J Ferdinand
Jeri / Jeroen Ferdinand
Violet City's mayor, who is running for Senator as the sane and sensible candidate
In Game
Bluesheets:
Character Hint
You are Jeri Ferdinand, Mayor of Violet City and Democratic candidate for the Senate. This is a bad day for the city; whether it's a good or bad day for you personally remains to be seen. You are a sincere and strong-willed politician, and work hard to do right by your people, but you've deliberately toned way down from your youthful radicalism, and it's almost a full-time job at the moment to keep the media away from that line of thinking.
You are third-generation Latino: thoroughly American, but you've kept your ties to the community and they've served you well.
Character Sheet
You are Jeri Ferdinand, Mayor of Violet City, the capital of Vermillion and the best city you know. And somewhere along the line, you decided that you would be able to great things in Washington. Which is probably true, but there are days you dearly wish you could stop campaigning. You knew this was going to be hard, but it sometimes seems like the mudslinging never stops. At least nobody is contesting the Democratic primary against you, but that just means the Republicans are already hitting you hard.
Right now, the problem is your youthful indiscretion. Or maybe your youthful discretion -- there are times when you think that life would be so much easier if you'd just thrown Nika under the bus in the first place, but it's far too late to worry about that.
Back in college -- must have been 25 years ago now, since Bush 41 was in office -- you were one of the leaders of Violet Justice. Yeah, the name sounds dumb now, but you were all college freshmen when you created it, and it sounded cool then. There were probably a dozen of you all told, but three of you who really had the passion: you, Vasily Leonard and Nika Stanimir. You wanted to fight the establishment, help people, make the world a better place, and you were prepared to be as loud as necessary to do it. You led protests, sit-ins, the whole thing. Yeah, people made fun of you, saying you didn't realize the 60s were long since over, but you didn't care: it was the post-Reagan world now, with the conservatives in the driver's seat, and protests mattered.
Those first couple of years were really a lot of fun, and you felt like you were getting somewhere, raising consciousness. And then Nika fucked it all up.
It all started innocuously enough. President Bush was going to be visiting campus, early junior year, and you'd all been actively protesting around campus, that a warmonger like that had no business at a place of higher learning. Folks were starting to pay attention, until that night.
The first you heard about it was when Nika came into your dorm room, eyes blazing (as it were) with pride, looking kind of manic (you don't know what he was smoking that night), and told you that he had struck a blow for justice. That worried you enough -- and then you heard the sirens of the fire trucks. You sat him down and demanded to know what he had done, which turned out to be setting fire to the Campus Administration building. Him idea was apparently that this would prevent the visit, showing Bush to be a coward who had no business ordering Americans to fight and die for him. (Or something like that -- he wasn't exactly completely coherent.)
Of course, he wanted to proudly claim credit for the whole thing, which was basically insane. So you called Vasily and told him to get to your dorm room ASAP. The two of you convinced Nika that you all needed to keep quiet about this, and not admit anything. (You finally got his attention with the word "expelled", when "arrested" didn't do the trick.)
The next few days were miserable. Of course, the authorities came and grabbed the lot of you -- everyone involved with Violet Justice -- the following morning, since it was pretty obvious that if it was arson, you were the obvious perps. But there wasn't hard proof of arson -- Nika, being (fortunately) an amateur at this, had simply used a lighter, taking advantage of the dry early-fall weather and setting some of the old woodwork ablaze. The three of you clammed up and didn't admit anything, and the rest of the club could honestly profess ignorance, so they eventually let you all go.
But it was never the same after that. You'd all been passionate, but never violent -- this had crossed what you had always assumed was an impassable line. Everyone's hearts kind of went out of it, and Violet Justice just quietly fell apart.
The real irony, of course, is that Nika and Vasily went on to become pretty much the thing you were fighting, which sort of showed that you had never entirely understood either of them. Nika went on to not only join the NRA, but to become their representative in this part of Vermillion. It kind of fits: at a certain level, you realize, he was always attracted to violence, maybe even turned on by it. He has even wound up an active adversary of yours -- he is really good at playing the police, in particular, and you've sometimes had to be more conciliatory than you'd like in order to keep the police union on-side.
As for Vasily, he clearly was in it for the shouting, and for tearing people down. Yeah, he had been a journalism major, but you hadn't expected him to wind up at Fox News, much less as such a passionate right-wing shill. Of course, to be fair, he seems to enjoy destroying anybody -- it isn't as if Senator Newbold has been entirely free from him particular brand of investigative journalism -- but you've particularly come to be tired of having him microphone in your face.
And now the Ronit campaign is slamming you for the campus fire. Somebody (you have no idea who) apparently remembered Violet Justice getting arrested for it, and remembered you as part of it, so they are making you out to be some kind of crazy firebomber. You really want to stick Nika's face in it, like a dog in its own poop, but you have to be careful or they'll just accuse you of trying political misdirection -- Nika is now Newbold's campaign manager, which makes the whole thing extra-dicey.
Dammit. At least Vasily has had the good sense to mostly stay away from this one: if he started hammering you over it, you might just blow your cool and take them both down with you. But the result, of course, is that it's mostly Roger Forrester, the CBS anchor and something of a friend, who is hounding you on this story. You keep mum, same as you've been doing for decades, but it's wearing thin.
Overall, the campaign is going adequately, but not great -- you are trailing in the polls behind both Newbold and Ronit. (Especially to Newbold -- you saw a depressing poll recently that said that if the election were held between you today, he would win 59/41.) So a while back, you brought in Simon Mercer to take over as Campaign Manager. You didn't do that completely enthusiastically -- he has a reputation as being pretty cold-blooded and ruthless, and it says something that he didn't blink at the idea of helping you out, after running Newbold's campaign last time -- but by all accounts he is smart, competent, and the best at him job, the fixer's fixer.
Your major campaign planks include:
- Better gun control is necessary for the city and for the nation. Simon wants you to tone it down on this issue, but you've decided that that just hands it to the conservatives. Instead of running from it, you've started to stare down the damned NRA -- they are going to back the Republican candidate no matter what you say, so you may as well come out swinging. (Sadly, today may be a fine chance to make this point.)
- The Latino community mustn't be victimized by the right wing's paranoia about immigration. There are millions of hard-working Americans who are living huddled in fear today because they don't have the right papers. It is time to work together to craft a path to citizenship for them.
- Corporate America needs to learn to be more responsible, and responsive to the needs of their employees, not just their stockholders; the sort of cold-blooded short-termism advocated by the free market fundamentalists is destroying the companies that America needs. You've been playing this part up in the primaries with considerable success. You used Greyrock Investments as a good example: a venture firm that is heavy into the midwest, buying into companies and then panicking and dumping them at the first sign of problems. They caused the shutdown of two different firms in Violet City in the past year -- companies that, with a longer viewpoint and a sense of the value of the employees, could have been turned around. (You're not sure whether to keep this particular argument going once the primaries are past -- Simon keeps telling you you need to tack more to the center -- but it sure feels good to let your sincere anti-Corporatist feelings out.)
- The Republicans are fond of claiming that the way to deal with crime is to build more prisons, and lock up more blacks and Latinos. That's not just nonsense, it's harmful nonsense. You've spent your term as Mayor hurting the Signoretti Mob, the leading criminals in Violet City, and you take great pride in how obviously Marco Signoretti hates you. Not that you've managed to take down Don Spider, lurking in his huge mansion in the Purple Hills to the west of the city. Yet. But as a Senator, you could help make sure the FBI has the resources to take down bastards like that.
[GM NOTE: feel free to expand on this as makes sense to you -- this is just a representative sampling.]
You've also been trying to promote Violet City as a burgeoning tech hub recently, to attract companies like Google and Facebook to open midwestern regional headquarters here. That's had some success, and you've publicly come out in support of Net Neutrality to encourage them, which has brought some welcome funding for your Senate campaign. But lately Ronit's been making idiotic claims that Net Neutrality somehow impinges American freedom -- that it's going to, how did he put it?, "turn the Internet into a sleepy regulated backwater". It's nonsense, but unfortunately too many people believe it.
But now, into the tragedy. You made a public call for calm a little while ago (you like that turn of phrase, "a respectful calm"), but you know perfectly well that that isn't going to last an hour before the media feeding frenzy begins. You love being the Mayor of this city, but days like today are hard...
Who You Know
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Simon Mercer: Your campaign manager: shrewd, cold, good at him job. You've come to rely on him for a sanity-check, and for talking points for your press conferences.
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Reagan Newbold: The incumbent four-term Senator. Cynical, philandering, probably at least somewhat corrupt, but pretty smooth.
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Nika Stanimir: The original source of all this tsurrus, your radical friend turned NRA rep turned campaign manager for Newbold. At least you've taken a certain amount of Schadenfreude from the fact that the NRA went and backed Ronit instead...
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Fred Ronit: The Tea Party up-and-comer. Basically a right-wing nutjob, and it sometimes amazes you that he can say things like that and actually mean them.
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Roger Forrester: The voice of sanity in Violet City's TV landscape. You're really pretty fond of him, and tend to watch his newscast in the evening. You just wish he wasn't letting the Ronit campaign manipulate him like that.
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Vasily Leonard: Your old friend, now the lead investigative journalist for Fox. To say that he doesn't like you any more would be the grossest understatement.
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Christina Nikolaus: A new-media vlogger who has been pushing her way into all the press conferences lately. You were initially resistant, not really knowing who she was, but gradually realized that she is far more progressive than the mainstream media, which is pretty helpful. Actually, she is way more progressive than you are, kind of close to the fringes of the left wing, and you've had occasional problems with being branded as a "turncoat" and like that. But if you can keep her focused on the Republican threat, she may help you keep the young vote, which you desperately need.
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Roger Cameron: The founder and CEO of Decameron Enterprises. You knew him socially, not well but you'll miss him -- he was pretty decent as these business types go, and employed a fair number of people. The last thing the city needs right now is to lose another company.
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Millie Cameron: Roger's wife, who has worn the "dutiful" thing kind of to shreds. You can tell that she's smart, and it frustrates you to see a woman like that hiding behind her husband.
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Maeve Caoilinn: One of the VCPD's better detectives. You're glad to see her on the case -- she is one of the few cops you trust to be solidly clear-eyed in the middle of a mess like this.
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Aidan O'Malley: The at Lady of Redemption church, down the street. What is he doing here, in the middle of all this?
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Robert Gervasio: Speaking of "what is he doing here?", your heart sinks a little to see Robert stuck in this fray.
About a year ago, you were doing an outreach project for the city's homeless. Partly it was a publicity stunt, it's true: you wanted to get the homeless on television, telling their own stories, so that the people of the city would see them as people, not just as a problem. And partly it was genuine information-gathering -- you trust someone telling you what their problems really are a good deal more than you trust all the think tanks. So you gathered a camera crew, and for a couple of weeks you spent some time going out among the city's homeless, getting to know them a little bit, talking to them about their needs and filming the best bits for the evening news and online.
Among the folks you met was Robert. He was a down-on-him-luck Army vet, who had left the Iraq War with PTSD and no support structure back home, so he wound up sleeping rough in the park. But as you got him to calm down and ignore the cameras, you found him to be intelligent and thoughtful, far from the usual stereotyped indigent. He was just too damned proud to take advantage of all of the opportunities the system provided for him.
So after the cameras had all left, the following week you took the opportunity to quietly sneak over to the park by yourself, find him and strike up a conversation. That proved really pleasant: you shared some lunch and just talked about stuff. It was refreshing to talk to someone about something other than politics: you've never married and have precious little time for dating, so you've never really had anyone to share your life with. And you've kept meeting, once a week, ever since -- quietly, when nobody is watching. (The whole thing has made Simon completely insane since you told him, but you can't say you completely mind that.)
Robert isn't exactly what your sainted Momma would have wanted to bring home, but he is quiet, strong, and responsible. The truth is that you're attracted to him, and want to find a way to help him. So far, you mostly managed to help by introducing him to Roger Cameron and the folks at Decameron Enterprises, and he tells you that they've been great, letting him join in the coffee and breakfasts, use their showers, and generally treat him like a human being.
All of which was great, until today. If he is here now, that means he was probably there during the shooting. And that's not a place for someone who lived through a real war zone...
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Brian Truman: One of those vultures from Greyrock Investments. Oh, now there is a possibility. Are they invested in Decameron? What are they planning today? You wouldn't at all mind getting to rake them over the coals again, if they try to hurt another company, especially in its hour of need...
GM Notes
Violet City's mayor is a classic Clintonian Democrat: socially liberal (but not strident), somewhat pro-business these days. Has been edging more centrist in recent years, but secretly longs for hir old days as a student radical fighting the good fight. But the Republicans in the Senate race have been mercilessly harping on that past, so sie has to laugh it all off as the hijinks of youth, long in hir past.
One of those "hijinks" went badly wrong, though. Sie wasn't actually involved personally, but hir campus group was accused of setting fire to the Violet City University administration building in protest of an upcoming visit by Reagan when he was president. The group came under suspicion because they had been so strident in their protests, and in fact one of the members of the group (who should be another character in-game
N Stanimir ?)
did set the fire. The rest of the group, led by Ferdinand, convinced hir to not claim responsibility, though, and they all claimed they had nothing to do with it. The University didn't press too hard -- they basically hushed the whole affair up, so as not to disrupt the visit (and never told the Secret Service about it), but it did wind up in the files. Senator Newbold's campaign got wind of this a couple of months ago, and has begun to make a huge stink about it.
Sie is publicly very pro-immigration, and has Latino background (albeit three generations back). Privately, hir feelings are more mixed -- so long as they pay taxes they are fine, but is conscious that there is a modest but non-trivial community that is basically sponging off of city services. Hir usual approach has been to exhort them to better themselves and behave like proper citizens, but is somewhat frustrated about the ones who won't follow.
Sie has been an outspoken proponent of gun control for years (sie views gun violence as a bane of the city), so this is a chance for hir to make a statement without coming across as excessively political.
Sie wound up tacking a bit to the left during the recent Democratic primary; since the mood has been a bit anti-Corporatist lately, it was easy to brush off a little of that honest radicalism. Sie used Greyrock Investments as an example of the typical "vulture capitalism" that is damaging Main Street business nowadays in favor of Wall Street corporatism, buying up good companies and breaking them up, laying off lots of people. That went down well with the rank and file, and sie won the Democratic nomination in a walk (no one else was even close), but that is backfiring a bit, resulting in Greyrock (and their masters, the US Chamber of Commerce) backing Ronit and Newbold in the main election. It isn't entirely clear what the right strategy is right now -- whether to go on the offense, or to play it cool and stay in the mushy center.
What with the attacks from the Republicans, sponsored by Greyrock and aimed at making hir look like an out-of-control leftist, sie has been slipping in the polls over the past couple of months. Sie prefers not to pay attention to the notoriously fickle tracking polls, but they currently show hir losing to Ronit 53/47, and to Newbold 59/41. That requires a response, so sie slightly reluctantly hired legendary political "fixer"
S Mercer as an assistant (but really lead) campaign manager. Sie knows that Mercer has been digging up dirt on hir opponents, and is uneasy about the prospect of being dragged into a muddy campaign, but keeps reminding hirself that it is all for the long-term good.
Sie should probably be single, with a fairly public relationship with someone else in the cast. Not sure anybody is appropriate, though. Possibly B Ari? If so, make Ari hispanic, to give R Finlay someone to focus hir aggressions at.Later: based on casting, let's be more daring about this. She first encountered
R Gervasio about a year ago, while doing some outreach to the city's homeless population, trying to figure out what to do about the growing problem. She found, somewhat to her surprise, that she actually kind of respected -- and moreover,
liked -- him. They've developed an odd friendship, meeting in the park once a week and talking increasingly honestly. At this point Robert is actually the closest she has to a spouse, or at least a close confidant, and she has developed fairly strong feelings for him, but is very aware of how different their worlds are and how this would look like some kind of dumb political stunt to the media. She doesn't want to expose Robert to that sort of media hell.
To Do
