The Confession (15 page)

But pity the person who thinks Ray's not still a commanding figure. He can be ruthlessly persuasive and single-minded—and always charming—when he sets his sights on a goal. Winning his support and friendship gave me hope that I might actually win my run for mayor.

As we got down to the wire late that summer and early fall, DeMarino's attentions were distracted by his criminal case. The trial was scheduled for October, and because I was campaigning on “integrity,” he was forced to explain himself.

“I was asked to help some friends out,” he once cryptically told a reporter. “That's all.”

We were polling neck and neck. In a curious move, DeMarino pushed to have his trial broadcast on local cable. He truly believed that the voters would see how innocent he was and reward him at the polls.

But it backfired. It turned out that the county prosecutor had been
secretly tape-recording JoJo for years. It didn't matter whether the case was strong or weak; his coarse language alone cost him votes. The seniors in Woodbridge tuned in every morning, and the little old Hungarian and Italian ladies were scandalized. Hearing the word
damn
was enough to send them into a spell. The language on the tapes was much worse. As I went door to door, they would say to me in horror, “Can you believe what DeMarino said today?”

JoJo was found not guilty in October 1991, but by then he'd already lost the race. The following month, in a close four-way election, I became the next mayor of Woodbridge. I packed my things at Merck & Co., married Kari in a beautiful Episcopal ceremony in Vancouver, with Jimmy Kennedy as my best man, and moved to Town Hall.

One of the first things I did as mayor was hire Paul Weiner as my corporation counsel, the town's top lawyer. Paul was a partner in Ray's law firm, Weiner Lesniak, and Ray must have known he was just what I needed, a loyal and extremely competent deputy. With just the right temperament, he was able to meet with the squabbling party stalwarts in both parties and divvy up the spoils: appointments to various town departments and offices, jobs on this crew or that agency. Some of it was patronage, always has been, but done as wisely as Paul did it, doling out the jobs can build a mighty peace. The way we did it in Woodbridge had an almost parliamentary effect; we entered a power-sharing arrangement with our adversaries, reached out to voting blocks that hadn't supported us, and gave a little back to the people who supported us. And in the bargain, we made sure everybody had a stake in running the town. Good government and good politics aren't contradictory ideas, not always.

 

I HAVE TO SAY, JOJO DEMARINO DID ME A HUGE FAVOR. NO JOB WAS
better suited to me than being mayor of Woodbridge. In the years since then I have traveled the world and seen cities and villages that took my breath away. But Woodbridge is still my favorite place. Its roots go back to the early days of American history. Settled in the autumn of 1665 and granted a charter five years later by King Charles, the city was named either for the English
town where some of the settlers were born or in fond memory of a pastor the Puritans recalled from their first stop in America, in Newbury, Massachusetts—nobody knows for sure. The first permanent printing house in America was opened here in 1751, and the first truly American periodical in the Colony was published there.

The fact that gave me greatest pride, though, was that the sons of Woodbridge hosted the first antislavery conference in American history—on July 4, 1783, six years before George Washington was inaugurated first president of the United States.

In modern America, there is perhaps no place that better embodies middle-class American values. Every ethnic group, every race, every religion and culture is represented there—not in unofficially segregated communities like I remember from my childhood, but intermingled and coexisting, and equally invested in the community. We had many prefixes, but for us what mattered was our suffix: African
American
, Italian
American
, Turkish
American
, Cuban
American
, all sharing the American dream. The St. James Street fair every October was a celebration of our diversity. So was the yearly Pearl Harbor memorial service, and every baseball game come spring. In fact, baseball season is my favorite time in Woodbridge, those warm, endless nights when floodlights glow over distant diamonds and the sounds of cheers spill out over the town.

But JoJo had left the place in a wreck. As a last-minute election-year gimmick, he had rolled back area property taxes 20 percent, telling newspaper reporters that he'd built up a surplus. Wrong. The town's $60 million budget was $24.5 million short. Making matters worse, he gave a costly raise to municipal labor unions to placate them, and then underestimated state aid. To cover costs, JoJo had raided surplus accounts.

The bookkeeping was a shambles. In one desk drawer we found $400,000 in uncashed checks made out to the township, some dating back seven years. I looked at John “Mac” McCormac, my chief financial officer. “Well, the good news is, we have no place to go but up,” I joked.

I spoke too soon. On the second day of our administration, two federal agents arrived with warrants to investigate the disappearance of $650,000 in health insurance funds. Next, four of the employees I inherited from JoJo
were charged with taking kickbacks from contractors. Woodbridge's government was an utter disaster.

Financially, we had no room to maneuver. I didn't want to levy new taxes. The median income in Woodbridge was only $45,000; I knew people were already pinched. But the alternative was to lay off 40 percent of the workforce, which was also unacceptable. That would mean dirtier streets, deeper potholes, and a painful shortage of health department workers, police officers, librarians, and so on.

Mac suggested a clever solution. Several other Jersey towns had shifted from a calendar year for budget purposes to a fiscal year, from July 1 to June 30. A quirk in the process for doing this would allow us to float municipal bonds to cover costs for a half-year transitional period. This way we could borrow about $42 million, enough to bridge the gap and jump-start the local economy.

It was a great solution. We took “Woodbridge Works” as our new slogan, and resolved to make sure every dollar went to services. But first, to get it past the municipal council, I needed a majority of the nine members—five of them Republicans. Jack Fay, who had simply moved into the mayor's office with me, occasionally peered over his copy of the
New York Times
to offer suggestions for working over the councilmen. Mac and I followed his advice energetically, but despite our best presentations they weren't budging.

Finally, Paul Weiner figured out why.

“They want assurances,” he said. “They don't like the underwriter we're using. They named two other firms they want included—firms that just happen to be big backers of some of the Republican councilmen.”

This was an eye-opener for me. I had never thought of finance houses as Republicans or Democrats. I expected the selection process to be strictly price-based. It seemed like payola to me to handpick outside firms based on who their executives were supporting—and it seemed like total fiscal irresponsibility to jeopardize Woodbridge's future in the gamble.

In fact, this was my first lesson in a system known as “pay-to-play,” the financial interplay between politicians and vendors that defines public life in New Jersey. The members of the Woodbridge Municipal Council, like every other municipal official in the state who's ever had to raise campaign
funds, counted among their supporters' leaders in every field, even this one. And it was understood that they owed them something in return. This would be a huge payday for any outside contractor—the underwriters, consultants, bonders, and finance houses—and an opportunity for payback. It was like a huge virtual chess game.

“What if I say no?” I asked Paul. “What are they going to do, make me lay off everybody and close down the town?”

“Jim, we're not talking about contracting to shady companies. Both underwriters are respectable firms; they just happen to have some relationship to two Republican councilmen. They just play for the other team.”

“None of these companies are the Little Sisters of the Poor,” Jack piped up, between puffs on a cigarette.

I didn't really care which corporation was going to handle our bonding. “A pox on all their houses,” I said. “I just want to know this isn't adding costs.”

“They'll get a fixed percentage of the total bond issue package,” Paul said. “It's the same cost no matter who we use. In fact, we can use them all and divide the fee in thirds.”

In my years in politics, this was my first difficult moral crossroad. I thought of all the political biographies I'd read with my dad. What Caesar, Lincoln, and Douglas McArthur had in common was the ability to make political accommodations to reach their goals. The high art of leadership, I knew, was the ability to chart a route to the good through a moral quandary.

I thought back to college, to Kant's famous formulations on the “Concepts of Good and Evil.” Kant argued that morality couldn't be reached by judging ends and means alone. Motive, he wrote, is the main measure of whether an action is moral or not. My motive was clear and lacked self-interest. This crisis was exactly the “hypothetical imperative” he parsed:
You must do
A
in order to achieve
X. Floating bonds was a legitimate goal; compromising on vendors would surely produce that goal, without committing an egregious moral harm in itself.

Finally I capitulated and let the Republicans pick their two contractors, while keeping the one we'd originally chosen as well. It was a distasteful
decision, but I believed it was a moral one, and not unethical. The taxpayers of Woodbridge benefited. Without accommodation, we would have been dead in the water.

But from my personal life I had a keen understanding of the dangers of accommodation. To get where I was, I had already made one major accommodation with the truth.
Doing
A in that instance might have justified
achieving
X. But that first compromise invariably led to many others;
A
became a whole alphabet of lies and half-truths.

I worried very consciously that the same thing might happen with my political career, one little compromise at a time.

 

IMMANUEL KANT WASN'T MY ONLY LODESTAR. I MODELED MY ADMINISTRATION
on the principles showcased by Stephen R. Covey in his book
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
, a best seller at the time. I had attended several Covey seminars and found his credo, which was a lot like my Dad's old marine maxim, very useful. It emphasized concentrated work, integrity, and measurable goals. We instructed each department to come up with mission-driven goals for the year, and I met with department heads once a week to review progress toward those goals.

Given our bare-bones operation, I did a lot of the work myself. If I saw a pothole at 7:00
AM
, I would have it filled by nightfall—then put in a shift on the public works hot line, making lists of new problems to fix. I would drive around behind the snowplows and make sure they did a decent job. I was maniacal about making the town spotless. Once a month I held an open Town Hall meeting, inviting people to bring their complaints and promising to find a solution. These meetings were by far my favorite part of the job. I'd personally call people who had their lawns too high. I didn't care if they thought it was overstepping. I cared about community standards in the town.

One delicate challenge came up when I started hearing complaints about the conditions in the Little India section of town. Woodbridge has one of the largest South Asian populations in the United States, and the old-world traditions persisted among some of the newer immigrants, a fact that
stirred some local prejudices. We had callers who actually said, “It smells of curry over there.”

I worked to be fair, exacting, and impartial. I understood the importance of shared culture among new immigrant groups, but I also felt we would let the neighborhood's people down if we didn't hold them to the same standards as the rest of the town. When there were real violations, I sent in teams to write up tickets, which initially drew charges of racism. But we also invested in the neighborhood, widening the streets and improving the public landscaping. In the end, Indian leaders were pleased to see their area improving along with the rest of Woodbridge. Come India's Independence Day, August 15, I proudly raised the Indian national flag over Town Hall.

I attended every event I was invited to and most events I wasn't. A good friend, Mike Seidel, told me recently that I attended services at his synagogue so often he thought I was Jewish. I wanted to become everything anybody in Woodbridge wanted me to be. I taught myself seven words in every language spoken in my district—not always the right ones, but nobody cared. I absolutely adored getting to know Woodbridge. I wanted to make it the best little town in America.

My goal was to make sure everybody was happy in Woodbridge as long as I was there. If anybody had a complaint, Paul would negotiate with them and, if necessary, invite them to hockey matches on Tuesdays or football games on Thursdays—and by the next morning their concerns were resolved. We were an administration working for all the people, because we had all the people working for us.

But with Paul taking care of the backroom stuff, I was able to carry out the parts of the job that really challenged me. I put together a plan to revitalize Main Street, which had gone the way of other cities in the 1980s. The strip was rundown and abandoned; most retailers had moved out to the malls, taking all foot traffic with them. With the help of the town council, we laid brick sidewalks and added new lampposts, benches, and planters through the center of town. Anchoring the effort were plans for a new town hall, a three-story high-tech building, fully wired for the Internet. In addition, we committed new financing to the town's marina and
ramp in the Sewaren section of town, making it among one of the most-used launches in the area; we invested in park rehabilitation and put computers in every school in town. It all worked. Downtown became a destination again.