It seemed for awhile this year that no matter whom the Republican Party nominated for president I would have some connection to that person. I of course knew Rudy Giuliani for over 12 years. I had my Vegas outing with John McCain and I also had a relationship of sorts with their unlikeliest, albeit, short-lived front runner, Mike Huckabee. Here’s the story of how Rudy Giuliani’s insular City Hall atmosphere lead to what was a nice friendship with the former Governor of Arkansas.
Kate Anson, the Mayor’s Assistant for Scheduling, and I were going over some upcoming events at her desk. I was giving her a hard time as recently she had sent me a large number of State Department and USAID invites for me to handle.
Part of my job as Coordinator of Inter-Governmental Affairs for the Mayor’s Office involved receiving foreign delegations wanting to meet with the mayor. They had to meet with me instead of Rudy as he would meet with practically no one below the rank of President or Prime Minister. And even then it was highly iffy as I will elaborate on further in the next few weeks.
It was not just a matter of his time or scheduling. He just was not interested in foreign affairs. Kate and Beth Petrone, his executive assistant, both knew he had no interest and did not even show him the invites. They were just rejected out of hand. Those things were funneled first to First Deputy Mayor Peter Powers, who did have an interest, and then to me. Everyone knew Rudy’s interests were strictly parochial. And even then national affairs were limited to matters as they related to law enforcement.
I met constantly with groups of foreign legislators and deputy prime ministers. It was a fascinating part of my job. Since the Soviet Union broke up nearly every new republic wanted to learn how to set up a democratic system of government. They came to New York City as part of their tour of the United States. I was happy to facilitate these meetings and often invited others to sit in and join on the discussions.
My favorite meeting may have been with a senior delegation of Brazilian legislators and representatives of the Rio city government. They were fascinated by our recent crime reduction. We went through the usual explanations and knowing ahead of time of their interest, I had invited someone from the NYPD.
We laid out things both simple and complex: Compstat, deployment, drugs, personnel, training, gangs, etc. We were working through an interpreter, as we always did. At one point I asked, “What is your biggest problem?” One of the Brazilians answered through the interpreter, “Corruption. The police are all taking bribes. It is our biggest problem. We do not know what to do about it.” All of the Brazilians nodded vigorously in agreement. The guy from P.D. followed up by asking, “What do you pay the average police officer who patrols your neighborhoods?” They all looked to one Brazilian whom they seemed sure knew the answer. “Fifteen dollars a month”, he said. They all nodded.
We all cracked up. There was clearly a total disconnect - absolutely no connection between that salary and the entire constabulary being on the take. I explained our brilliant analysis and they seemed stunned that there could be a linkage. We assured them that there was. Higher salaries would probably solve most of their problems. They seemed to find this revelation worth the price of their trip.
While I was giving Kate crap about my latest meeting with Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan or wherever, she mentioned that Peter had declined a meeting with the Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas and wanted me to do it. “Really”, I said. “It’s Arkansas, but the guy’s the lieutenant governor. Shouldn’t Peter at least meet the guy?” “Jo said Peter’s not going to do it and wants you to,” Kate said referring to Peter’s scheduler. “Do you want me to decline?” “No, no.”, I said. “I’ve heard of this guy, he’s a Republican. We have to meet with him. It just shouldn’t be me, I’d like it to be Rudy.” “Well the Mayor can’t,” she said. “Can’t or won’t?” I asked. “Let me go look at the book.” Beth Petrone kept the giant scheduling book and was the final word on his schedule. Beth confirmed this was a case of won’t. Rudy didn’t want to. It was passed to Peter Powers who passed it on to me.
My next stop was Jo Yagid, Peter Powers’ scheduler. She also confirmed that Peter could meet with Mike Huckabee, Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas, but was choosing not to. I left the matter alone and decided to do some checking up on Huckabee on my own. After placing calls to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, the Senatorial Campaign Committee, and my friend at the President’s Dinner, a Republican congressional fundraising operation, I was getting back the same response. Huckabee is a comer who’ll be either governor or senator someday and Rudy should be nice to this guy.
Two days later at Peter’s weekly staff meeting I added the Huckabee meeting as an agenda item. I told Peter that I thought it was a mistake that Rudy wasn’t meeting with this guy and that at least Peter should meet with him. Would Peter talk to Rudy? “No”, he said. And Peter didn’t want to meet with him either. I explained the man was a Republican and a rising star. Peter was surprised to hear that the lieutenant governor of Arkansas was a republican.
Peter was a much better republican than was Rudy and we always bonded on that level as I had been a life-long republican of the Goldwater stripe. We were always loyal republicans and much more consistently conservative than Rudy ever was. Peter and I were grounded philosophically, although we did not get along personally. I was hoping on party discipline to appeal to him to meet with Huckabee but the Arkansas appellation was killing my argument.
Notwithstanding having a president from there, the name of that state was sinking this for me. Not even the governor, but the lieutenant governor!!! Not gonna happen. I left thinking classic Peter Powers; haughty and imperious, he thinks as deputy mayor he’s too good to meet with the lieutenant governor of another state even if it is Arkansas. Oh well. The meeting was now two weeks away.
By the time the day rolled around I had pretty much forgotten about it. City Hall life is pretty hectic and you take each day as it comes. I’m sure the Tweed Courthouse - behind City Hall where my office was located - was a big letdown to Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. Huckabee and their guest. The difference between Lt. Gov. Huckabee and Mrs. Huckabee was that he was politician enough to hide it.
She could barely contain the loathing and seething contempt at how insulted she felt at the slight she perceived was directed at her and her husband; presumably by me and the mayor. She daggered me with her eyes for the next hour. Mike Huckabee could not have been more pleasant. He was a portly man but so were the Hardings so who was I to throw stones. It was the cheap light blue suit that called attention to himself here in New York, however. I was soon to learn why he was being so nice in the face of this perceived slight. He wanted something.
I thought that Mrs. Huckabee could have taken lessons from Liz Harding, my mother, on how to be a good political wife. If your husband wants something this badly then you suck up the slight yourself and make nice for the next hour. For all you know I’m your ally and fought for your meeting with the mayor. That’s what Liz Harding would have done, but she’s a pro at this after forty years.
After the initial chat we got to the point of all this. He named a Taiwanese organization with which he was deeply involved. “I’m here in New York for their function at the Marriott Marquis. I’ve been associated with this organization for some time,” he said.
The man who attended the meeting with him had some official relationship with this Taiwanese group, although he was not Taiwanese. Huckabee explained further, “We wanted to meet with Mayor Giuliani to invite him to speak to the group and welcome them to New York.” He went on to say that it was in fact an honor to have this meeting in New York and it was going to be a large turnout. While Huckabee seemed a fairly genuine sort of fellow, and the Mrs. continued to shoot me laser beams of hate, his friend seemed unctuous. Or an Arkansan misguidedly trying to attain unctuousness; smiling at me way too much.
Anyway, this Taiwan thing seemed a little fishy. Maybe I was imposing a New York sense of skepticism to something perfectly fine. But if he was a New York pol I would definitely say this group was funding him big time. It reeked of that.
They gave me the invitation and it seemed like it might be a well attended event. I had a feel for that after having attended political functions since I was six years old. But why was the lieutenant governor of Arkansas mixed up with this major Taiwanese group? Hmmmmmm. Why Taiwan? Was Huckabee a big anti-communist? Was there a religious affiliation to this group? Maybe a Baptist nexus - Huckabee is a Baptist minister.
“Well,” I said, “I will have to talk to Rudy and get back to you. I can tell you his schedule would make it nearly impossible to accommodate a drop-by on this short notice. I wish you had given me some idea before now that this was the point of the meeting and I could have pitched this. But this event is tomorrow.” He apologized and explained that he wanted to make the presentation in person. He thanked me for the meeting and I asked them if they wanted to go over to City Hall for a tour. Mrs. Huckabee’s mood seemed to warm up a little when we got to City Hall. I left them alone for a moment and poked my head into the Mayor’s office to see if he’d shake hands with him. But no go.
After the tour we parted and I went back to my office to figure out what to do. Blow him off? Make a pitch to Rudy to go to the event? Ask Peter to go?
I slept on it and the next day decided I’d ask Rudy to stop by this thing and say hello as a gesture to Huckabee. Beth got me time. I took along a slew of documents that needed signing. While he signed I said, “Mayor, I met with the lieutenant governor of Arkansas. You turned down the meeting.” “I passed that on to Peter,” he interrupted. “Right,” I said. “He passed on it.” “Oh, OK,” Rudy said. “His purpose for the meeting”, I began, “was to invite you to an organization he’s affiliated with that’s having an event at the Marriott tonight for a drop-by. It’s some sort of Chinese group he has a long-standing association with. Not sure who they are I haven’t checked them out. But he’s vouching for them. I’ve checked him out thoroughly with D.C. and everyone asks that you be accommodating to him. Says he’s gonna be governor or senator. I checked your schedule and you can do this for fifteen minutes. The party in D.C is asking you to be nice to this guy. They say he’s a comer.”
“Did you say Chinese?” Rudy asked, “Yes, Taiwanese,” I clarified. “I don’t want to do anything to piss off the Chinese. They just bought that building and moved their consulate. I don’t want to do anything to upset them,” Rudy said.
“The Red Chinese? You don’t want to piss off the communists?” I asked sotto voce. I was actually confused. I knew what he was talking about - the Government of China had recently purchased a large building and had consolidated most of their various official and consular offices on the far west side of Manhattan. What I didn’t understand was why he thought this mattered and why he cared about Red China. I kind of assumed that like me, Rudy Giuliani had been a fierce anti-communist most of his life.
“Yes, the communists,” he responded. “OK,” I said. “Would you mind if Peter went?” You can ask him,” Rudy said, closing his Mont Blanc fountain pen. “Thank you, Mayor”, I said, gathering my documents before I left.
At a scheduling meeting with Peter later that afternoon I approached him about repping Rudy. Again the answer was a firm no. Although he never said the words, it was obvious he was thinking “yahoo”, not “serious pol”, when I said, “Lieutenant Governor Huckabee of Arkansas.” We agreed after looking at the invite that this Chinese group seemed fishy but Peter didn’t mind me having pitched the event to Rudy. I had explained D.C.’s interest in Huckabee’s future and that they viewed this as a request of Rudy. Peter and I both understood we could use all the good grace from the national party we could get. We did our other business and I went back to my office to call Huckabee.
“Governor, the Mayor won’t be able to fit this in on such short notice, I’m very sorry, I did try,” I told him. He was very gracious but threw me for a loop. “I appreciate all your efforts, Russell, I really do. Could we get a letter or a proclamation from the Mayor to the group welcoming them? Could you arrange that?” He asked. The short answer is, of course. I’ve worked tougher miracles than that before for friends in a jam. But what were my instructions exactly from Rudy about this Chinese business?
What’s his obsession with Red China? Was I precluded from further assistance in his name? “I’m afraid I can’t do anymore on this with the time allowed. We have a whole process here for that. I’m very sorry, Governor,” I told him. “Would you come and say a few words to the group on behalf of the Mayor yourself, as my guest?” He asked. OH MY GOD, I thought. How do I get off this call? “I’d be honored, Governor, but again, had I only known, I have a previous commitment this evening,” I lied, “I’m very sorry. I hope your event is a great success.”
I regret not going that night. He was gracious to invite me. He was clearly in a jam. He had promised Rudy to the group and I could have gotten him out of some of this difficulty without any harm to my principal. I know, I know first rule: always check out the group before involving your principal. But I don’t think much harm would have been done had Rudy went. And certainly not for the reason he was espousing. Pissing off the Red Chinese? I was also really interested to see how deep Huckabee was with this group. There was some connection there that has never been mentioned publicly, to my knowledge.
POSTSCRIPT:
This was still the period, more or less, of easy going Rudy. As time went on Rudy would get more and more difficult about doing anything. He always needed more information before doing most things. It became exasperating when after providing him with tons of background he would say, “I need more information on this”, and you would explain there was no more info on this group, person or event. I can’t even count the number of times I would encounter this either alone or with Peter.
Governor Huckabee and I met on one other occasion in New York and after that always stayed in touch at Christmas. Governor Huckabee sent me all of his published Christian themed books with very nice letters attached. When I went to work at the NYC Housing Development Corporation I became a member of the National Council of State Housing Finance Agencies. Through my counterpart in the Arkansas state HFA, a close friend of Huckabee, I stayed in touch with the Governor. He was always decent to me and I tried after that initial meeting to make up for the snub he received from Rudy that I was clearly part and parcel of.
ADDENDUM:
Prior to going to a Little Rock fundraising event for the short-lived 2000 senate race, Tony Carbonetti mentioned that the Governor would be there. I told him to make sure that he said hello for me. Tony asked incredulously, “You know the Governor of Arkansas?” He had completely forgotten the story and moreover didn’t really believe me when I recounted it.
When he returned from the trip he called me first thing and said when he and Rudy went up to Huckabee to introduce themselves at the country club where the fundraiser was being held, the first words out of the Governor’s mouth were “Mayor, how’s my good friend Russell Harding?” Tony said he and Rudy were both blown away. That story always makes me laugh.
Thats an interesting little article. Politics! I wonder what $15 dolars in brazil compares too our police wages? I suppose some one asked what that would be translated. I suppose I could find out myself but for the sake of the story, it is implied that it is a meager amount and so the cops are crooks, but compared to the median wages what is $15?
Also, I haven't heard anything about gulliani for a long time now, didnt he have cancer or something? BTW, it seems to me I remember something about him going somewhere in drag, what was that all about? He doesnt have time to meet with a L.Gov of Arkansaw but he can get dolled up in drag? Where did he go for that? Is he a transvestive?
Posted by: robin cowley | February 13, 2009 at 02:08 AM