Feature

The Pataki Puzzle

At precisely 10 a.m. on the morning of July 4, a solemn procession began descending the temporary ramp leading to the dirt and bedrock floor of ground zero. This was the ceremony to lay a block of Adirondack granite as the cornerstone for the new Freedom Tower. First came the bagpipers, and then the three men in suits—Mayor Bloomberg on one side, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey on the other, and Pataki, symbolically, in the middle. It was all low-key and restrained, not unlike the way Pataki presides as governor. Pataki, in fact, had decided against having his name engraved on the twenty-ton slab. “This isn’t about a person,” he explained earlier. “The Statue of Liberty . . . I don’t know who the governor was, who the mayor was. It was a symbol of freedom. Nobody says, ‘Wasn’t it great that Governor So-and-so allowed the French guy Whatever-his-name-was to put it there?’ ” Absent from the groundbreaking was the New Yorker most closely identified with ground zero. Giuliani, it seems, has a tacit understanding with Pataki: The rebuilding is yours.

If it were only that simple on the campaign trail. These days, if Rudy is Oprah, Pataki is Montel. Giuliani took the lead role on September 11 and went on to become America’s Mayor. Pataki has yet to be introduced as America’s Governor. “Everybody knows Rudy Giuliani. He was the face you saw on TV every day,” says Ashenfelter. “I actually ran this by my family when Governor Pataki was going to be our speaker. They said, ‘We know Rudy. Pataki, we don’t know who he is.’ ”

There were years of tensions between the two men after Giuliani shunned Pataki in 1994 to support Mario Cuomo for governor. It took six years and Giuliani’s prostate cancer in 2000 for the chill to subside. The thaw began when Pataki invited Giuliani to his Hudson Valley home for the weekend. Their work following September 11 brought them closer together. But Giuliani also has been flying around the country, raising cash for Republicans and trying to maximize his political options—including a run for president. Giuliani and Pataki could be on a collision course again.

Indeed, there was some anxiety within the Pataki camp last month as the Bush campaign was finalizing the schedule for next month’s convention. Would Giuliani get a more prominent role than the governor? One planner of the Garden gathering called it a “subplot of the convention,” adding, “I guess they never stopped being rivals.” The Bush campaign settled things late last month. Giuliani received a prime-time speaking slot on the convention’s opening evening, and Pataki was assigned the honor of delivering the speech nominating Bush on the final night. The governor’s camp was relieved.

If he decided to run, Pataki could raise at least $10 million, and maybe $30 million, up front, Republican strategists say, probably enough to stay in the race beyond the initial thinning of the field in Iowa and New Hampshire. Winning is another matter. Katon Dawson, the South Carolina Republican chairman, touched all the politically correct bases when asked how Giuliani or Pataki would fare in the South Carolina Republican primary. Sure, they would have a chance to win, he said: “They both took America on its worst day, and made us better by the minute.” He helpfully pointed out that this is no small matter; no Republican has won the party’s nomination in recent times without capturing the South Carolina primary, he said.

Did he know that Pataki and Giuliani have been staunch supporters of gun control? “Well,” he drawled, “we are all supporters of the NRA in South Carolina.”

Was he aware that both men supported a woman’s right to an abortion? Dawson paused. “That is a litmus test in the South. That would be plowing new ground in South Carolina.”

And how about their support of some gay rights? There was no pause now. “A big stumbling block,” he said.

Dawson chuckled. “When you come to South Carolina, you better be prepared for a brass-knuckles brawl,” he volunteered. “Issues: That’s what drives primaries in South Carolina and in the South.”

The first decision Pataki faces is whether to seek reelection in 2006. When the question came up at La Nueva España, Pataki’s eyes widened. “I’ll tell you, I am excited as I have ever been. And you expect me to say that, and I should, but I honestly feel that way.” He mentioned that a day earlier in Albany, he had announced that high-temperature superconducting power cable, a new kind of power line, will be made in New York. “It’s totally obscure and it got no press and I did not expect it would.” The press just didn’t know. “The fibers will be made in Schenectady!” He beamed. “This will do for electric transmission what fiber-optic cable did for telecommunications!” Over the next five minutes, Pataki also said, “How could you not be really excited by this?” and “I know I am filibustering, but I just love this!” and “There is so much more to do.”

Leaving the public sector holds no allure. “Their names shall be nameless, but many of my really good friends who were in the administration are making a lot of money in the private sector, and yet there is something missing,” Pataki said. “The reason they went into government was because they had this desire to impact policy in a way that affects people’s lives.”

In Albany, it is widely assumed that Pataki is either too frustrated or too bored to want a fourth term. His relations with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, could not be worse. “Those guys really seem to loathe each other,” says Assemblyman Tom Kirwan, a Newburgh Republican. “I don’t know how much more you would want to put up with that.” Pataki has kept the option of a fourth term alive, collecting more than $1.5 million for his own gubernatorial-campaign committee since January. But running against a tough, well-funded opponent like Senator Chuck Schumer or Attorney General Eliot Spitzer would raise the ugly prospect of ending his political career on someone else’s terms.

Running against Hillary Clinton for the Senate in 2006, on the other hand, would seem to have appeal. Beating her would make Pataki an instant hero to national Republicans, a transcendent figure. But that too would be a hard fight, and it’s not necessarily a job that suits him anyway. On this point, Pataki is remarkably frank. “After Rudy didn’t run [in 2000], a lot of people said, ‘You got to run, you got to run,’ ” Pataki said. “Had I run, it would have been a relatively not difficult—I wouldn’t say easy—race. I just didn’t have the desire to be a legislator when the alternative is to be an executive. You never say ‘never.’ But being the person in the hot seat making the decisions—the challenge is something that I have relished.”

Pataki also appears to have little interest in the second-tier Cabinet positions, like Housing or Labor, that could be in his grasp if Bush wins in November.

Seen one way, then, running for president could end up being Pataki’s best chance to hold public office. And looking at it from his perspective, why not? Who gave Jimmy Carter a shot to be president? Or maybe there’s a shot at the vice-presidency. Certainly, there are people around Pataki urging him to dream big. “He’s got a circle of friends who have been with him at every step of the way, from mayor to the Legislature to governor, who talk about the governor running for national office,” says his political ally Michael Long, chairman of the New York State Conservative Party. “I have heard them talk, that given the right place, right time, the next time around, he could become president.”

Right place, right time. Hardly a scenario to bet his new Adirondack farm on. But Pataki doesn’t need to make any decisions or commitments now. So he will continue to raise money and give speeches and network—especially next month, when the Republicans converge on the city. The governor already has penciled in a key fund-raiser during convention week. He will be the featured speaker at a benefit for the New Hampshire Republican Party.