The Confession (21 page)

“This is going to be a hell of a race, isn't it?” I responded as my young staff circled around the corpse, rolling it respectfully into the tall grasses with their shoes.

The first people we came upon were from out of state—a pair from New York, and a family from Pennsylvania. They were extremely friendly. The New Jersey residents we approached thereafter were less cordial. “Christie's doing a fine job,” they would say, or: “If you're running for governor, how come we've never heard of you?”

Burning eyes, dead wildlife, indifferent voters—it wasn't shaping up as a very productive day. Finally, I sat down with one last group, grabbing a French fry off a plate. I'll never forget this family: Ruth Arimente of Basking Ridge, her daughter Joanne Loya, and her teenage granddaughter, Jennifer Loya. None of them had any clue who I was. “Look,” I said, “I'm not Whitman. I don't live her imperial life. I'm concerned about property taxes and
auto insurance, just like you are. My position is more precarious now, more anxiety producing, than it was when she took office. Can you afford your property tax and car insurance payments? Because if you can, then you should vote for her. But if you can't, you should find a better way for New Jersey.”

It worked. When a reporter asked Ruth whom she was going to support, she committed to me on the spot. “I go with people who look you in the eye,” she said.

 

ONE OF MY FIRST HIRES DURING THIS PERIOD OF EXPANSION WAS
Regena Thomas, a get-out-the-vote specialist with the firm IEM Message Management, whom I'd first met when she was helping coordinate Clinton/Gore campaign events in 1992. Her mission was to take my message to the African American community, a critical cornerstone of my campaign. Whitman had a bad history in this area. Ed Rollins, her political consultant in 1993, had bragged that he won her first election by spending $500,000 to
suppress
black voters. Regena was going to make sure that couldn't happen again. No amount of Republican money could override her message of empowerment. “The power in this election lies in the African American vote,” she told the papers. “African Americans may not be powerful enough to make a governor on their own, but they've proven that they can cause one to lose.”

We reached out to every group we could. Tassos Estafraides was our man for the Greek community. As a liaison to Latino voters, I brought in Lizette Delgado in South Jersey, Idida Rodriguez in North Jersey, and Tonio Burgos, a friend who had worked for Governor Mario Cuomo in New York. We worked hard to connect with Russians, Poles, Germans, and Portuguese, with staff members maintaining contact with each community. If you walked, we had an ethnic liaison for you.

Dina took on the job as our Portuguese-language coordinator. She was an able front woman—her day job was spokeswoman for the Columbus Hospital in Newark, so she knew how to shape and deliver a message. But she was also a natural politician, able to work a room quickly and effectively. She had cut her teeth as a volunteer with Clinton/Gore, and had long been
involved with the National Women's Political Caucus. Thanks to her efforts I was in every Portuguese-language church, diner, picnic, street fair, christening, and store opening in the state. Of course, that could only account for so many votes; more than anything, these campaign stops were an excuse for us to see each other.

Our romance was blossoming in semisecret, though my staff all knew what we were up to. Dina called my cell phone so often that Kevin Noland started calling her the Mad Dialer. I still missed Kari, but Dina shared my ambitions; I knew she was more comfortable with the idea of becoming first lady. But aside from stolen moments—after an event in Atlantic City, for instance, or during a drive to Hyde Park, FDR's stately home along the Hudson River—we rarely got to spend much time alone together. Instead we talked politics on the phone late into the night, comparing notes and sharing insights. I grew to cherish her companionship and friendship.

Things between us changed somewhat when my marriage troubles were revealed in the summer. A reporter from the
Bergen Record
had dug Kari's legal brief out of a Vancouver courthouse. I was mortified to pick up the morning paper and see my marital woes—ratcheted up by a lawyer's hyperbole—reprinted for all to read. My phone rang off the hook, and when one reporter got through, I said, “Kari's the only woman I ever wanted to marry.” I was telling the truth. Yet now I felt free to start hinting about my relationship with Dina, and began bringing more attention to her at campaign stops.

Years later, Dina accused me in legal papers of courting her, and ultimately marrying her, for purely political reasons. That's not true. I treasured her companionship, and in my way I loved her. But as a gay man, I could only love her so much. She deserved more.

 

WHEN OUR FIRST DISAPPOINTING POLL RESULTS CAME IN, I BLEW
a gasket. I suppose if I hadn't been so exhausted, I might have been more forgiving to my staff. I was demanding, almost impossible to satisfy—there wasn't a shoulder I didn't look over constantly, a decision I didn't second-guess. I knew exactly why our numbers were lagging. We weren't hitting our targets with seniors, which was inexcusable. I had the best pro-senior
policies of any candidate. I adopted the AARP's planks as my own. And I'd felt a personal connection with every senior citizen I'd ever met.

We were in a car racing to a radio interview down the shore when I lashed out. Unfortunately, I took out most of my rage on poor Kevin Noland, whose only job was to get us to appointments on time. I threw my cell phone at the dashboard, inadvertently striking him on the shoulder.

“Our grassroots operation is an embarrassment!” I hollered. “By this point, we should have been in five thousand senior centers! Seniors should be lining up to volunteer! You think we can win like this?”

Just then, the phone rang. It was the radio station wondering why we were so late. Kevin had driven right past the exit.

“Turn around!” I bellowed, kicking the dashboard with the heel of my shoe.

“There's another exit coming up in a couple miles,” he said meekly.

“I don't care about the exit. Turn around now!”

In due time Kevin found the station, but not before I had a chance to call up every member of my senior campaign staff for a tongue-lashing. One of them must have called Ray to tell him about my meltdown, because when I got back in the car for the trip home, he'd filled my voicemail box with messages.

“Look, I don't care how you treat your staff—that's none of my business,” he said when I called him back. “It's your campaign I'm worrying about. You're trying to do too much and it shows. You've got to delegate. You need a campaign manager you can trust. Somebody who can get everything done for you. You need to be a full-time candidate. At the end of the day a lot of people can manage a campaign, but there is
only one candidate
. Let somebody else sweat the little stuff.”

It was a classic woodshed conversation. I knew what he was saying, and I knew he was right: letting go of anything was antithetical to my character. I needed to let the pros run the business, and stick to what I did best—connecting with the people, like a box of soap flakes on the shelf.

But I also read a deeper admonishment into Ray's words. We were sailing into the rapids now on the fundraising side; the donors were getting bigger, their expectations more challenging. Whatever Ray was trying to tell
me, I realized in that moment that I was going to have to start removing myself from the darker business of deal making. After all, no one ever blames the box of soap flakes for the backroom arrangements that got it moved to the front of the store. Insulation, deniability, immunity—those were the rewards of delegation. I decided, right then and there, that I needed to relinquish control and let the cards fall as they might.

I immediately called Gary Taffet, who ran my operation in Woodbridge, and offered him the job. I'd known Gary for years. I knew everybody in his family. I trusted Gary to make the difficult decisions without my input. With him in charge—and me as the product—the campaign began to sail a lot more smoothly.

 

WHITMAN AND I AGREED TO TWO TELEVISED DEBATES. THEY WERE
a huge opportunity to improve my name recognition, and we rehearsed like madmen. As a stand-in for Whitman we recruited Marianne Espinosa Murphy, an articulate former state superior court judge who also happened to be the former wife of Michael Murphy, the candidate Andrews and I had bested in the primary. She was a formidable adversary, but I kept my message tightly focused: education, taxes, and auto insurance.

Jimmy Kennedy was the coach I listened to most closely. He and his wife, Lori, were always trying to quash my professorial tendencies, my wonkishness. “Go to the real Jim,” Jimmy told me. “Play this thing like you were back at the monthly Woodbridge Town Hall meetings. Just bantering and sharing your perspectives with the locals. That's your strength.”

It's going to take a lot more than that,
I thought. Whitman's job approval rating was back up to 55 percent, and polls showed her beating me by a wide margin. And then, just before the debate, Ray Lesniak came to me with a problem.

“There's a hooker in the Middlesex County Jail who's calling around saying she knows you,” he said.

Myra Rosa was a heroin addict from Woodbridge who'd spent the better part of the last decade in and out of jail. Two years earlier, in 1995, she'd started peddling this story that we'd been involved. It was a pure lie. This is
no whitewash: I've made it clear that I'd known many women, and men, through the years. Rosa was not one of them. We never even met. I still wonder why she targeted me for her dubious claims—or, perhaps more to the point, who put her up to it.

I told Ray the truth—that I had no idea who she was. He believed me, even though he knew as much about my personal life as anybody at the time. He had already sent one of his men to the jailhouse to talk to her, hoping to ascertain just how crazy she was:
very
crazy, it turned out. “She says you used to pick her up in a white van, for over two years, sometimes screwing her at your condo. She can even identify the cat and the blue rug.”

“I haven't had a cat since I was fourteen years old, Ray. And I've never had a white van. Yes, I have a blue rug, but what American doesn't have a blue rug?” I was angry. “She says I was picking up a streetwalker in my own legislative district? I may be crazy, Ray, but I'm not
that
crazy.”

Right after Ray's man interviewed her in jail, a guy from a place called Lucky 7 Bail Bonds bailed her out, representing an anonymous source. Gary, who had a million connections in Woodbridge, wracked his brain wondering who might be posting her bail. “The
Star-Ledger?”
he wondered.

That made little sense—they didn't need to spring her from jail to get her story. “Republican State Committee,” I suggested, half seriously. A week or two later, John Lynch sent some of his guys around asking questions, and they drew the same conclusion.

“Well, whoever it is, we have to do something about the prostitute,” Ray said. “I heard she already talked to the
Star-Ledger.
They're going to do a story.”

“She needs a vacation,” somebody suggested. Ray, Paul, and Gary all thought it was a good idea. Ray said he could take care of it. I don't know how they convinced her, but within the week she was riding the roller coasters at Disney World. On her way out of town she apparently “hired” a lawyer who took a sworn statement from her disavowing the McGreevey story.

 

OUR BIG TELEVISED DEBATE CAME LESS THAN TWO WEEKS BEFORE
the general election, on October 21, 1997. It was held at Birchwood Manor
in Whippany, a colonial-era village that made world history fifty years earlier when the first television broadcast signal was sent from there to New York City. Our one-hour event, which was sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, was broadcast on channel 57 in Philadelphia and on WWORTV, an independent station based in Secaucus that served New Jersey and New York. I was a forty-year-old state legislator taking on a Republican powerhouse, but with my party's backing I felt confident. Looking around the room I saw many friendly faces, including Ray and all the young turks from the office. Jimmy and Lori Kennedy were there, too. As mayor and first lady of Rahway, they'd been invited to sit with my old boss, Dick Trabert, at the Merck & Co. table.

Whitman and I were joined on stage by the libertarian candidate, Murray Sabrin. I'd encouraged his campaign, assuming he might bite into Whitman's right flank. But I wasn't expecting the Chamber crowd to be in his camp or mine. I knew the business community was squarely behind Whitman, wary of my attacks on the insurance companies. Even so, I was surprised when my opening remarks were met with such ice.

The first question was better—a slow ball, about auto insurance.

Whitman put forward her newest cockamamie plan, saying she would promote a change in the regulations allowing people to buy less insurance on their car, for a savings of 25 percent. This was clearly no victory for the motorist, who would be more financially vulnerable in the long run. She basically rolled over on the issue. “If lowering auto insurance were easy, I would have done it,” she said. “Tom Kean would have done it; Jim Florio would have done it, or Brendan Byrne would have done it—because that's how long we've had the problem.” I had her just where I wanted her.

I got off some zingers on other matters, too, calling Whitman a “borrow-and-spend Republican” and mocking her plan to finance a tunnel to Atlantic City so that people could race to the casinos without crossing through town. This would only hurt the city's locally owned shops and gas stations, I pointed out—while protecting the out-of-state businesses that owned the casinos. I didn't exactly set the studio audience on fire with my comments, but I was surprised to see that even my best friend, Jimmy Kennedy, was sitting on his hands; he was anxious not to offend his hosts
from Merck, the largest employer in his town. The only one applauding at their table was his wife, Lori.