Toby Corners Defector Kimball on Grazing Fees Ultimatum
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Toby confronts Congressman Kimball outside the White House, immediately establishing tension over Kimball's delayed arrival and shifting allegiance.
Kimball reveals his leverage—four proxy votes—and presents his demands, turning the conversation transactional.
Toby challenges Kimball's betrayal, questioning how a Democrat could undermine their own president.
Kimball defends his position with economic arguments about the estate tax, while Toby rejects the justification.
Toby accuses Kimball of holding the administration hostage, solidifying the power struggle.
Kimball bluntly names his price—grazing fees—forcing Toby to engage with his demands under time pressure.
Toby grudgingly accepts the negotiation, acknowledging the ticking clock as they move inside.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Smug confidence bordering on arrogance
Kimball emerges smugly from his car, casually dismissing delays, reveals four proxies for veto leverage, counters Toby's moral appeals with estate tax economics, and demands grazing fee talks from a position of strength.
- • Maximize farm-state concessions using proxy leverage
- • Exploit White House desperation for personal district gains
- • Party loyalty yields to constituent economic needs like grazing fees
- • Estate tax rhetoric ignores real-dollar farm burdens
Righteously indignant, masking desperation with sarcasm
Toby lunges to intercept Kimball post-car arrival, sharply rebuking his delay and defection with principled fury, invoking Democratic history via TVA and farm nets, then yields to urgent negotiation on grazing fees amid ticking veto clock.
- • Shame Kimball into loyalty or secure his vote via concessions
- • Preserve Bartlet's veto by flipping the defector quickly
- • Democratic presidents deserve unwavering party loyalty from beneficiaries like Tennessee farmers
- • Historical investments like TVA bind constituents to the party's agenda over personal gain
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Congressman Kimball's car serves as the immediate backdrop and narrative trigger, pulling up outside the White House under night's chill; Kimball exits it with finality, stranding it as a silent emblem of his calculated late arrival, heightening Toby's intercept tension and underscoring the defector's isolated opportunism amid crisis horse-trading.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Tennessee Farm Country is weaponized rhetorically by Toby as a moral cudgel, its shadowed hollows and electrified barns invoked to shame Kimball's defection—recalling Democratic TVA dams and safety nets that birthed rural resilience, now betrayed for grazing fee ransom in White House night frenzy.
The White House exterior at night frames Toby's frantic ambush of Kimball post-car exit, its looming columns and manicured lawns witnessing a tense standoff where principle fractures under proxy leverage and grazing fee demands, amplifying the stakes of Bartlet's veto salvage amid Erev Yom Kippur urgency.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
The Democratic Party looms as Toby's invoked moral authority, its historical TVA and farm net lifelines for Tennessee wielded to indict Kimball's proxy betrayal of a Democratic president, fracturing party unity in frantic veto override horse-trading where loyalty splinters against farm-state muscle.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Key Dialogue
"TOBY: How does a Democrat from Tennessee Farm Country, where we championed electrification -- the Tennessee Valley Authority, farm safety nets, the... how do you do this to a democratic president?"
"KIMBALL: I've got some things I'd like to talk about and I feel I'm in a fairly strong negotiating position."
"TOBY: Grazing fees. Let's go; we're running out of time."