Summaries

Synopsis

A Florida con man named Thomas Jefferson Johnson (Eddie Murphy) runs scams on wealthy people. He has a phone sex line, from where he gets credit card info of customers. from cards he figures out everything there is to know about them. In one case he comes upon Zeke Bridges (Noble Willingham) a friend of a US congressman Jeff Davis Johnson, who was hosting a $1000/guest banquet for the congressman, for 50 of his friends. Thomas sends the phone sex girl (his cousin Loretta Hicks (Sheryl Lee Ralph)) in there to threaten Zeke, and Zeke would do anything to get her out of the house. Meanwhile Thomas himself pretends to be a cop and wants Zeke to testify against the girl, and he knows that Zeke would never do that. Zeke pays Thomas $20K to make the "problem" disappear.

Jeff Davis was backed by Olaf Andersen (Joe Don Baker) a PAC (CEO of a major power company). Jeff Davis had told Olaf that after 20 yrs he wanted to retire, since if he retired this yr, he could keep $1.5 MM in campaign funds from previous campaigns. To convince him to run again, Olaf gives Jeff Davis insider Info on a stock, to help him make some more money.

Thomas uses the passing of the longtime Congressman from his district, Jefferson Davis "Jeff" Johnson (James Garner) (who died of a heart attack while having sex with his secretary Kimberly (Sarah Carson)), to get elected to the United States Congress as a freshman Congressman, where the money flows from lobbyists. The con is that as congressman he gets a base salary of $130K and staff salary of $500K+ per year. Van Dyke (Sonny Jim Gaines) becomes Jeff's advisor. Jeff needs 5600 signatures to get on the ballot.When Jeff Davis dies, fellow congressman Dick Dodge (Lane Smith) tries to convince his wife to run for office instead, but she refuses.

Omitting his first name, and abbreviating his middle name, he calls himself "Jeff" Johnson. He then manages to get on the ballot by pitching a senior's organization, the Silver Foxes (they are another party separate from the democrats or the republicans), to endorse him.Once on the election ballot, he uses the dead Congressman's old campaign material (which he gets from his wife Vera (Cynthia Harris), by posing as a fan of her dead husband's policies) and runs a low budget campaign that appeals to name recognition, figuring most people do not pay much attention and simply vote for the "name you know." He wins a slim victory and is off to Washington, a place where the "streets are lined with gold."

Once in DC, Jeff and his troops are totally lost as there are procedures that Jeff's completely unaware of. He has to hire Arthur Reinhardt (Grant Shaud) as his assistant, as he was the assistant to the dead congressman Johnson and had sent Jeff all of briefing material to Florida, before his flight to DC.Jeff also meets lobbyist Terry Corrigan (Kevin McCarthy). Terry coaches Jeff on how getting on the right committees helps you raise more money. and Dick Dodge is the big fish as he is the chairman of the Power & Industry committee and is constantly lobbied by all trade groups. Jeff wants Arthur to get him on that committee.

Jeff starts by asking all his staff to call Dodge's office and pretend to be from a minority group and raise the issue of lack of diversity on Dodge's committee. Loretta then meets Kimberly and says that she heard that Dodge is about to be picketed by the press on the diversity issue. Dodge invites Jeff on his committee. Skeeter Warburton (Daniel Benzali) is the Chairman of the Environmental Protection Agency and is in cahoots with Dodge.

Elijah Hawkins (Charles S. Dutton) is a fellow negro congressman and thinks Jeff is wasting his opportunity by being Dodge's boy. Celia Kirby (Victoria Rowell) works for Pro Bono. Jeff is romantically interested in Celia, but she thinks he is interested in her work and spends more time bringing her research on various social issues to him.Terry then coaches Jeff on taking positions on issues that lead to more contributions from interest groups. Jeff wants to know why Celia is not a lawyer, pulling in $100K every year and she replies that she wants her life to mean something. Celia turns out to be Elijah's niece.

Initially, the lucrative donations and campaign contributions roll in, but as he learns the nature of the con game in Washington D.C., he starts to see how the greed and corruption makes it difficult to address issues such as campaign finance reform, environmental protection, and the possibility that electric power companies may have a product that is giving kids in a small-town cancer. reality hits home when a mother and her bald daughter accost Jeff in his office and tell him how high voltage power lines passing through their community is giving kids brain tumors.

Jeff brings the issue to Dodge, who is supportive in public, but tells Jeff that he will never bring the issue to inquiry. Dodge tells Jeff that Olaf and Zeke (CEO of a major insurance player) are his major contributors, and he doesn't want to anger them either. Olaf and Zeke tell Jeff that it will cost $5Bn to move the lines and the inquiry would plummet the value of all homes near power lines and kill the real estate market. The insurance claims will be astronomical. Olaf then contributes $200K to Jeff's campaign funds.

Meanwhile, Elijah is angry with Dodge for killing his bills and threatens to run against him for speaker. Dodge sends Jeff to placate Elijah. Both have some drinks, and Loretta was driving them home when a taxi rear ended them. Jeff calls Dodge for help. Dodge gets Arthur to secretly release to the press that Elijah was drunk and was with a woman, who was earlier involved in a phone sex operation.Jeff is angry about how Dodge set Elijah up. He decides to run a con on Dodge. He gets Arthur to meet Jeff's con operative (who poses as an EPA guy) who says that EPA is going to run an investigation between power lines and cancer clusters. Arthur tells Dodge, which Jeff predicted.

Then Jeff gets into Skeeter's office (by getting Skeeter to leave by pretending to spray his office with disinfectants) and when Dodge calls, Jeff (as Skeeter) tells him that EPA is writing a report on cancer clusters. Dodge uses this confirmation to shake Olaf down for another $1MM as campaign "contributions"..

The next day, at the committee hearing, Jeff invites the press and announces that he videotaped the meeting between Dodge and Olaf and threatens to release it on CNN. Dodge takes Jeff into the back room and Olaf walks in. Unknown to both, this is the conversation that Jeff videotapes where Olaf lists all of the phony contributions he made, including funding the college education of Dodge's kids.Jeff plays this recording during the committee hearing (when Dodge proceeds) and exposes Dick as corrupt. Dick also alleges that Jeff is a conman, and he agrees.As the film ends, it appears likely that Johnson will be thrown out of Congress for the manner in which he was elected, but he defiantly declares, "I'm going to run for President!" then breaking the fourth wall.