The Return of George Pataki
Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:45:00
The last time most people saw George Pataki (R), he was sitting on stage at Eliot Spitzer’s (D) inauguration, being compared to Rip Van Winkle.
What a difference the most tumultuous two years in state political history makes.
Of the Democrats elected in 2006, Spitzer, Alan Hevesi and Hillary Clinton are gone, as is their mandate and most of the reserve of good will.
In their place is the ever-less popular Gov. David Paterson, an ongoing embarrassment for Democrats, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the result of an appointment process that may only be rivaled in rockiness by the crowded primary she seems certain to face next year.
And in response there is George Pataki, the man not so long ago reviled for presiding over the long, slow funeral of the state GOP through the end of the last decade and the beginning of this one, about to be drafted as his party’s great hope for the next one.
Or, in the words of one former operative: “Jesus Christ. I mean, he could win—but Jesus Christ.”
Former State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is on board. “We sure miss him,” he explained. “He’s a winner.” State Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos is too. “I’d love to see him,” he said.
Even GOP state chair Joseph Mondello, who all of eight months ago left Pataki’s name off the delegate list for the Republican National Convention allegedly because the former three-term governor did not call personally to ask for a spot, has thrown himself hard into Pataki’s corner and pledged to do everything he can to convince Pataki to run for Senate (the rumors of his interest in another run for governor do not appear to have much grounding).
“I’m thrilled to death that Governor Pataki is back,” Mondello said.
Brian Kolb, the new Assembly minority leader, tried to explain the collective change of heart.
“Sometimes when you’re in public service for a period of time, people take you for granted. They say, ‘Oh, Governor Pataki.’ They want somebody new,” Kolb said. “Then they get somebody new, and they say, ‘Oh god, we want Governor Pataki back.’”
Kolb chuckled.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he said.
All this is a welcome change, Pataki said.
“Obviously, it’s wonderful when people come up on the street and say, ‘Thank you, you did a good job, we want you back,’” he said, explaining his thinking in his first extended interview since leaving office. “I’m as human as anybody else. I like that. It’s a lot better than people coming up and saying, ‘You bum.’”
Pataki’s electoral appeal is hard to dispute. He was 36 years old when he knocked off his first incumbent to become mayor of Peekskill. Three years later, he knocked off another to take an Assembly seat. Those were both Democrats. But in 1992, instead of trying to win re-election in a redrawn district, Pataki ran and won a primary against seven-term Republican State Sen. Mary Goodhue. Two years later, he was the governor-elect, and he barely broke a sweat defending the office in the next two elections.
In part, he got lucky. New Yorkers were tired of Mario Cuomo (D) by 1994, and being a Republican the year of the Gingrich Revolution did not hurt either. Democrats strained for candidates in 1998, with their bigger guns all in the fight for the Senate nomination, and in 2002, he rode a post-Sept. 11 bump to victory as the Democrats collapsed into the Shakespearean primary between Andrew Cuomo and Carl McCall.
There was also that undeniable Pataki charm, or what Quinnipiac pollster Mickey Carroll, who has covered Pataki as a reporter during the early years of his administration, called “the old Jimmy Stewart stuff. Tall, low key and amiable.”
But perhaps most important was Pataki’s shifting of policy away from traditional Republican principles to win himself political support in an increasingly non-Republican state—most famously, with the political masterstroke which made an ally out of Dennis Rivera and 1199 through concessions on health care, though there are numerous examples of this triangulation and co-opting the Democratic base from throughout his years as governor.
Part of being a savvy politician is knowing when to quit. Pataki took himself out of a race for a fourth term in August 2005, and with his image battered, that 2008 presidential run that had him traveling to and opening offices in Iowa never materialized either. But still, after a quarter century in politics and a history of uphill battles, he has never delivered a concession speech.
Two years in private life have not changed Pataki much. As governor, he perfected the art of avoiding direct answers, and he boasts, justifiably, at how sharp those skills remain. Sitting next door to the office in 30 Rockefeller Center where he works as counsel at Chadbourne & Parke and helps run the Pataki-Cahill environmental consulting group, he is still gleefully bland, friendly, fluid in conversation and ready with a folksy twang whenever he tears into the Democrats.
“I’m extremely disappointed with the course of government both in the state and on the federal level,” he said, “and certainly want to articulate some ideas and some concepts that I think would help us solve the current problems in a way that’s better than what is out there today.”
Conveniently for someone who has a Senate run being dangled in front of him, those ideas and concepts are increasingly focused on federal policy and less on the state matters that were so long at the center of his mind. But as Pataki tells the tale, that is a natural evolution.
“Now with Washington glomming on to such a massive role, not just at the expense of the private sector, but at the expense of state government too often as well—like with the undoing of welfare reform—then it becomes important to start talking about those issues as well,” Pataki explained.
The extent of Pataki’s foray into national politics was in 2000, when he made George W. Bush’ vice-presidential short list, and in 2004, when he delivered a rip-roaring attack on John Kerry in his introduction of Bush to the convention crowd at Madison Square Garden.
For all the talk and anticipation, he never did join the dozen other Republicans on stage for the 2008 presidential primary debates. Instead, he endorsed John McCain and devoted time to rallying support for the Arizona senator whose name he had tried to keep off the state primary ballot eight years earlier.
And while he voted for McCain and said he would again in a heartbeat, he said he was troubled by how the Republican campaign had unfolded.
“To me it was very disappointing, but not overly surprising. One of the sad things is that I can’t sit here and think of two or three things that we were saying if we win we will do that will make your life better,” he said.
Going forward, he said, Republicans will have to take more responsibility for their role in the financial collapse.
“I can’t believe my party was so lax on regulation. Yes, we trust the marketplace, and it’s a good thing, but it was Ronald Reagan who said ‘Trust, but verify.’ It wasn’t in the context of the economy, but in the context of the economy, that should be us,” he said.
From this he moved into what could become a campaign talking point.
“I think we failed, meaning my party at the national level over the course of the past few years,” he said, “but on the other hand, I think the solution of having politicians in Washington run our economy is a recipe for failure as well.”
Pataki agrees with the idea of a stimulus, but said that while he approves of the attention paid to infrastructure and clean energy in the one passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama, the final version was crammed too full of “social engineering and Washington power grabs that had nothing to do with economic growth.”
But politics is not about voters parsing details like these. New York was a happier place when Pataki was governor—the economy was booming, and the bumbling of the governor’s office was not a constant topic conversation. Albany may have been slow and dysfunctional, but what people seem to remember now is the lack of prostitution scandals and tax hikes. Not much could have revived Pataki and the Republican Party in the minds of New Yorkers. Helped along by the financial crisis, the Democrats have managed to find a way.
Two months after they sent him off into the sunset, only 36 percent of New Yorkers had a favorable opinion of their former governor, according to a Siena College poll from February 2007. In Siena’s April 20, 2009 poll, his approval numbers had climbed to 49 percent, only a few points shy of the highest approval numbers Siena ever recorded for him. The same poll put Paterson at 27 percent and Gillibrand at 33 percent. And while Siena did not ask what would happen in a potential Pataki-Gillibrand match-up, it did find that only 20 percent of people were ready to elect her next year, while 47 percent were looking for someone else, in a nearly 20-point spike since she took office, even as the numbers of those who would elect her have remained level.
Marist College did ask the Pataki-Gillibrand question in its March 4 poll. Just a few weeks after National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Cornyn came to New York to broach the idea of running with the governor, 41 percent of those polled picked him over Gillibrand, with only 45 percent for her. Things may have changed since, but already, said Marist Poll director Lee Miringoff, those are “very competitive numbers.”
This has gotten Pataki’s attention, even catching him somewhat by surprise.
“The idea of running for Senate a year ago was not in the cards for him,” said his longtime friend, former chief of staff and business partner John Cahill. In recent weeks, though, “he certainly has been giving it some thought, deeper thought than anyone would have imagined.”
He has taken many in the state party by surprise as well, though they now seem ready to embrace another Pataki candidacy, past disputes regardless. There is a simple pragmatism involved: despite a weakened Democratic Party and an untested governor, senator and comptroller, their bench is thin. Pataki does have the name recognition, and he might be able to put together the money, and having a man who has won statewide in the Senate slot would be a relief, even among a base he infuriated during his strikingly non-conservative later years as governor.
“There’s no question about it: over the 12 years, but certainly in the last four years, I had many differences with him and was not happy,” said Conservative Party Chair Michael Long, while admitting that he was open to the idea of once again giving Pataki the crucial ballot line had for his three gubernatorial runs.
However, Long said, this would not come without some new commitments from the governor.
“Naturally, if he got serious about running for the U.S. Senate, we’d have to sit down and have a philosophical conversation,” he said.
Then there are the realities of what running for Senate next November would entail, none harsher than the $30 million he would likely need to raise to make a serious challenge. Pataki closed the PAC he had started to fuel his presidential prospects in February, and he has just $292.23 left in an account with the State Board of Elections that has not been active since January 2007. He would be starting from scratch, and in a tough economy.
He has yet to begin fundraising or any active outreach. He says this is both a statement of principle, objecting to the constant churn of elections in the media, and a reflection of his confidence that he has enough time. After all, he tells every reporter who asks him the inevitable question of whether he is running, in 1994, back when he was an unknown state senator, he did not announce his gubernatorial campaign until that January—and look what happened then. So he has time to decide on the Senate race, he insists. Eight months at least. Maybe 10. Maybe even a year.
The party leadership will probably not be that patient. Practically, they cannot afford to be, no matter how thin their bench is. Without a fundraising operation and more active presence underway, there is no way to oust an incumbent senator, even if she is unpopular and likely to draw several primary challengers.
Mondello says he wants to know who all his statewide candidates will be by the end of the summer. Others say Pataki’s public appearances and fundraising operation will have to pick up well if he wants to signal his interest in the race.
“The longer he waits, the more remote it becomes,” said former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R), the man who engineered Pataki’s gubernatorial win 15 years ago.
Others in the party share this concern. Many may be eager to have Pataki run, but their version of what happened in 1994 makes them wonder how seriously the former governor is really weighing a return. He may have waited until that January to step in front of the cameras and officially declare his candidacy, but he was involved in extensive conversations and preparations long before. And, they point out, by the time he did, there was a critical mass of party power brokers and operatives behind him. None of that behind-the-scenes movement is going on now.
And so, some senior Republicans suspect, 2010 will in the end be a rehash of an old Pataki pattern rather than the actual emergence of a new Pataki candidacy.
“It’s like his run for president,” said one when pressed. “Some people bullshit, and he’s one of the best.”
Pataki has never run in a race like the one against Gillibrand would be. Without the power of an office to make deals on policy in exchange for political support, Pataki and his inner circle would have to devise ways of building a winning coalition that are alien to them. Nor would he have the incumbency as an excuse for the kind of Rose Garden campaigns he ran in 1998 and 2002.
The GOP is counting on the likely (and likely bloody) Democratic primary battle to help, but that may be a stretch. In 1998, after all, Chuck Schumer emerged from a real bruiser with Geraldine Ferraro and Mark Green, and still ended up beating D’Amato by 10 points.
But the race against Gillibrand seems set to be even more intense. And the more candidates who jump in, the more likely the winner will be someone without strong support from Democratic voters going into the election. That, along with the tailspin of state Democrats and the dissatisfaction with the economy could make the race too enticing for Pataki to skip.
Still, Pataki will not say anything about his intentions except that he is back.
He is writing a book, to be out next spring, which will detail his policy proposals for New York and the country. He is still working on a title.
But just being a party elder, he admitted, makes shaping the debate difficult.
“You probably can’t,” he said, “because people in elected office are the ones that get the attention by virtue of their position.”
And so he stokes the speculation.
Last year, Pataki was not even at the big state Republican Party dinner held every year in midtown Manhattan. This year, he was promoted as a featured guest, given the speaking slot right after Newt Gingrich and introduced to the crowd by Mondello as one of the party’s favorite sons.
Pataki’s speech was shorter than Gingrich’s, which included a near-announcement of the Senate candidacy on Pataki’s behalf, and even shorter than the introduction Gingrich got from Rudy Giuliani. But it was much more passionate. Picking up energy as he went, he reminded everyone of the good times, the low taxes, the energetic economy back when he was in charge. He cracked a joke about being approached by a man who scolded him for frequenting prostitutes, which Pataki used as an opportunity to absolve himself publicly of all the bad things that happened since he left.
“If there’s still any press, it wasn’t me,” he said. “I’m the former governor of New York who left voluntarily.”
Then he leaned into the podium on his left elbow, lumbering forcefully into an attack on all the Democrats who have come into power in his wake.
“Let me tell you something, to President Obama, the Democrats in Washington: this is a great country. We’re going through tough economic times. We’re going to get through it, we’re going to be stronger than we were before—not because of what you’re doing, but because of what the people are doing,” he said. “Stop claiming the sky is falling! If you would get out of the way, this country would come back stronger than it has ever been before!”
They cheered. They applauded. They banged their forks on their glasses.
Pataki shifted his weight, clearly enjoying the response and the feeling of being back up in front of a crowd.
“The Democratic Party now asks you to depend on the government, and they will provide for you. They have lost their way! They are not the future! They are not right for America!” he said, the applause beginning to drown him out. “We need to work hard, get our act together, and we’re going to elect a governor, a senator, a Senate majority, a lot of new members of Congress in New York, and we’re going to see our country and our state better come 2011!”
And with the room still cheering, he walked off stage with a broad smile on his face.
“He’s been gone too long,” Mondello said, taking back the microphone. “We’ve got to bring him back!”
Mondello waved his arm in, keeping the applause going.
People started to get convinced.
“Going into the dinner, I wasn’t certain about the bold assertions they were making,” said one Assembly Republican, reflecting on the rumors he had heard of Pataki’s return and the level of emotion and nostalgia between the former governor and the crowd. “Listening to him speak, he sounded to me like a candidate for office.”
At the end of the night, after posing for photos for the crowd and autographing a few tickets but before leaving for the night, Pataki found Mondello among the emptying tables. They hugged, and Mondello stayed gripping Pataki’s elbows as they spoke, looking deeply into each other’s eyes. They could have been posing for a wedding photo.
“Are you going to run for the Senate?” Mondello asked, trying for the straight answer which all the reporters Pataki had just escaped from failed to get.
Pataki smiled. He did not say yes. He did not say no. But he nodded his head as Mondello quietly encouraged him to take the idea seriously.
“It is so nice to be back,” Pataki said, a note of emotion swelling in his throat.
He turned to leave, shook his head, and turned back to Mondello to say it again.
“It is so nice to be back.”
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ABOVE: Conservative Party chair Michael Long said he would need to have a “philosophical conversation” before supporting Pataki again, but he is open to the idea. Photos by Daniel S. Burnstein
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Looking to the Future, Pataki Mounts Defense of the Past
Focusing on national policy is one essential part of George Pataki’s pivot into a potential Senate candidacy. Trying to recast how people remember his performance as governor is the other.
First of all, Pataki contends, the withering of New York Republicans was the result of the national party’s failures and George W. Bush’s unpopularity, and not his fault. He rejects the very common complaint that he did not do enough to build a farm team over his 12 years in charge.
“We tried very hard,” he said. “I tried very hard to work at the grassroots level to help the party. But take a look in the Northeast! It’s been very frustrating to see the impact that the perception of the national party has had on my party throughout the Northeast, and it’s made it very difficult.”
Nor does he accept the general assessment of his record as governor—that, especially as time went on, he did not do enough, he was not engaged enough, and that his administration simply treaded water.
“We got so much done,” he said.
In addition to his undisputed record on the environment, Pataki said, he has the distinction of leaving office with record highs for the state bond rating and record lows for the state unemployment numbers, all while building up billions of dollars in reserve.
But for all the blame he lays at the feet of Democrats, Pataki has his own questions to answer for, said H. Carl McCall (D), the former state comptroller and Pataki’s 2002 opponent.
“He would have to explain why the state is in such a terrible fiscal condition now, given the fact that he was here for 12 years, and one could suggest he would be the one responsible,” McCall said.
For example, McCall indicated that the bond rating might be attributable to the fiscally questionable move of racking up large debts. And anyway, McCall added, there are quite a few questions about how the bond agencies made their ratings in the wake of the Wall Street collapse.
Pataki stands by what he called a forward-thinking approach, despite the jump from a $63.23 billion state budget in his first year to a $112.8 billion budget in his 12th
“We worked very hard to prepare for difficult times,” he said, attributing the success to doing “the fiscally conservative, prudent things.”
There is more to his record than that, though. Pataki wants people to recognize the pro-business, pro-development atmosphere he fostered, which meant that more towers were built in Manhattan during his years in charge than at any other time in history (and, notably, that leaves the building he had dubbed the Freedom Tower as the only such project currently underway in the United States).
And they should recognize as well his record on fighting crime, instead of just giving all the credit for the declines to mayors Rudy Giuliani (R) and Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) and a sustained economic boom. The 100-plus criminal justice laws he signed, including measures to toss bad judges and reform the parole system, has a lot to do with New York going from the most dangerous state to the safest large state between 1995 and 2006.
“Yes, Rudy and Mike and Commissioner Kelly, and before him, Rudy’s commissioners, deserve a lot of credit, but so too does what happened in Albany,” he said. “We never got any press for that. Probably most people don’t know much of what we accomplished, if they know anything about it on crime. But I do. And I know that hundreds, if not thousands, have been saved.”
But not getting the attention he believes he deserves, he admits, is an inherent danger of politics in the Empire State.
“If you run for office because you want to be put on a pedestal and people say what a great job you’re doing, don’t do it in New York,” he said. “But I knew that before I ran.”
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D’Amato, Once Pataki’s Kingmaker, Now Leans Toward King
Back in 1994, then-Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R) helped propel an obscure state senator named George Pataki (R) into the governor’s mansion. The Republican Revolution was at hand across the country, and D’Amato was the New York field general, making sure his handpicked candidate knocked Mario Cuomo (D) from power.
These days, D’Amato calls his political viewpoint “Republicrat,” had a spot front-and-center at the press conference announcing Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D) appointment, and says he has not talked to Pataki recently about the idea of running for Senate or anything else.
Even so, the man who once admitted that his old protégé’s performance in office broke his heart said that New York Republicans should and will be open to Pataki running for Senate.
“The party would like to have a winner, and just because he may have made some decisions that I felt were not in the state’s best interests and I felt badly about doesn’t mean” that he should be disqualified, D’Amato said.
“There’s some hardliners, there are always some hardliners,” he explained. “But if they can forgive Rudy Giuliani for having supported Mario Cuomo, certainly it seems to me that the party is big enough to be able to support George Pataki enthusiastically if he decided to run.”
But though D’Amato says he is over the problems of the past, his once-broken heart now seems to be with Rep. Peter King (R-Nassau), whose interest in the race has been largely drowned out since the rumors of Pataki’s interest in the Gillibrand race began to emerge. It is King, not Pataki, whom D’Amato now refers to as the “leading luminary” in the state GOP.
Indeed, asked whether he would support Pataki, his old ally, over Gillibrand, who interned in his Senate office while she was in college and whose father is an old friend, D’Amato turned the conversation to King.
“I am a Republican, and if the choice is between Peter King or Gillibrand, I would be supporting Peter,” D’Amato said, citing his close friendship with the nine-term congressman and kindred philosophy.
Asked if he would make that same commitment to backing Pataki, D’Amato paused.
“Most likely,” he said.
For his part, King has been making some appearances around the state and beginning to fundraise, with a plan to make a final decision about running by the end of the summer.
A few months ago, his intentions were much more certain. A huge critic of the idea of Gov. David Paterson’s (D) appointing Caroline Kennedy to the Senate, King said he had already prepared a statement of candidacy that he would have been “ready to file two seconds after Paterson appointed her.”
Among those who had encouraged him to do this while the Kennedy speculation was at full throttle, King noted, was Pataki himself.
Nevertheless, he said, he does not mind the recent speculation about the Senate seat centering on Pataki.
“If George wants to get his name out there, it’s fine,” King said. “I’m not going to begrudge anyone getting into the race, especially when I haven’t decided about running.”
While King lagged in the early March Marist poll, which found that Republicans preferred Pataki over him 56-32 percent, and that he was down against Gillibrand 49-28 while Pataki was much closer at 45-41, he said the internal polling he has seen makes him confident about his chances.
In addition to the support that his Republican record gives him upstate, King said, the data shows him ahead in the outer boroughs of New York City and the surrounding suburbs, crucial swing areas for a statewide election.
“I run stronger than any other Republican I’ve seen in polls in the suburbs,” he said.
In other words, King hinted, leave the Gillibrand challenge to him.
“George can run against Schumer,” he joked, referring to the other Senate seat, which will also be up next year.
If not, King said, he is prepared to take on Pataki in a primary.
“To me it would show that people are interested,” King said. “It shows that the seat is worth going for.”
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ABOVE: Former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato at the press conference announcing the appointment of Kirsten Gillibrand to the Senate. Photo by Andrew Schwartz
What a difference the most tumultuous two years in state political history makes.
Of the Democrats elected in 2006, Spitzer, Alan Hevesi and Hillary Clinton are gone, as is their mandate and most of the reserve of good will.
In their place is the ever-less popular Gov. David Paterson, an ongoing embarrassment for Democrats, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the result of an appointment process that may only be rivaled in rockiness by the crowded primary she seems certain to face next year.
And in response there is George Pataki, the man not so long ago reviled for presiding over the long, slow funeral of the state GOP through the end of the last decade and the beginning of this one, about to be drafted as his party’s great hope for the next one.
Or, in the words of one former operative: “Jesus Christ. I mean, he could win—but Jesus Christ.”
Former State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is on board. “We sure miss him,” he explained. “He’s a winner.” State Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos is too. “I’d love to see him,” he said.
Even GOP state chair Joseph Mondello, who all of eight months ago left Pataki’s name off the delegate list for the Republican National Convention allegedly because the former three-term governor did not call personally to ask for a spot, has thrown himself hard into Pataki’s corner and pledged to do everything he can to convince Pataki to run for Senate (the rumors of his interest in another run for governor do not appear to have much grounding).
“I’m thrilled to death that Governor Pataki is back,” Mondello said.
Brian Kolb, the new Assembly minority leader, tried to explain the collective change of heart.
“Sometimes when you’re in public service for a period of time, people take you for granted. They say, ‘Oh, Governor Pataki.’ They want somebody new,” Kolb said. “Then they get somebody new, and they say, ‘Oh god, we want Governor Pataki back.’”
Kolb chuckled.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he said.
All this is a welcome change, Pataki said.
“Obviously, it’s wonderful when people come up on the street and say, ‘Thank you, you did a good job, we want you back,’” he said, explaining his thinking in his first extended interview since leaving office. “I’m as human as anybody else. I like that. It’s a lot better than people coming up and saying, ‘You bum.’”
Pataki’s electoral appeal is hard to dispute. He was 36 years old when he knocked off his first incumbent to become mayor of Peekskill. Three years later, he knocked off another to take an Assembly seat. Those were both Democrats. But in 1992, instead of trying to win re-election in a redrawn district, Pataki ran and won a primary against seven-term Republican State Sen. Mary Goodhue. Two years later, he was the governor-elect, and he barely broke a sweat defending the office in the next two elections.
In part, he got lucky. New Yorkers were tired of Mario Cuomo (D) by 1994, and being a Republican the year of the Gingrich Revolution did not hurt either. Democrats strained for candidates in 1998, with their bigger guns all in the fight for the Senate nomination, and in 2002, he rode a post-Sept. 11 bump to victory as the Democrats collapsed into the Shakespearean primary between Andrew Cuomo and Carl McCall.
There was also that undeniable Pataki charm, or what Quinnipiac pollster Mickey Carroll, who has covered Pataki as a reporter during the early years of his administration, called “the old Jimmy Stewart stuff. Tall, low key and amiable.”
But perhaps most important was Pataki’s shifting of policy away from traditional Republican principles to win himself political support in an increasingly non-Republican state—most famously, with the political masterstroke which made an ally out of Dennis Rivera and 1199 through concessions on health care, though there are numerous examples of this triangulation and co-opting the Democratic base from throughout his years as governor.
Part of being a savvy politician is knowing when to quit. Pataki took himself out of a race for a fourth term in August 2005, and with his image battered, that 2008 presidential run that had him traveling to and opening offices in Iowa never materialized either. But still, after a quarter century in politics and a history of uphill battles, he has never delivered a concession speech.
Two years in private life have not changed Pataki much. As governor, he perfected the art of avoiding direct answers, and he boasts, justifiably, at how sharp those skills remain. Sitting next door to the office in 30 Rockefeller Center where he works as counsel at Chadbourne & Parke and helps run the Pataki-Cahill environmental consulting group, he is still gleefully bland, friendly, fluid in conversation and ready with a folksy twang whenever he tears into the Democrats.
“I’m extremely disappointed with the course of government both in the state and on the federal level,” he said, “and certainly want to articulate some ideas and some concepts that I think would help us solve the current problems in a way that’s better than what is out there today.”
Conveniently for someone who has a Senate run being dangled in front of him, those ideas and concepts are increasingly focused on federal policy and less on the state matters that were so long at the center of his mind. But as Pataki tells the tale, that is a natural evolution.
“Now with Washington glomming on to such a massive role, not just at the expense of the private sector, but at the expense of state government too often as well—like with the undoing of welfare reform—then it becomes important to start talking about those issues as well,” Pataki explained.
The extent of Pataki’s foray into national politics was in 2000, when he made George W. Bush’ vice-presidential short list, and in 2004, when he delivered a rip-roaring attack on John Kerry in his introduction of Bush to the convention crowd at Madison Square Garden.
For all the talk and anticipation, he never did join the dozen other Republicans on stage for the 2008 presidential primary debates. Instead, he endorsed John McCain and devoted time to rallying support for the Arizona senator whose name he had tried to keep off the state primary ballot eight years earlier.
And while he voted for McCain and said he would again in a heartbeat, he said he was troubled by how the Republican campaign had unfolded.
“To me it was very disappointing, but not overly surprising. One of the sad things is that I can’t sit here and think of two or three things that we were saying if we win we will do that will make your life better,” he said.
Going forward, he said, Republicans will have to take more responsibility for their role in the financial collapse.
“I can’t believe my party was so lax on regulation. Yes, we trust the marketplace, and it’s a good thing, but it was Ronald Reagan who said ‘Trust, but verify.’ It wasn’t in the context of the economy, but in the context of the economy, that should be us,” he said.
From this he moved into what could become a campaign talking point.
“I think we failed, meaning my party at the national level over the course of the past few years,” he said, “but on the other hand, I think the solution of having politicians in Washington run our economy is a recipe for failure as well.”
Pataki agrees with the idea of a stimulus, but said that while he approves of the attention paid to infrastructure and clean energy in the one passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama, the final version was crammed too full of “social engineering and Washington power grabs that had nothing to do with economic growth.”
But politics is not about voters parsing details like these. New York was a happier place when Pataki was governor—the economy was booming, and the bumbling of the governor’s office was not a constant topic conversation. Albany may have been slow and dysfunctional, but what people seem to remember now is the lack of prostitution scandals and tax hikes. Not much could have revived Pataki and the Republican Party in the minds of New Yorkers. Helped along by the financial crisis, the Democrats have managed to find a way.
Two months after they sent him off into the sunset, only 36 percent of New Yorkers had a favorable opinion of their former governor, according to a Siena College poll from February 2007. In Siena’s April 20, 2009 poll, his approval numbers had climbed to 49 percent, only a few points shy of the highest approval numbers Siena ever recorded for him. The same poll put Paterson at 27 percent and Gillibrand at 33 percent. And while Siena did not ask what would happen in a potential Pataki-Gillibrand match-up, it did find that only 20 percent of people were ready to elect her next year, while 47 percent were looking for someone else, in a nearly 20-point spike since she took office, even as the numbers of those who would elect her have remained level.
Marist College did ask the Pataki-Gillibrand question in its March 4 poll. Just a few weeks after National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Cornyn came to New York to broach the idea of running with the governor, 41 percent of those polled picked him over Gillibrand, with only 45 percent for her. Things may have changed since, but already, said Marist Poll director Lee Miringoff, those are “very competitive numbers.”
This has gotten Pataki’s attention, even catching him somewhat by surprise.
“The idea of running for Senate a year ago was not in the cards for him,” said his longtime friend, former chief of staff and business partner John Cahill. In recent weeks, though, “he certainly has been giving it some thought, deeper thought than anyone would have imagined.”
He has taken many in the state party by surprise as well, though they now seem ready to embrace another Pataki candidacy, past disputes regardless. There is a simple pragmatism involved: despite a weakened Democratic Party and an untested governor, senator and comptroller, their bench is thin. Pataki does have the name recognition, and he might be able to put together the money, and having a man who has won statewide in the Senate slot would be a relief, even among a base he infuriated during his strikingly non-conservative later years as governor.
“There’s no question about it: over the 12 years, but certainly in the last four years, I had many differences with him and was not happy,” said Conservative Party Chair Michael Long, while admitting that he was open to the idea of once again giving Pataki the crucial ballot line had for his three gubernatorial runs.
However, Long said, this would not come without some new commitments from the governor.
“Naturally, if he got serious about running for the U.S. Senate, we’d have to sit down and have a philosophical conversation,” he said.
Then there are the realities of what running for Senate next November would entail, none harsher than the $30 million he would likely need to raise to make a serious challenge. Pataki closed the PAC he had started to fuel his presidential prospects in February, and he has just $292.23 left in an account with the State Board of Elections that has not been active since January 2007. He would be starting from scratch, and in a tough economy.
He has yet to begin fundraising or any active outreach. He says this is both a statement of principle, objecting to the constant churn of elections in the media, and a reflection of his confidence that he has enough time. After all, he tells every reporter who asks him the inevitable question of whether he is running, in 1994, back when he was an unknown state senator, he did not announce his gubernatorial campaign until that January—and look what happened then. So he has time to decide on the Senate race, he insists. Eight months at least. Maybe 10. Maybe even a year.
The party leadership will probably not be that patient. Practically, they cannot afford to be, no matter how thin their bench is. Without a fundraising operation and more active presence underway, there is no way to oust an incumbent senator, even if she is unpopular and likely to draw several primary challengers.
Mondello says he wants to know who all his statewide candidates will be by the end of the summer. Others say Pataki’s public appearances and fundraising operation will have to pick up well if he wants to signal his interest in the race.
“The longer he waits, the more remote it becomes,” said former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R), the man who engineered Pataki’s gubernatorial win 15 years ago.
Others in the party share this concern. Many may be eager to have Pataki run, but their version of what happened in 1994 makes them wonder how seriously the former governor is really weighing a return. He may have waited until that January to step in front of the cameras and officially declare his candidacy, but he was involved in extensive conversations and preparations long before. And, they point out, by the time he did, there was a critical mass of party power brokers and operatives behind him. None of that behind-the-scenes movement is going on now.
And so, some senior Republicans suspect, 2010 will in the end be a rehash of an old Pataki pattern rather than the actual emergence of a new Pataki candidacy.
“It’s like his run for president,” said one when pressed. “Some people bullshit, and he’s one of the best.”
Pataki has never run in a race like the one against Gillibrand would be. Without the power of an office to make deals on policy in exchange for political support, Pataki and his inner circle would have to devise ways of building a winning coalition that are alien to them. Nor would he have the incumbency as an excuse for the kind of Rose Garden campaigns he ran in 1998 and 2002.
The GOP is counting on the likely (and likely bloody) Democratic primary battle to help, but that may be a stretch. In 1998, after all, Chuck Schumer emerged from a real bruiser with Geraldine Ferraro and Mark Green, and still ended up beating D’Amato by 10 points.
But the race against Gillibrand seems set to be even more intense. And the more candidates who jump in, the more likely the winner will be someone without strong support from Democratic voters going into the election. That, along with the tailspin of state Democrats and the dissatisfaction with the economy could make the race too enticing for Pataki to skip.
Still, Pataki will not say anything about his intentions except that he is back.
He is writing a book, to be out next spring, which will detail his policy proposals for New York and the country. He is still working on a title.
But just being a party elder, he admitted, makes shaping the debate difficult.
“You probably can’t,” he said, “because people in elected office are the ones that get the attention by virtue of their position.”
And so he stokes the speculation.
Last year, Pataki was not even at the big state Republican Party dinner held every year in midtown Manhattan. This year, he was promoted as a featured guest, given the speaking slot right after Newt Gingrich and introduced to the crowd by Mondello as one of the party’s favorite sons.
Pataki’s speech was shorter than Gingrich’s, which included a near-announcement of the Senate candidacy on Pataki’s behalf, and even shorter than the introduction Gingrich got from Rudy Giuliani. But it was much more passionate. Picking up energy as he went, he reminded everyone of the good times, the low taxes, the energetic economy back when he was in charge. He cracked a joke about being approached by a man who scolded him for frequenting prostitutes, which Pataki used as an opportunity to absolve himself publicly of all the bad things that happened since he left.
“If there’s still any press, it wasn’t me,” he said. “I’m the former governor of New York who left voluntarily.”
Then he leaned into the podium on his left elbow, lumbering forcefully into an attack on all the Democrats who have come into power in his wake.
“Let me tell you something, to President Obama, the Democrats in Washington: this is a great country. We’re going through tough economic times. We’re going to get through it, we’re going to be stronger than we were before—not because of what you’re doing, but because of what the people are doing,” he said. “Stop claiming the sky is falling! If you would get out of the way, this country would come back stronger than it has ever been before!”
They cheered. They applauded. They banged their forks on their glasses.
Pataki shifted his weight, clearly enjoying the response and the feeling of being back up in front of a crowd.
“The Democratic Party now asks you to depend on the government, and they will provide for you. They have lost their way! They are not the future! They are not right for America!” he said, the applause beginning to drown him out. “We need to work hard, get our act together, and we’re going to elect a governor, a senator, a Senate majority, a lot of new members of Congress in New York, and we’re going to see our country and our state better come 2011!”
And with the room still cheering, he walked off stage with a broad smile on his face.
“He’s been gone too long,” Mondello said, taking back the microphone. “We’ve got to bring him back!”
Mondello waved his arm in, keeping the applause going.
People started to get convinced.
“Going into the dinner, I wasn’t certain about the bold assertions they were making,” said one Assembly Republican, reflecting on the rumors he had heard of Pataki’s return and the level of emotion and nostalgia between the former governor and the crowd. “Listening to him speak, he sounded to me like a candidate for office.”
At the end of the night, after posing for photos for the crowd and autographing a few tickets but before leaving for the night, Pataki found Mondello among the emptying tables. They hugged, and Mondello stayed gripping Pataki’s elbows as they spoke, looking deeply into each other’s eyes. They could have been posing for a wedding photo.
“Are you going to run for the Senate?” Mondello asked, trying for the straight answer which all the reporters Pataki had just escaped from failed to get.
Pataki smiled. He did not say yes. He did not say no. But he nodded his head as Mondello quietly encouraged him to take the idea seriously.
“It is so nice to be back,” Pataki said, a note of emotion swelling in his throat.
He turned to leave, shook his head, and turned back to Mondello to say it again.
“It is so nice to be back.”
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ABOVE: Conservative Party chair Michael Long said he would need to have a “philosophical conversation” before supporting Pataki again, but he is open to the idea. Photos by Daniel S. Burnstein
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Looking to the Future, Pataki Mounts Defense of the Past
Focusing on national policy is one essential part of George Pataki’s pivot into a potential Senate candidacy. Trying to recast how people remember his performance as governor is the other.
First of all, Pataki contends, the withering of New York Republicans was the result of the national party’s failures and George W. Bush’s unpopularity, and not his fault. He rejects the very common complaint that he did not do enough to build a farm team over his 12 years in charge.
“We tried very hard,” he said. “I tried very hard to work at the grassroots level to help the party. But take a look in the Northeast! It’s been very frustrating to see the impact that the perception of the national party has had on my party throughout the Northeast, and it’s made it very difficult.”
Nor does he accept the general assessment of his record as governor—that, especially as time went on, he did not do enough, he was not engaged enough, and that his administration simply treaded water.
“We got so much done,” he said.
In addition to his undisputed record on the environment, Pataki said, he has the distinction of leaving office with record highs for the state bond rating and record lows for the state unemployment numbers, all while building up billions of dollars in reserve.
But for all the blame he lays at the feet of Democrats, Pataki has his own questions to answer for, said H. Carl McCall (D), the former state comptroller and Pataki’s 2002 opponent.
“He would have to explain why the state is in such a terrible fiscal condition now, given the fact that he was here for 12 years, and one could suggest he would be the one responsible,” McCall said.
For example, McCall indicated that the bond rating might be attributable to the fiscally questionable move of racking up large debts. And anyway, McCall added, there are quite a few questions about how the bond agencies made their ratings in the wake of the Wall Street collapse.
Pataki stands by what he called a forward-thinking approach, despite the jump from a $63.23 billion state budget in his first year to a $112.8 billion budget in his 12th
“We worked very hard to prepare for difficult times,” he said, attributing the success to doing “the fiscally conservative, prudent things.”
There is more to his record than that, though. Pataki wants people to recognize the pro-business, pro-development atmosphere he fostered, which meant that more towers were built in Manhattan during his years in charge than at any other time in history (and, notably, that leaves the building he had dubbed the Freedom Tower as the only such project currently underway in the United States).
And they should recognize as well his record on fighting crime, instead of just giving all the credit for the declines to mayors Rudy Giuliani (R) and Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) and a sustained economic boom. The 100-plus criminal justice laws he signed, including measures to toss bad judges and reform the parole system, has a lot to do with New York going from the most dangerous state to the safest large state between 1995 and 2006.
“Yes, Rudy and Mike and Commissioner Kelly, and before him, Rudy’s commissioners, deserve a lot of credit, but so too does what happened in Albany,” he said. “We never got any press for that. Probably most people don’t know much of what we accomplished, if they know anything about it on crime. But I do. And I know that hundreds, if not thousands, have been saved.”
But not getting the attention he believes he deserves, he admits, is an inherent danger of politics in the Empire State.
“If you run for office because you want to be put on a pedestal and people say what a great job you’re doing, don’t do it in New York,” he said. “But I knew that before I ran.”
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D’Amato, Once Pataki’s Kingmaker, Now Leans Toward King
Back in 1994, then-Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R) helped propel an obscure state senator named George Pataki (R) into the governor’s mansion. The Republican Revolution was at hand across the country, and D’Amato was the New York field general, making sure his handpicked candidate knocked Mario Cuomo (D) from power.
These days, D’Amato calls his political viewpoint “Republicrat,” had a spot front-and-center at the press conference announcing Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D) appointment, and says he has not talked to Pataki recently about the idea of running for Senate or anything else.
Even so, the man who once admitted that his old protégé’s performance in office broke his heart said that New York Republicans should and will be open to Pataki running for Senate.
“The party would like to have a winner, and just because he may have made some decisions that I felt were not in the state’s best interests and I felt badly about doesn’t mean” that he should be disqualified, D’Amato said.
“There’s some hardliners, there are always some hardliners,” he explained. “But if they can forgive Rudy Giuliani for having supported Mario Cuomo, certainly it seems to me that the party is big enough to be able to support George Pataki enthusiastically if he decided to run.”
But though D’Amato says he is over the problems of the past, his once-broken heart now seems to be with Rep. Peter King (R-Nassau), whose interest in the race has been largely drowned out since the rumors of Pataki’s interest in the Gillibrand race began to emerge. It is King, not Pataki, whom D’Amato now refers to as the “leading luminary” in the state GOP.
Indeed, asked whether he would support Pataki, his old ally, over Gillibrand, who interned in his Senate office while she was in college and whose father is an old friend, D’Amato turned the conversation to King.
“I am a Republican, and if the choice is between Peter King or Gillibrand, I would be supporting Peter,” D’Amato said, citing his close friendship with the nine-term congressman and kindred philosophy.
Asked if he would make that same commitment to backing Pataki, D’Amato paused.
“Most likely,” he said.
For his part, King has been making some appearances around the state and beginning to fundraise, with a plan to make a final decision about running by the end of the summer.
A few months ago, his intentions were much more certain. A huge critic of the idea of Gov. David Paterson’s (D) appointing Caroline Kennedy to the Senate, King said he had already prepared a statement of candidacy that he would have been “ready to file two seconds after Paterson appointed her.”
Among those who had encouraged him to do this while the Kennedy speculation was at full throttle, King noted, was Pataki himself.
Nevertheless, he said, he does not mind the recent speculation about the Senate seat centering on Pataki.
“If George wants to get his name out there, it’s fine,” King said. “I’m not going to begrudge anyone getting into the race, especially when I haven’t decided about running.”
While King lagged in the early March Marist poll, which found that Republicans preferred Pataki over him 56-32 percent, and that he was down against Gillibrand 49-28 while Pataki was much closer at 45-41, he said the internal polling he has seen makes him confident about his chances.
In addition to the support that his Republican record gives him upstate, King said, the data shows him ahead in the outer boroughs of New York City and the surrounding suburbs, crucial swing areas for a statewide election.
“I run stronger than any other Republican I’ve seen in polls in the suburbs,” he said.
In other words, King hinted, leave the Gillibrand challenge to him.
“George can run against Schumer,” he joked, referring to the other Senate seat, which will also be up next year.
If not, King said, he is prepared to take on Pataki in a primary.
“To me it would show that people are interested,” King said. “It shows that the seat is worth going for.”
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ABOVE: Former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato at the press conference announcing the appointment of Kirsten Gillibrand to the Senate. Photo by Andrew Schwartz
