The powerful chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat Bernie Edelstein of California, dies suddenly of a heart attack, leaving the Democrats with a razor-slim one-vote Senate margin. Unwittingly, Sacramento television reporter Jack Summerland stumbles onto the story and soon finds himself in the middle of deadly game of political intrigue that takes him from the halls of power at the State Capitol to the back streets of Sacramento and academia in Berkeley.