User:Topeakinrata/sandbox

It's three weeks into the presidential campaign and Vinick meets with Frost out on the trail, where the intelligence analyst's views clearly don't impress the Senator. Vinick has to deal with two wedge issues that are affecting his campaign: immigration and abortion rights. On the former front, Vinick is able to score points by pledging to double border security funding, meeting with (and then strongly criticizing the tactics of) an anti-immigration militia group, and tying Santos to the negative sides of the issue via Santos past pro-immigration policies and (implicitly) his subjectivity due to his Latino heritage. One of Vinick's top aides is a young Latino man who resigns from his campaign because he says he cannot stomach the idea of working day and night to defeat the first serious Latino contender for the Presidency. On the abortion issue, Vinick has a problem from a hardline Christian group who want veto rights over judicial appointments because they feel Vinick is too pro-choice and make it clear his agreement to them is the price for their large group of supporters to not stay home on Election Day. Vinick makes a general promise that gets leaked to the media, but his VP candidate, strongly religious and pro-life Gov. Ray Sullivan, meets with the group's representative and gets him back in line by mixing his own track record of appointing pro-life judges in West Virginia (even though, in real life, judges in West Virginia are not appointed by anyone but popularly elected) and making it clear that he'll take action if he gets any more unpleasant "surprises". Santos' campaign was riding high off of his reserve defense duty work, but runs into some turbulence here because of the issues and Josh's inability to come out ahead in debate negotiations with Bruno Gianelli (who Josh cannot believe is working for a Republican candidate).