Dant’s concerns during the primary about abortion forced Jake to work out a position for Tomlinson on stem cell research. After talking it over with the biomedical scientists on campus and a private company spun off from the university, Jake advised Tomlinson to emphasize two things: one, that stem cell research held enormous promise for future treatments of everything from Alzheimer’s to heart disease, and two, that stem cells were being produced from ordinary blood and skin cells; there was no longer any need for harvesting stem cells from human embryos.

Once she heard that, Amy Wexler clapped her hands joyfully. “That should quiet the right-to-life people!”

Genetically engineered corn was another issue that sent Jake scurrying to the biology labs. Corn was a major crop in the state and improving its resistance to frost and insect pests was highly desirable. But conservatives raised specters of uncontrolled mutations that could ruin the corn crop. Even Tomlinson’s father huffed about “Frankenstein on the cob.” Jake worked out a reasonable approach that, he hoped, would allay the fears of the farmers and the general public.

Climate change, space exploration, even a controversy between archeologists digging into the state’s past and Native American activists who protested their intrusions into sacred ground—Jake had to work out positions for Tomlinson that would alienate the least number of voters and perhaps even help to get some science accomplished.

And, of course, there was the MHD program.

“They’ve finished the transmission line from the big rig to the grid,” Jake reported to Amy in mid-June.

She nodded uncertainly. “How does that help us?”

They were sitting in one of the booths at the Roosevelt Club’s bar. Jake hadn’t been to Amy’s apartment since before the primaries, nor had she come to his place. The quiet, darkly paneled bar was as intimate as they had been for months.

“Whenever the generator runs, they can send the power into the state’s electrical system. The local utility companies get fifty megawatts for free.”

“As long as the generator is running,” Amy said.

“Tim’s had it going for a hundred hours at a stretch,” Jake said. “He’s talking about going for two hundred hours.”

“More than a week,” Amy muttered.

“A little over eight days,” said Jake.

She shrugged. “I suppose that’s good progress for you science jocks, but what does that mean to the average voter?”

“Progress,” said Jake.

“We need something more than that, Jake. Something that will make the voters realize that MHD is important. Something that will get votes for Franklin.”

Jake said, “I’ll try to think of something.”

“The Fourth of July will be here in a few weeks,” she said. “We’re trying to think of something special that Franklin could do, something to get him headlines and really get the campaign off with a bang.”

Jake figured that she and Tomlinson were getting themselves off with a bang fairly often.