IT WAS AT THIS JUNCTURE that fate played the first of many hands. In keeping with my promise to keep Keri well shod, I started looking for full-time work along with my schooling. I had never had trouble finding work, until then. I became less picky as the weeks waned, until I started to apply for about everything I saw. I was rejected for three different custodial jobs.
After several months of rejection, I interviewed with a local bank for a teller position and was told by the bank manager that I was perfect for the job. She said I would be taking the place of an employee who was leaving, so I would have to wait a few weeks until the position opened. She gave me a number to call and the date I would start.
I called the bank a week later, only to be told that someone had transferred from another branch and taken the position. Dejected, I hung up the phone. Within seconds, it rang. The woman on the other end of the phone was Bae Gardner, assistant director of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics. She wanted to know if I was available to go to Washington, D.C.
Years before, I had turned my name in to the institute for a possible position as a political intern. Ms. Gardner had called to tell me that a U.S. senator from Utah had an opening for an intern in Washington. I thanked her for the call but told her I would have to decline, as I was about to get married and needed full-time employment at home. She said, “If you’re interested in politics, I might have what you’re looking for. The Norm Bangerter for Governor campaign is looking for someone to work full time.”
“Who’s Norm Bangerter?” I asked.
“Representative Bangerter is the speaker of the Utah House of Representatives. He’s running for governor.”
She gave me the campaign’s phone number and I called for an interview. At the time, Bangerter was a long shot, running fifth in a field of five candidates. But it was a full-time job, if only a temporary one, and it paid eight hundred dollars a month. And I got it.
I fell in love with politics and put my whole heart into my job. The campaign manager, Doug Foxley, noticed my efforts, and as my candidate rose in the polls, I rose with him. Within months I was promoted to campaign field coordinator for Salt Lake County. I was responsible for recruiting Bangerter supporters to run as delegates for the state convention.
Bangerter won the party nomination, then the general election. My candidate was now in office and politics was in my blood. I was also introduced to a new profession. The most enviable guys in the campaign were the advertising consultants. They were witty, dressed cool, commanded the candidate’s respect and, from what I could see, made gobs of money. All that for just coming up with an idea now and then. I decided that I wanted to be an adman someday.
The week after the campaign ended I sat down with the campaign manager, who was talking to everyone on the staff about future aspirations. “You did well,” he said to me. “But you’re still a kid. Go back to school.”
I did.
