the district, while fairly diverse, had been Republican for a long time. Twelve or thirteen candidates announced they would run for the GOP nomination. Among them were several prominent local figures, each with a decent chance of winning.
I had toyed with the idea of running for Congress now and again. One of the people who encouraged the idea was New Jersey Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen, who represented the Princeton area. When I worked on Capitol Hill, he asked me to lunch. While we were talking, he asked when I was going back home. He did not think I should spend my career as a congressional staffer, but instead suggested that I might return to Washington one day as an elected official. It seemed unusual that a senior member of Congress would take such an active interest in a young staffer’s career. His suggestion stuck in my head.
If I wanted to run in my home district, this might be the only chance I’d have in several decades. I was twenty-nine years old. I had never held elected office. I had been away from my home district for ten years, since 1950, when I left for college. I did not seem to have anything that could even remotely be considered a political base.
My parents thought the idea of running for Congress was almost unbelievable. Having lived most of his life in Chicago, Dad had the impression that politicians were crooks. My mother didn’t see how someone my age could possibly succeed Mrs. Church, who was forty years older. I was the longest of long shots. The savvy political reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times predicted I would run seventh out of seven.
I did have a few things going for me, however, the most important of which was our many friends from school in the area. The campaign team we put together was like a reunion. But it was not, to be sure, in any sense a finely honed operation. In our initial meeting around a table in our kitchen, we had a long discussion about strategy and position papers. Then, just as the meeting broke up, someone asked, almost as an afterthought, “Won’t we be needing some money?” Laughing at how inexperienced we were, we each put in fifty dollars and managed to scrape together the formidable sum of four hundred dollars.
Ned Jannotta, a friend from New Trier High School and Princeton, became the campaign manager. He had also been away for many years in college, the