Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt

Chapter 303 - 151: Who is Opposing "Made in America"?

Erie City Hall, Mayor’s Office.

Ron Smith slammed the receiver back onto the landline phone. The crude motion let out a loud CLANG.

He had just finished a call with the state investigation team.

Some young bureaucrat from Harrisburg had informed him, in a stiff tone, that all of Erie City’s cross-regional procurement accounts had been preemptively frozen.

After hanging up, Smith picked up another cell phone and dialed a number.

Scranton. Joe Byers.

The call was answered almost instantly.

"Ron?" Byers’s voice sounded like he was being strangled, and he was clearly gasping for air. "You got the call, too?"

"I did," Smith said. "Harrisburg is playing for keeps this time. It looks like Monroe’s campaign isn’t going well. He’s getting desperate."

"What do we do?" Panic laced Byers’s voice. "My cement plants are still shipping, the convoys are still on the road, and for every ton of that damn cement that goes out, my factories are losing money. But I haven’t dared to tell the workers and the owners that the funds are frozen. I’m afraid they’ll tear down City Hall on the spot!"

"Don’t worry," Smith interrupted him.

"Joe, think about it," Smith said in a low voice. "If you back out now, that’s a unilateral breach of contract. Leo Wallace has the contracts. He’ll sue you, and he’ll win. Not only will you not get paid, but you’ll lose everything you have."

"Besides, have you thought about the consequences? Your factory owners will despise you for cutting off their source of income. Your voters will think you’re a spineless coward who got scared shitless by a single phone call from Harrisburg. You’ll be caught in the middle with no one on your side."

"Then what else can we do? Just wait for that mob of workers to come after us?" Byers asked.

"We don’t have to take the heat ourselves."

Smith walked to the window and looked out at the sky.

"Think about it. Who’s putting up this money? Pittsburgh. Who started this alliance? Leo Wallace."

"Now that there’s a problem, whether it’s Harrisburg making things difficult or the funding chain breaking, it’s ultimately his responsibility."

"We’re the victims, Joe."

Smith’s voice turned cold and sinister.

"We’re the victims who believed in his alliance plan."

Byers was silent on the other end of the line for a few seconds, his breathing gradually steadying.

"You mean..."

"We don’t say the state froze the funds," Smith laid out his plan. "We just say there’s a problem with the wire transfer from Pittsburgh."

"Tell our people that due to some ’technical issues’ with the Pittsburgh City Government, or perhaps their financial approval process getting stuck, the advance payments couldn’t be transferred."

"Shift the blame to Leo."

Smith spoke faster and faster.

"Let our workers curse him. Let our factory owners pressure him. Let that rage burn a path right back down the highway to Pittsburgh."

"We need to make Leo Wallace feel the pain."

"If he wins, we keep making money. If he loses, we’ll just say we were duped, too."

Byers took a deep breath on the other end.

"Ron, you really are an old bastard."

"Takes one to know one," Smith said. "It’s just about survival."

He hung up.

Ron Smith pressed the intercom button on his desk.

"Come in."

The mayor’s secretary walked in.

"Mr. Mayor?"

"Call Jim Bell at the United Steel Factory."

Smith leaned back in his chair. The sinister look on his face vanished, replaced by a performance of utter exhaustion.

"Tell him that, regrettably, due to some unforeseen technical glitches on Pittsburgh’s end, the advance payment for the steel that was supposed to arrive today has been frozen."

"Remember, emphasize that it was a ’technical glitch.’ Don’t mention the state investigation."

"Also, tell him I’m doing my best to coordinate, but there’s no clear timeline at the moment."

The secretary hesitated for a moment, as if she wanted to say something, but after seeing the emotionless look in Smith’s eyes, she obediently nodded.

"Understood, Mr. Mayor."

The secretary left.

The office door closed in front of him.

Ron Smith slumped back into his leather chair, his spine curved. He seemed to have aged ten years in an instant.

He fumbled in a drawer for a moment before pulling out a bottle of blood pressure medication.

He twisted off the cap, shook out two white pills, tossed them into his mouth, and forced himself to swallow them dry.

He closed his eyes, waiting for the medicine to take effect, waiting for the frantic pounding of blood in his veins to subside.

’The call was over, but he knew exactly what it meant.’

’It meant thousands of furlough notices about to be sent out.’

’It meant thousands of families facing silent dinner tables this weekend.’

’It meant countless fathers having to hang their heads when their children looked at them, wanting a new toy.’

’It meant despair.’

’And he was the one who had personally passed that despair down the chain of executive orders to the very workers who once chanted his name at rallies.’

’But he had no choice.’

’Or rather, between saving his own position and saving his workers’ jobs, he had instinctively chosen the former.’

’It was a politician’s survival instinct.’

Smith stood up and slowly walked to the window.

Outside, Erie City was bathed in sunlight.

In the industrial district in the distance, the massive smokestacks of the United Steel Factory were spewing thick smoke into the grayish-blue sky. It was the last production line still running, the one they hadn’t had time to shut down yet.

The sunlight illuminated the mottled factory buildings and dilapidated streets, laying bare the city’s decay and its impending poverty for all to see.