Republican Party of the United States

The Republican Party appears as both an electoral organization and a social network of donors, candidates, and public figures. Through Kelly Kelleher’s family ties and her opposition to Republican politicians, the novel places party politics inside intimate relationships, while the Senator’s fear of losing his party’s future nomination shows how political belonging can become bound up with personal survival and public reputation.

Political and Social Network

Kelly’s father, Arthur Kelleher, is a longtime friend and golfing partner of Hamlin Hunt, a Republican congressman. Even when business is going poorly after a stock-market collapse, Arthur continues contributing to Hunt’s campaigns and helps host large fundraising dinners at the Gowanda Heights Country Club. He takes pride in being included in Republican Party events at both local and state levels, making party affiliation part of his social identity as well as his political support.

Hunt has become a nationally visible and controversial figure, appearing on television talk shows and in news interviews as a conservative maverick. He attacks liberalism while describing himself publicly as pro-choice. Kelly’s anger at his politics turns the family connection into a source of conflict: she denounces her father for supporting Hunt, while her mother responds by reminding her that she cannot presume to know how her mother votes.

Kelly’s Opposition and Electoral Politics

Kelly’s knowledge of politicians comes partly from studying American history and politics at Brown, but also from growing up around her father’s partisan commitments. She sees Hunt’s views on abortion as genocidal and confronts her father over his support. The disagreement is not merely abstract: her father’s campaign contributions and participation in party events make political allegiance an ongoing feature of their family life.

During the most recent presidential election, Kelly volunteers for Governor Dukakis’s campaign in Cambridge. She initially regards George Bush’s public presentation as so transparently hypocritical and venal that voters must reject him. The campaign workers around her share the expectation that Dukakis can win, although national polls indicate otherwise; only in the final weeks, perhaps the final days, does Kelly understand that the campaign is doomed. Her father then berates her for spending her time and energy on it, sharpening the contrast between his Republican loyalties and her Democratic activism.

Party Ambition and Public Image

The Republican Party’s importance also appears in the Senator’s private panic after the crash. Injured and covered in black muck, he imagines that the accident could end his political prospects: he fears not being nominated by his party, not being elected president, and being publicly derided by his enemies. His immediate concern is therefore not confined to the accident’s human consequences; it expands into a terror that political favor and public standing may be withdrawn.

That fear belongs to the novel’s broader portrayal of politics as a struggle over reputation and hostility. In the telephone booth, the Senator tells Ray Annick that Kelly is dead and predicts that they will accuse him of manslaughter, while Ray urges him not to discuss the matter over the phone and asks where he is. The party itself is not shown directing this response, but the Senator’s imagined political ruin makes clear how thoroughly his ambitions shape the way he understands the crisis.

National Ritual and Political Symbolism

The Republican Party’s electoral world sits against the novel’s recurring images of national celebration. On the Fourth of July, parties, fireworks, and the St. John family’s large American flag frame the events around the Senator and Kelly. The flag remains visible above the party even as the narrative moves between the celebration and Kelly’s death in the black water, setting national symbols of continuity beside an individual catastrophe.

This contrast does not make the flag or the holiday a direct emblem of the Republican Party. Instead, the political network of campaigns and party nomination occupies a national landscape where patriotism is publicly performed and political ambition is privately feared. The result is a portrait of party politics as both organized social belonging and a precarious claim to public legitimacy.