Feature

Underground Man

Despite whatever doubts he may have initially had—D’Amato was going up against fellow Republican Jacob Javits, a New York Jewish icon—Kalikow became his finance chairman, and the two have been inseparable since. “All my friends take heat with respect to me,” D’Amato says. But these ties run very deep.

Kalikow hired a D’Amato staffer named Rick Nasti more than twenty years ago, and he became one of the developer’s closest confidants. While Kalikow owned the Post, Nasti, a vice-president, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of violating state financial laws for artificially inflating the paper’s circulation numbers. Kalikow himself was never implicated, and Nasti, who is still with him, now works in his company’s offices at 101 Park.

D’Amato’s lobbying firm, Park Strategies, is also on the 25th floor at 101. And, though it happened before Kalikow became MTA chairman, D’Amato was paid a $500,000 fee for making one phone call to grease the wheels of the MTA’s move of its headquarters to Two Broadway.

But the intermingling doesn’t end there. David Mack, one of Kalikow’s best friends and one of the people who helped him through his bankruptcy, is also an MTA board member. And he too has been a D’Amato buddy and supporter for more than 30 years. In fact, Mack and D’Amato played an instrumental role in engineering George Pataki’s initial run for governor.

In 1993, Republican consultant Arthur Finkelstein had come up with a list of ten qualities the ideal candidate should have to defeat Mario Cuomo. The criteria were fairly straightforward: The candidate should be from outside the city, have a fresh face, support the death penalty, and the like. D’Amato, Mack, Mack’s brother Earle, and two other Republican heavyweights from Nassau County met for lunch at the Marriott near La Guardia airport. With Finkelstein’s wish list in hand, D’Amato suggested they get behind the then little-known Pataki.

The five of them formed the nucleus of Pataki’s team. To pick his running mate, Pataki, D’Amato, and Kalikow held what amounted to a one-day casting call in a New York City hotel room during the Republican state convention. “It was a really tedious day,” says one source, “and then Betsy came in with her pearly whites and long legs and it was a done deal.” Betsy McCaughey Ross was selected as Pataki’s running mate, according to several sources, because she “was the prettiest.”

Kalikow argues without rancor that the people closest to him have all been an enormous help. “I told Alfonse, ‘If you screw around, I’m gonna kill you,’ ” Kalikow says. “I told him, ‘I want to be a success here, and you’re going to help me.’ And he does. I’ve gotten to see a lot of people in Washington who might not have taken my calls. And I know when to see them and what to say. If that’s cronyism, I’ll take the heat.”

State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who heads the committee that has oversight responsibilities for the MTA, says: “One of Peter’s strengths is that he’s a member of this big-guy Republican club. And one of Peter’s weaknesses is that he’s a member of the big-guy Republican club. On the positive side, it means they let him in the room. But the question is, can he stand up to them when he has to? I’ve seen signs of it, but there needs to be more.”

Kalikow acknowledges the validity of the criticism and the charge that he has gone easy on the governor when it comes to funding public transportation. He even says he might be making the charge himself if he were on the other side. But this is the year the MTA’s five-year capital plan will be set. “We’re going to the governor and the Legislature this year,” Kalikow says, “and Albany is going to have to lead the way in providing funding.”

Though he can be prickly and demanding, Kalikow is well liked, even by his adversaries. He is an entertaining mixture of power and money with the essential qualities of a kid from Queens. In conversation, he makes seamless personal references to people like Elie Wiesel, Bill Moyers, and Stephen Ambrose (Kalikow is mentioned in his last book), while at the same time exhibiting the slightly twitchy body language of a guy from the streets.

Kalikow is the kind of guy who fixes and tinkers with the nearly 50 exotic cars he owns and who, as one friend put it, could be found on his $10 million yacht watching The Honeymooners—his favorite show—as guests were arriving for a dinner party.

He is without artifice, which makes him both accessible and direct—what he himself would call a straight shooter. “Peter’s very engaging,” says Gene Russianoff. “He’s the kind of guy who will call you if he sees a comment you’ve made in the newspaper and tell you what he thinks.”

Kalikow works at maintaining good relations even with his opponents. The one exception is State Comptroller Alan Hevesi. When the battle was joined over the fare increase last year, an ugly public dispute developed between the two men that has left raw feelings even a year later. “To Hevesi’s discredit,” Kalikow says, “he tried to get political mileage out of what was happening. That’s what you call unscrupulous. I think he should be ashamed of himself.”

Hevesi apparently hasn’t lost any of his passion for the dispute either. “Once again, Kalikow is not telling the truth,” he responded when told what the MTA chairman had to say. The comptroller argues that as a result of demanding public accountability from Kalikow and his board, the MTA has reformed its financial-reporting practices.

Despite the battering Kalikow and the MTA took for raising the fare, he believes they did the right thing. He is looking forward now, focused on expansion. “This job and this system,” Kalikow says, “are too important to leave before I’ve accomplished everything I’d like to get done.”

And besides, he loves what he’s doing. But the MTA is not his last stop. “I’m still a developer,” he says. “And I know I have one more great building in me.”