2020 United States presidential election

The 2020 United States presidential election is the novel's central political crucible, the contest in which President Ellen Claremont seeks a second term against Republican challenger Senator Jeffrey Richards. It is the election that Texas flips blue for the first time in decades, delivering Claremont a decisive 301 electoral votes, and it is the election nearly derailed by the Waterloo Letters scandal, the Richards campaign's conspiracy to surveil, hack, and out Alex Claremont-Diaz. The election's outcome vindicates the First Family, exposes Richards's hostile conspiracy, and transforms Alex from a campaign operative into a man planning a future beyond politics.

The Campaign and the Texas Gamble

As the general election approaches, the Claremont campaign makes a bold strategic bet: a massive rally at Minute Maid Park in Houston, the result of Alex's lobbying with one of the campaign chairs and his own mother. Polls are shifting in directions never seen before, and Politico's top story of the week asks whether 2020 is the year Texas becomes a true battleground state. The campaign's internal dynamics are on display as Ellen Claremont, barely paying attention, promises Alex she will make sure everyone knows the Houston rally was his idea, while June reads the speech over her mother's shoulder and advises using "grit" instead of "fortitude" because Texans like grit. The Texas Binder, the compendium of Texas voters Alex has been studying, becomes a symbol of the campaign's hopes and of Alex's own future. Every time he looks at it, he knows it is a big fat case for him to go take the LSAT, as both his parents wish he would instead of diving headfirst into politics. He has always said no, but now he is beginning to reconsider.

The Waterloo Letters Scandal

On September 27, 2020, the Daily Mail publishes the first of the emails between Alex and Prince Henry, obtained by the British tabloid and uploaded to WikiLeaks under the moniker "The Waterloo Letters," seemingly named for a reference to the Waterloo Vase in the Buckingham Palace Gardens in one email composed by Henry. The correspondence, which continues regularly up to Sunday night, appears to have been lifted from a private email server used by residents of the White House. The Washington Post reports that the First Family has shuttered, with no official statement from the First Son, while White House Press Secretary Davis Sutherland issues a brief prepared statement asking for patience and understanding as the family handles this very private matter. Senator Richards seizes on the scandal at a press conference, expressing concern about the private email server and demanding to know what kind of information was being disseminated on it, insisting that American voters have a right to know everything else for which the server may have been used. Sources close to the administration insist the server is similar to one set up during the George W. Bush administration and used only for day-to-day operations and personal correspondence. For five endless, unbearable hours, Alex is shuffled from room to room in the West Wing, meeting with every strategist, press staffer, and crisis manager his mother's administration has to offer, the only moment he recalls with any clarity being when he pulls his mother into an alcove to say, "I told Raf."

The Richards Campaign Conspiracy

The scandal is not a leak but a conspiracy. Nora discovers a photo of Alex, blurry and out of focus, caught on a long-range lens, only barely recognizable, with the elegant ivory curtains of Henry's bedroom at the edge of the frame. It is attached to an email between two people, with a note from Nilsen, Richards's campaign manager, saying the photo is not nearly clear enough and that they are not paying for Bigfoot sightings. Nora reveals the full scope: Richards outed Alex as soon as he left the campaign, hiring a firm that hired the hackers who got the surveillance tapes from the Beekman. There are pay stubs and invoices and requests of service, all through back channels and go-between firms and fake names, a digital paper trail enough for a federal investigation. Richards hired a firm that hired the photographers who followed Alex and the hackers who breached the server, then hired another third party to buy everything and resell it to the Daily Mail. The Washington Post breaks the story, with emails anonymously leaked and confirmed by an anonymous source on the Richards campaign, showing that Richards or high-ranking staffers at his campaign orchestrated the plan to have Alex stalked, surveilled, hacked, and outed as part of an effort to take down Ellen Claremont in the general. The conspiracy is confirmed when Alex recognizes the code in an email as coming from Rafael Luna, who has infiltrated the Richards campaign and sent the evidence to Nora. Forty minutes before recording, Senator Luna tweets that he is parting ways with the Richards campaign, and a podcast host declares him perhaps the unlikeliest hero of the 2020 presidential race.

The Coming-Out Speech and the Public Revelation

On October 2, 2020, the whole world watches as Alex and Henry appear together publicly for the first time. Alex waits on the South Lawn, within view of the linden trees of the Kennedy Garden, where they first kissed, as Marine One touches down and Henry emerges in head-to-toe Burberry, looking dramatic and windswept. In an hour, every person in America will be able to look at a screen and see their First Son and his boyfriend, and across the Atlantic, almost as many will see their youngest prince, the most beautiful one, Prince Charming. The public revelation transforms the election, turning a scandal into a story of love in defiance of expectations. Alex's mother, Ellen Claremont, exhales slowly and grins a small, secret grin, the crooked, unflattering one she never uses in public, the one he knows best from when he was a kid around her knees in a small kitchen in Travis County, and says, "Then, fuck it." The election becomes a referendum not just on the presidency but on the First Family's right to love openly.

Election Night and the Texas Flip

On November 3, 2020, Alex votes in his hometown, tugging his bottom lip between his teeth, scuffing the heel of his boot against the linoleum floor, and looking down at his ballot. He picks up the stylus chained to the machine, his heart behind his molars, and selects CLAREMONT, ELLEN and HOLLERAN, MICHAEL. The machine chirps its approval, and to its gently humming mechanisms, he could be anybody, one of millions, a single tally mark, worth no more or less than any of the others. It is a risk doing election night in their hometown, as there is no rule technically saying the sitting president cannot host the rally in DC, but it is customary to do it at home. On the projection screen, Texas is gray for five more seconds before flooding beautiful, unmistakable Lake LBJ blue. Thirty-eight votes for Claremont, for a grand total of 301, and the presidency. "Four more years!" Alex's mom outright screams, louder than he has heard her scream in years, and the cheers come in a hum, in a rumble, and finally in a storm, pressing from the other side of the partition, from the hills surrounding the arena and the city surrounding the streets, from the country itself, and from a few sleepy allies in London. President Ellen Claremont steps up to the podium and delivers her victory address from Austin, Texas, thanking the voters who chose a woman and a family with Texas dirt under their shoes, a family made up of the children of immigrants, of people who love in defiance of expectations or condemnation, of women determined never to back down from what's right.

Aftermath and Alex's New Future

The election's aftermath marks a turning point for Alex. He has become a new kind of icon, someone who laughs on even footing with his royal boyfriend on the cover of a magazine, someone willing to accept the years stretching ahead of him, to give himself time. He reveals to Nora that he snuck off and took the LSAT that summer, and she immediately understands, saying "law school" as simply as she said "dick you down" all those months ago, the simple answer to where he has been unknowingly headed all along. She is about to start applying for her master's, and they can do it together. The night of the victory, Alex grabs Henry by the hand and says, "Follow me," trading Liam and Spencer the promise of a six-pack for their bikes, and Henry does not ask questions, just kicks the stand out and disappears into the night behind him. Henry is family now, part of it all, headlines and oil paintings and pages in the Library of Congress, etched right alongside, and part of them, goddamn forever. The election that nearly destroyed them has instead made them permanent.