Bluebird for Congress (Adventurers)
Bluebird for Congress is a storyline for the Adventurers supergroup, starting in May 2019 and intended to continue through September 2019.
Contents
Background
Who is Bluebird?
Bluebird is the nom de guerre of Olivia Ellison, a 25 year-old resident of Millennium City. Olivia works for her family's global hotel chain, Ellison Hotels; yet far from being a trust fund heiress, Olivia has completed a business degree and earned her seat at the executive table with her sound business acumen.
Secretly, Olivia takes to the streets as Bluebird, emulating her older half-sister, Sarah, the hero Night Star from New York City. Trained by Red Spider, Olivia has no powers, so relies on cunning and stealth more than her fists - though she is a capable fighter when need arises.
Why is Bluebird Running for Congress?
Recently, Millennium City's Congressman, Harland "Hal" Duran (D) passed away at the age of 66. His passing was deemed natural, and it began a process of a special election to replace him next fall. Everything seemed fine! ... and then, while surveilling mafia-connected gangsters on an unrelated matter, Bluebird overheard one boasting that he was part of a plot to poison Duran so that his vacant seat could be filled by someone hand-picked by the mob. Bluebird tracked this gangster down, captured him, and questioned him - but couldn't get him to break. She had to abandon him when his buddies arrived.
In the aftermath, that gangster seemed to disappear.
Bluebird started looking into likely gang-linked candidates, but could find few leads worth pursuing. She realized she needed to get into the system, not as an outsider, but someone working within it: as a candidate.
Upon sharing her plans with her sister and friends, Olivia became convinced that her candidacy was not crazy - she had the education, the experience, and the connections - and maybe, just maybe, she could stand of chance of winning. The better she did, the better her chances of getting close to other candidates, and be able to better understand the flow of money in campaigns.
Despite making a serious bid to contend, though, Olivia hasn't lost sight of her reason for running: someone killed Representative Duran, and she intends to find out why.
Campaign Events
Primaries
| Week | Event | Olivia's Polling | Brownlee's Polling | Pittman's Polling | Strom's Polling | Undecided |
| 1 | Olivia declares. She works on policy, establishes a campaign office at her family's hotel in MC, and hires a staff. | 5% | 15% | 19% | 13% | 48% |
| 2 | Events of Adventurers #252 (Battle at the High School). Republican primary contender Carl Michaels uses the schoolground battle to stoke fear and hate toward meta-humans. Olivia goes public with her urban redevelopment plan. | 9% | 14% | 21% | 11% | 45% |
| 3 | Olivia's office is taken over by an army of mind controlled people, predominantly homeless, held in sway by Pariah. Pariah doesn't like Olivia's plan to redevelop the remaining ruins of Old Detroit - it's where he and his thralls live, and he styles himself a king. The Adventurers help free Olivia before Pariah can mind control her, and she uses rhetorical persuasion to help break the spell over Pariah's thralls. Video of Olivia non-violently handling the mob gives her a huge surge in media attention and popularity, making her the presumed front-runner for her party overnight. | 39% | 16% | 17% | 11% | 17% |
| 4 | A strangely quiet week for the campaign. Most candidates focused on their door-to-door work, and on fundraising. | 36% | 17% | 19% | 13% | 15% |
| 5 | A break in at the local DNC offices by the costumed thief Ms. Direction is thwarted, and she fails to escape with the file cabinet she seemed to be after. But when a DNC audit of the records in the targeted cabinet reveals a previously unaccounted financial disclosure from Olivia Ellison suggesting she has taken funds from an ARGENT-linked think tank. Her critics are quick to paint Olivia as a hypocrite and a criminal for knowingly violating campaign finance law in accepting a corporate donation. | 28% | 19% | 21% | 14% | 18% |
| 6 | Olivia continues to struggle in the polls as opposing newspapers pillory her as corrupt, even though no new evidence is brought to light. She meets secretly with Clayton Ewing, a Republican primary contender, who assesses Olivia's character, and then confides that he thinks Congressman Duran was murdered.
Olivia comes to her campaign office to find a live bluebird nailed to the door by its wing one day. Olivia directs her security staff not to talk about it and keep it out of the media. Clayton Ewing survives an apparent assassination attempt, out-drawing a would-be gunman and putting him in hospital with a gunshot wound. The attacker dies in hospital overnight due to a medication conflict. |
23% | 25% | 19% | 16% | 17% |
| 7 | The Adventurers discover a connection between Lester Brownlee and crime boss Cosmo Liddell - they're cousins. Liddell's freight company was at odds with the Strom/ARGENT one, so he wanted to get his cousin into Congress to tip the scales for him. Azure Hawk publicly embarrassed Brownlee with evidence. His campaign was DOA by the next morning. Olivia Ellison was exonerated. | 30% | 8% | 24% | 18% | 20% |
Polling data is accurate to within ±5%, 19 times out of 20.
Candidates
Agendas
Every candidate running has their focus. A campaign tends to benefit from having a strong, tightly-controlled message on a small number of policy areas. Conversely, voters may grow fatigued with a candidate who blusters on about esoteric policy areas.
Motives
Motives
- Ambition - Personal drive to 'climb the ladder'
- Ideology - Wants to enact their vision of how society should be
- Service - Wishes to serve others and/or the common good
- Renown - Revels in being well-known and/or well-liked; wants to make history
- Power - Hopes to enhance their wealth, influence, and/or privilege
Policy Strengths
- Economy - Industry, commerce, employment, transportation, ports, power grid
- Environment - Climate, conservation, protection, restoration
- Government - taxation, governance, elections, immigration, civil service
- Justice - Law enforcement, prosecution, penalties, civil rights
- National Defense - procurement, recruitment, deployment, veterans affairs
- Culture - Arts, heritage
- Social - education, health, NGOs, welfare, community & protective services
- Foreign policy - relationships, intelligence, sanctions, trade
Democratic
Republican
