Pol­i­tics makes me sick. Lit­er­al­ly. On elec­tion day in 2016, I woke up feel­ing nau­seous. I blew break­fast mid-morn­ing and ripped through a series of dry heaves that after­noon.  Exhaust­ed, I col­lapsed on our liv­ing room recliner.

“I’m real­ly sick,” I told my wife as we watched the elec­tion cov­er­age. “I must have food poisoning.”

“I don’t think so,” Cindy said. “We both ate the same things. Maybe it’s the election.”

I stared at the obnox­ious talk­ing heads yam­mer­ing away on the tele­vi­sion screen and thought she might be on to something.

We live in Cal­i­for­nia. It’s basi­cal­ly a one-par­ty state. The Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can Par­ty has been on life sup­port for a decade. By 2016 there were more Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers reg­is­tered as Unaf­fil­i­at­ed than as Repub­li­cans. Demo­c­rat vic­to­ries became so rou­tine that even the Demo­c­rat-con­trolled state leg­is­la­ture got bored with the process. To cre­ate com­pet­i­tive con­tests in Novem­ber, it amend­ed Cal­i­for­nia elec­tion laws to pit the top two vote-get­ters in the open pri­maries, almost always Democ­rats, against each oth­er in the gen­er­al election.

You might think like-mind­ed can­di­dates from the same par­ty would run clean cam­paigns. Think again. In 2012, redis­trict­ing forced two Demo­c­rat incum­bents to run against each oth­er for the 30^th Dis­trict of the House, which cov­ers the San Fer­nan­do Val­ley where I live. Hav­ing served ten terms, Howard Berman was Chair­man of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee. Brad Sher­man had served sev­en terms and sat on the same committee. 

Good friends when the cam­paign start­ed, they shared almost iden­ti­cal vot­ing records. Unable to find much to dis­agree about on pol­i­cy, their pitch to the vot­ers quick­ly devolved into increas­ing­ly bit­ter per­son­al attacks, cul­mi­nat­ing in a tele­vised phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion on the debate stage at Pierce Col­lege. When Howard accused Brad of being “delu­sion­al,” he lost it. Brad crossed the stage, grabbed Howard by the shoul­ders, and jammed his nose in his face. “You want to get into this?” he shout­ed. A sheriff’s deputy and the debate mod­er­a­tor jumped between them and pulled Brad away. 

Brad’s cam­paign man­ag­er claimed Howard start­ed it by step­ping toward Brad in a threat­en­ing man­ner. It strained creduli­ty. Resem­bling a bald-head­ed Big Bird, Brad is taller and thir­ty pounds heav­ier than Howard and Howard was 71 years old at the time. Despite the tele­vised assault, Brad won by twen­ty points, send­ing poor Howard to the polit­i­cal bone­yard. A har­bin­ger of things to come. 

The pukey con­test in 2016 was the nation­al Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Hillary Clin­ton and Don­ald Trump ran relent­less­ly neg­a­tive cam­paigns with her bas­ket of deplorables and his ral­ly chants of “Lock her up.” I felt like a rat poised at the head of a T‑shaped Skin­ner Box with both met­al bars at oppo­site ends of the T set to deliv­er a high volt­age shock no mat­ter which lever I pulled.

On elec­tion night, I thought my angst about that god-awful choice had made me sick, but my upset stom­ach turned out to be an ear­ly symp­tom of an infect­ed gall blad­der that spent the next two months try­ing to kill me. The doc­tors cut it out on Christ­mas Eve and I ful­ly recov­ered, but with next Tues­day rolling inex­orably toward us, my nau­sea has returned. Since my gan­grenous gall blad­der is long gone, the 2020 elec­tion seems the like­ly cul­prit this time.

My queasi­ness began with California’s new vot­ing process. The state mailed bal­lots to all vot­ers this year so we could vote with­out risk of expo­sure to Covid at a polling place. We can mail our bal­lot or deliv­er it to a Cal­i­for­nia drop box at des­ig­nat­ed civic locations.

In a des­per­ate attempt to increase their vot­er turnout, the small band of remain­ing Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­cans cre­at­ed their own bal­lot box­es, labeled them “Offi­cial,” and placed them in strate­gic loca­tions across the state. The Democ­rats went bal­lis­tic. The state Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Xavier Becer­ra, a Demo­c­rat, launched an investigation.

The Repub­li­cans defend­ed their box­es as per­mis­si­ble “bal­lot har­vest­ing.” The Demo­c­rat-con­trolled leg­is­la­ture passed a law sev­er­al years ago allow­ing cam­paign work­ers and par­ty offi­cials to col­lect bal­lots from vot­ers and take them to the polls. Repub­li­cans screamed bloody mur­der at the time, accus­ing Democ­rats of legal­iz­ing vot­er fraud, but this year they appar­ent­ly decid­ed to push the enve­lope of the new rules by har­vest­ing bal­lots in pri­vate drop boxes. 

Becer­ra filed suit seek­ing a cease and desist order, and the Repub­li­cans are fight­ing the case. They removed the “Offi­cial” label, but they insist the box­es oth­er­wise com­ply with the law. As I write this, thou­sands of bal­lots are sus­pend­ed in legal lim­bo inside those boxes.

Worse yet, a cre­ative soul invent­ed a new vot­er sup­pres­sion tech­nique based on the design of the real Cal­i­for­nia drop box­es. The state con­struct­ed them with heavy met­al so no one could pen­e­trate them and tam­per with the bal­lots. Know­ing that, an arson­ist in Bald­win Park jammed burn­ing paper through the bal­lot slot. While smoke belched from the mouth of the box, cit­i­zens on the scene couldn’t break into it to res­cue its con­tents. By the time the fire depart­ment cut it open with a met­al saw, more than a hun­dred bal­lots had burned to a crisp. Elec­tion offi­cials are try­ing to fig­ure out how to iden­ti­fy the vot­ers and give them replace­ment bal­lots. Good luck with that.

Even if I man­age to cast my bal­lot safe­ly, my vote won’t make much dif­fer­ence. Most of the con­tests are lop­sided; their out­comes fore­gone con­clu­sions. The only dogfight is the race for LA Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney. The incum­bent, Jack­ie Lacey, is the first woman and first African Amer­i­can to serve in that posi­tion since its cre­ation in 1850. She’s run­ning on her two-term record. Her chal­lenger, George Gas­con, is a for­mer LAPD Assis­tant Chief and for­mer San Fran­cis­co Dis­trict Attor­ney, who sup­ports police reform and the elim­i­na­tion of cash bail.

Lacey looked like a shoo-in until she got cross­wise with Black Lives Mat­ter. Upset with some of her deci­sions not to pros­e­cute police offi­cers accused of racial vio­lence, forty BLM pro­test­ers gath­ered in front of her home before dawn on March 2 and shout­ed for her to come out­side. When she didn’t respond, three of their lead­ers went to the front door and rang the door­bell. Lacey’s hus­band came to the door bran­dish­ing a gun. “I will shoot you,” he said. “Get off my porch.” Attor­ney Gen­er­al Becer­ra filed crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor charges against him, and BLM lead­ers filed a civ­il suit alleg­ing assault and inflic­tion of emo­tion­al dis­tress. The race is now a toss-up.

The 2020 pres­i­den­tial con­test presents anoth­er high volt­age Skin­ner Box. Trump says Biden is a crook who’s lost his mar­bles. Biden says Trump is a crook who nev­er had any mar­bles in the first place. The way things have gone so far in 2020, they’re both prob­a­bly right.

Mean­while, Brad Sher­man is coast­ing to reelec­tion in my dis­trict for his thir­teenth term. I’ve vot­ed against Bel­li­cose Brad four times since he beat up on old Howard. I’m vot­ing against him again this time but it won’t do any good. He seems des­tined to be my rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wash­ing­ton until one of us dies. Noth­ing per­son­al, but I hope he kicks the buck­et first.

This morn­ing I marked, sealed, and signed my bal­lot, drove to the Cal­abasas City Hall drop box, looked around furtive­ly for arson­ists lurk­ing in the weeds, then shoved my vote through the slot.

I haven’t thrown up yet, but it’s not over. With the uncer­tain­ties of the process and both pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns gear­ing up for legal chal­lenges, I’ll be chug­ging Pep­to Bis­mol all the way to Inau­gu­ra­tion Day.

Post­script: Appar­ent­ly, I’m not alone. The Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion report­ed last week that 68% of Amer­i­can adults cur­rent­ly suf­fer from Elec­tion Stress Dis­or­der. Symp­toms include loss of sleep, sud­den irri­tabil­i­ty, and, of course, an upset stomach.

Mom pulled our Ram­bler to the curb on a rainy fall after­noon. I sat in the pas­sen­ger seat, feel­ing queasy.

“You see your friends?” she asked.

“Under the awning.”

Mom peered through wipers pump­ing back and forth. “Where are the girls?”

“Richard said to get here ear­ly so we could buy the tick­ets before they show up.”

“Sounds like Richard’s quite the lit­tle man,” Mom said, smiling.

Star­ing grim­ly at the movie the­ater, I didn’t smile.

“You all right?” Mom said.

I got out of the car with­out answer­ing and ran across the side­walk to Richard and Arthur. Thir­teen years old, we’d just start­ed the eighth grade. Tall with blonde hair, Richard already had mus­cles. Arthur was chub­by, but begin­ning to fill out. I was the short­est, skin­ni­est boy in our class.

The date was Richard’s idea. He want­ed to take Mar­cia to a movie, but his mom wouldn’t allow it unless oth­er kids went with them. Richard asked Arthur to be his side­kick. Arthur and I were best friends, so he invit­ed me. I didn’t want to go because I was afraid of girls, but Arthur roped me into it by get­ting his girl­friend, Ger­ry, to set me up with her friend, Ann, the only girl in the eighth grade short­er than me. I couldn’t back out with­out look­ing like a hope­less nerd.

When I joined Richard and Arthur under the movie theater’s awning that after­noon, they were hud­dled togeth­er, talk­ing in hushed tones. “Girls act like they don’t like it,” Richard said, “because they don’t want boys to think they’re bad, but secret­ly they want it.”

“Mar­cia tell you that?” Arthur said, look­ing worried.

“No, you idiot. You can’t talk to girls about sex. My broth­er told me. He said the key is to get to first base. After that, girls get so excit­ed they’ll let you do any­thing. That’s why I picked this movie.” Richard point­ed at the poster on the wall behind us.

I blanched when I saw it. “PSYCHO,” it blared in yel­low let­ters under a pic­ture of a pret­ty blonde woman sit­ting on a bed wear­ing noth­ing but her underwear.

“That woman gets stabbed in the show­er,” Richard said. “It’ll scare the crap out of the girls. Ger­ry will prob­a­bly jump in your lap. Even a doo­fus like you ought to make it to first base after that.”

What’s first base, I won­dered just as the girls got out of Marcia’s mom’s car and ran over to us. Mar­cia and Ger­ry looked excit­ed. Ann looked like she want­ed to cry.

“Hi,” I said in a small voice. Ann mum­bled some­thing with­out look­ing at me.

Inside the the­ater, Ann sat to my right, star­ing straight ahead, her lips pinched into a tight line, her knees pressed togeth­er, her hands clenched in her lap. Arthur and Ger­ry sat next to her. Then Richard and Marcia.

I tried to focus on the movie to calm my nerves. The blonde woman stole some mon­ey from her job. Mak­ing her get-away on a stormy night, she stopped at a motel run by a creepy guy who lived with his moth­er in a spooky house on a hilltop.

I looked over at Richard. He had draped his arm over the back of Marcia’s chair. His hand rest­ed on her shoul­der. A cou­ple min­utes lat­er Arthur lift­ed his arm up on the back of Gerry’s chair.

By the time the woman went to her room and start­ed to undress, Richard’s hand was inch­ing down the front of Marcia’s shirt; Arthur had put his hand on Gerry’s shoul­der; and I hadn’t moved.

In my head, I saw all the boys in the eighth grade massed up at my home­room desk, point­ing at me, laugh­ing, and shout­ing, “Doo­fus!”

If I put my arm up on the back of Ann’s chair, I thought, it might be enough to save face. I didn’t have the guts to touch her shoul­der, but I could lie about that part. Scared wit­less, I took a deep breath and lift­ed my arm onto the chair-back. Ann flinched, sucked in her breath, and teared up, but at least she didn’t bolt out of the the­ater, scream­ing bloody murder.

Speak­ing of bloody mur­der, the blonde woman was stand­ing in the show­er by then. A shad­owy fig­ure sud­den­ly pulled back the show­er cur­tain and stabbed her repeat­ed­ly with a butch­er knife. She screamed while shrill music bleat­ed like an air-raid siren.

Mar­cia jumped into Richard’s arms. Ger­ry put her hands over her face. Arthur pat­ted her on the shoul­der gen­tly and seemed to be try­ing to com­fort her. Ann didn’t move a mus­cle. Nei­ther did I.

The woman’s blood was cir­cling the bath­tub drain when a dull ache began to creep down my arm to my shoul­der. It slow­ly got worse. By the time the shad­owy fig­ure stabbed a pri­vate detec­tive, my arm was killing me.

I real­ized too late what was wrong. The movie chairs were designed for adults. Being short, I had to raise my arm above my shoul­der to reach the high back. All the blood was drain­ing out of my arm. Worse yet, I was trapped in that posi­tion. If I took my arm off the chair, Richard would tell every­one, and I’d nev­er live it down.

I had no choice but to tough it out. I grit­ted my teeth as the pain increased in inten­si­ty. Be a man, I told myself, fight­ing back tears.

I don’t remem­ber any­thing about the rest of the movie except that it last­ed six­teen hours. Some­where near the end, my arm stopped hurt­ing. That scared me more than the excru­ci­at­ing pain. Gan­grene had set in, I fig­ured. They’d have to amputate.

When the movie end­ed and we walked out of the the­ater, my arm hung off my shoul­der like a piece of dead meat.

Out on the street, Ann broke the world record in the fifty-yard-dash sprint­ing to her mom’s car.

Mar­cia walked away slow­ly, her head down­cast. At her car door, she turned and glared at Richard. It was only then I noticed the red welt on his cheek.

Ger­ry lin­gered beside Arthur. Sud­den­ly, she pecked him on the lips and ran out to her mom’s car, leav­ing him with a dazed smile on his face.

Cradling my right arm with my left, I crossed the side­walk and got in our Rambler.

“How was your date?” Mom asked, smiling.

“Okay,” I muttered.

Her smile fell. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Why are you rub­bing your arm?”

“Try­ing to get the blood to come back,” I said under my breath, clench­ing and unclench­ing my fist.

“What?”

“Noth­ing.”

The blood came back; they didn’t have to ampu­tate, and Ann and I avoid­ed each oth­er for the rest of the eighth grade.

Post­script: In The Princess of Sug­ar Val­ley’s open­ing scene, Riley Sny­der, a skin­ny lit­tle boy in Gra­cie Sandridge’s sev­enth-grade class, asks her to meet him at a foot­ball game. Ear­ly in the game, he puts his arm up on her seat’s back­rest. As the game pro­gress­es, she notices he seems to be in pain and guess­es why. In an act of mer­cy, she lifts his hand over her head and drops it in his lap.

“Why’d you do that?” he says, look­ing stricken.

“You ought to thank me for it,” she says. “Once gan­grene sets in, they have to amputate.”

The scene is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, except for the act of mercy.

Today Psy­cho is rat­ed R, but the MMPA movie rat­ing sys­tem didn’t come along until 1968. It has spawned many enthu­si­as­tic detrac­tors. I’m not one of them. If it had exist­ed in 1960, it would have pro­tect­ed an inno­cent thir­teen-year-old boy from almost los­ing his right arm.

On August 9, John Welch, a Lath­am & Watkins retired part­ner, cel­e­brat­ed his 100^th birth­day with his chil­dren, grand­chil­dren, great grand­chil­dren, and great great grand­chil­dren, an astound­ing 104 direct descen­dants in all. In his long life, he has pos­i­tive­ly influ­enced the lives of thou­sands of peo­ple. I’m one of them. 

John grew up in north­ern Utah, grad­u­at­ed from Utah State Uni­ver­si­ty, served four years as an Army offi­cer dur­ing World War II, earned his law degree from Har­vard, and joined Lath­am in 1948.

I arrived at Lath­am thir­ty years lat­er and became inter­est­ed in labor law ear­ly on, but I was reluc­tant to join the firm’s Labor Depart­ment. My one and only reser­va­tion was John Welch. By then, he was the chair­man of the depart­ment, a giant in labor law cir­cles, and the most stern, intim­i­dat­ing per­son I’d ever encountered.

For a junior attor­ney, meet­ings with him were an expe­ri­ence in psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture. When I entered his office, he wouldn’t acknowl­edge my pres­ence in any way for at least a full minute. Even when he final­ly looked at me, he remained silent until I vol­un­teered my rea­son for dark­en­ing his door. From there on, he grilled me with ques­tions I hadn’t antic­i­pat­ed. As I stam­mered through a series of insipid answers, his cold stare reduced me to a pud­dle of water. After each meet­ing, I expect­ed the firm to fire me by the end of the day. 

When my fear of John Welch was at its zenith, Lath­am decid­ed to open a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., office, and the firm’s Man­ag­ing Part­ner, Clint Steven­son, asked me to be the new office’s only labor lawyer. I was stunned, in part because I was only in my third year of prac­tic­ing law and didn’t think I had enough expe­ri­ence to do the job, but more impor­tant­ly, because I was con­vinced the Labor Depart­ment Chair­man con­sid­ered me an idiot.

“What does Mr. Welch think about this?” I asked anxiously.

Clint seemed puz­zled by the ques­tion. “We wouldn’t assign you to the posi­tion if John didn’t have full con­fi­dence in you.”

When I recov­ered from shock, my ego took over. All the big wheels in firm man­age­ment want­ed me to relo­cate to Wash­ing­ton, so I fig­ured tak­ing the job would score points with them and launch my career like a rock­et to the stars.

When John met with me, I saw a dif­fer­ent side of him. He didn’t men­tion the firm’s inter­ests. He focused sole­ly on what was best for me. “Slow down,” he said. “Think this through. Don’t get swept away by the tide.”

I didn’t heed his advice. The tide was swift; my ambi­tion blind­ed me; and I moved to Wash­ing­ton. It proved to be a ter­ri­ble mis­take. For rea­sons unre­lat­ed to me, the firm’s major east coast labor client dumped us, and my rock­et crashed and burned.

I called John and told him I want­ed to come back to LA. We met with Clint. He was deter­mined that I stay in Wash­ing­ton. We went back and forth until John said to Clint, “Ken’s return to LA is best for him, best for the Labor Depart­ment, and best for the firm. So get it done.”

Clint got it done, but when I returned to LA, I was run­ning scared. Clint wasn’t pleased with me, and Car­la Hills, the Wash­ing­ton office Man­ag­ing Part­ner, want­ed me fired. Sens­ing my state of pan­ic, John sat me down. “Calm down,” he said. “Do good work, and you’ll be fine.”

This time I lis­tened to him, and over the next sev­er­al years, John gave me guid­ance with a light touch at the crit­i­cal moments when I need­ed it most. With his help, I rebuilt my career and survived.

A few years lat­er, my-five-year old son fell prey to a rare dis­ease. By the time the doc­tors diag­nosed it cor­rect­ly, his con­di­tion was crit­i­cal. I dropped every­thing at work, and my son and I moved into a children’s hos­pi­tal. John vis­it­ed us our first day there. After a game of Chutes and Lad­ders, he took me aside. “Don’t wor­ry about any­thing at the office,” he said. “We’ll cov­er your work. You stay here with your son until he gets well.” His delib­er­ate use of the word “until,” and not “if,” helped steel me for the com­ing days.

My son made a full recov­ery, thank God, and I returned to work with a dif­fer­ent mind­set. Up to that point, I’d made the bad choice of ele­vat­ing my career above my fam­i­ly. I want­ed to change my ways. When the local soc­cer league asked me to coach a team, I faced the first test of my new-found resolve. To coach, I had to com­mit to two week­day after­noon prac­tices dur­ing the sea­son. I couldn’t see how I could leave the office ear­ly and still man­age my caseload.

I men­tioned my dilem­ma to John. “You can do both,” he said.

“How?”

“Treat the soc­cer prac­tices like a client com­mit­ment. When you plan to meet a client at four in the after­noon, you put it on the cal­en­dar, block out the time, and rearrange your sched­ule to com­plete the rest of your work. Do the same with the soc­cer prac­tices. Put them on your cal­en­dar and treat them like a client meeting.”

That sim­ple sug­ges­tion worked and it changed my life. I coached my kids’ teams for a decade and spent more time with my fam­i­ly. My bal­ance between fam­i­ly and work wasn’t always per­fect from there on, but I became a bet­ter hus­band and father.

Short­ly before John’s 100th birth­day, Lath­am facil­i­tat­ed a zoom con­fer­ence call of retired part­ners who were close to him. The goal was to pro­duce a video from edit­ed excerpts of our state­ments about John. We were asked to choose a word or phrase that best describes him and to tell sto­ries about our expe­ri­ences with him. Wise, stead­fast, pro­fes­sion­al, and deter­mined were words the oth­ers chose as they spoke about his pos­i­tive impact on their lives. My phrase for John was life coach, and I told the sto­ries I’ve relat­ed here. When I came to the part about John’s vis­it­ing me and my son in the hos­pi­tal, I broke down and had to regroup before I could go on. Forty years after my son’s ill­ness, my grat­i­tude for John’s encour­age­ment and com­pas­sion dur­ing the biggest cri­sis of my life over­whelmed me dur­ing the tap­ing, and it did again as I wrote this.

John has brought to the art of liv­ing a grace, dig­ni­ty, and con­sis­ten­cy unprece­dent­ed in its qual­i­ty and longevi­ty. In my view, 100 years of John Welch isn’t enough. In August 2021, when this pan­dem­ic is over, I’m look­ing for­ward to a face-to-face cel­e­bra­tion of year 101.

Post Script:  In addi­tion to John’s prodi­gious intel­lect, he’s an amaz­ing phys­i­cal spec­i­men. When he was 63 and I was 36, he invit­ed me to run six miles with him. I’d been run­ning for a while and thought I was in good enough shape to keep pace with him. I was wrong. He ran me into the ground. “Nice easy run, Ken,” he said, slap­ping me on the back at the fin­ish line. When he was out of sight, I went behind a hedge-row and threw up. 

He made back­pack­ing trips to the high Sier­ras reg­u­lar­ly into his 80’s. He climbed Mount Whit­ney five times. A heli­copter took him on 44 trips to the high­est peaks of the Cana­di­an Rock­ies and dropped him off to ski the steep slopes, and he con­tin­ued ski­ing into his late 90’s. An inter­net sports pub­li­ca­tion taped a doc­u­men­tary about his fit­ness reg­i­men when he was 95. It’s less than four min­utes long and gives you a good sense of who he is. You can see it here: https://www.facebook.com/peoplegettingfit/videos/1553166878343180.

John was the ninth attor­ney to join Lath­am & Watkins. Today, it employs 2600 attor­neys in 29 cities all over the world. He is the firm’s first and only retired part­ner to reach the age of 100.

Foot­note: The last three pho­tographs in this post appeared in a May 4, 2018, arti­cle in the Deseret News.