Summary
Babs Marvin, luminous heiress to a political dynasty, combusts on contact with David Darrow, a razor-edged attorney whose conscience is mortgaged to ambition. Their affair detonates when Darrow uncovers the rot inside Eben Sprague, the senator’s anointed candidate, and weaponizes the secret: swap support to me, or the press gorges on your fraud. Horrified that the man she loves is bartering integrity for a pliant electorate, Babs retaliates with absurdist brilliance, drafting the town’s most conspicuous indigent—Hank Dawes, a ragged ghost of Main Street—into the race. Her satirical crusade, christened “Elect Dawes—Get Him Off Relief,” metastasizes into populist frenzy; the derelict triumphs, the machine sputters, and the lovers reconcile amid the embers of a rigged game.
Synopsis
Babs Marvin loves David Darrow, a young lawyer. Babs' father, the powerful Senator Marvin, is supporting Eben Sprague for a seat in the State Legislature. Darrow discovers that Sprague is a crook and threatens to expose the candidate unless the senator agrees to switch his support to him. Babs opposes Darrow's decision, fearing that it will ruin his promising law career. Determined to defeat Darrow, she promotes the candidacy of the village pauper, Hank Dawes, and contrives an elaborate campaign based upon the slogan that Dawes' election would remove him from the welfare rolls. Dawes wins the election, but Darrow is consoled with Babs's love and the senator's support of his law career.
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