Can Al and Jeanine Pirro's Marriage Be Saved? -- New York Magazine

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

Al may have been a brilliant zoning lawyer, but his “juice,” as he sometimes called it, came through another route. “I learned that raising money was an important ingredient for political decisions,” says Al. “So early on, I would get together a group of businessmen. We would have a private dinner. We would invite a potential candidate or the county leader.” Soon, Al was in a position to dispense favors, an activity that, by some accounts, he took to with relish. Asked by a friend to help with an antagonistic public-relations firm in town, Al snapped, “I made him and I can break him.”

As a young prosecutor in 1978.

(Photo: Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times/Redux)

In Westchester, Jeanine landed a job as assistant district attorney, aided by Al’s political connections. She soon ran one of the country’s first domestic-violence units, becoming a champion of battered women and abused children long before it was a popular cause. Later she pioneered the prosecution of Internet pedophiles, pressing for legislation that gave her the enforcement tools she needed. Jeanine was bright enough to do the wonkish, heavy-on-fine-print, white-collar cases. But they didn’t captivate her. “I’m a fighter,” she likes to say, and her preferred opponents are those who commit, as she says, “crimes whose scars remain after the wounds have healed.”

Colleagues, she knew, suspected women couldn’t go for the jugular. And Jeanine was determined to prove she was made of steelier stuff. To her, criminals were “freaks” and “perverts” and “slime.” “Cage the bastard” was a phrase she used. Her job at the district attorney’s office was to sort out good from evil. “I don’t think we’re angry enough,” she says. Every would-be protector needs a steady supply of victims. For Jeanine, they were everywhere. “The line that separates those of us who are victims of crime from those of us who live carefree lives is a very, very thin line,” she once said.

In 1986, Jeanine’s name was put forward for lieutenant governor. Jeanine wasn’t much interested in political machinations. “I am astounded by the lack of interest she has in the ins and outs of Republican or Democratic affairs,” says Al. Fortunately, that was one of Al’s interests. “Do my relationships open doors for her in the GOP?” Al once asked. “Unquestionably.”

Then, on the eve of her nomination, a report circulated that Al was supposedly in a business with a mob tie. Jeanine declined to release a list of Al’s clients. Her name was withdrawn as a candidate, a turn of events that Al credits with initiating the theme of “Al as the problem.”

Jeanine was disappointed, but Al put his considerable energies to work on her behalf. “The best strategy I could put together for her would be to run for county-court judge,” he tells me. “Because in the county-court race, by the canons of ethics, they’re not really allowed to talk about anything other than the qualifications of the candidates.”

In Westchester, elections were a foregone conclusion. Republicans almost always won. The difficult part was getting the nomination. “The issue was really could I persuade the leadership to give her the nomination?” says Al. The local party was an old boys’ club; no woman had ever served as a county judge in Westchester.

Al, though, had been raising money for these guys for years. Plus, anyone familiar with Jeanine noticed her winning qualities. Al says, “She was a wonderful product for the Republican Party”—a party starting to recognize the importance of an energized female electorate.

Once Al secured her the nomination, Jeanine won in a landslide. Sadly, Jeanine didn’t particularly care for the job. “She was given the judgeship, and it was a disaster,” Al explains. “She was stuck up on that bench in a robe, ruling on cases. She hated it.” The post stymied her activist spirit, though the black robes were also part of the problem. She found them dreary. She sewed colorful linings inside the robes. “Sitting there all day in black, I’d flip it up and see a flash of color,” she says.

She and Al plotted her next step. “We started to support local candidates, state candidates,” Al once explained. “And a lot [of this was] establishing relationships so she could move on to higher office.”

In 1993, soon after the Westchester district attorney announced his retirement, Jeanine decided she wanted the job. With Al’s help, she won handily. Jeanine soon became the most famous district attorney in America. She had an aptitude for publicity. She was a D.A. who sometimes raced to the scene of crimes, making declarations to TV cameras, occasionally maladroit ones. (During a hostage situation, she declared that the criminal would face the death penalty, infuriating police working to get the hostages out alive.) Soon, she was on TV commenting on other trials. During O.J.’s criminal trial she “practically lived” on the set of Geraldo.