Pataki Emerges as Rainmaker for National G.O.P.
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
ASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — George W. Bush and national Republicans all but ignored New York during the 2000 presidential election. But this time around, New York's Republican governor, George E. Pataki, has managed to grab their attention.
Mr. Pataki has emerged from the sidelines of the national party to become one of its best fund-raising draws. By playing host to events in Manhattan and political nightspots in Albany, as well as employing his formidable political apparatus, Mr. Pataki has helped pump millions of dollars into the campaigns of Republicans across the nation. Among those benefiting from his fund-raising prowess are President Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader and bête noire of liberal Democratic New Yorkers.
This year alone, Mr. Pataki has helped raise $5 million for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign. He has also held fund-raisers in New York on behalf of more than 25 Republican House and Senate members in the past two years, as well as for four Washington-based Republican campaign committees.
His efforts will be on display on Monday, when he holds a $1,000-a-person reception at a Manhattan restaurant for Mr. DeLay, whose positions have drawn opposition from a host of New York politicians, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a fellow Republican. Then, Mr. Pataki will embark on a sprint in New York and across the country that Republicans say may add as much as $1.7 million to the money he has brought in for national Republicans.
For Mr. Schwarzenegger, Mr. Pataki arranged a lunch in August at the Four Seasons with one of his top fund-raisers, Charles A. Gargano, the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, and with some of the city's top Republican money raisers and donors. The Pataki team has since been soliciting contributions, with donors assured of a chance to meet Mr. Schwarzenegger in November, when, the fund-raising literature states, he will return to New York as California's new governor.
Why Mr. Pataki is putting this kind of effort into raising money for Republicans nationally is an open question, even among some Republicans. Of particular interest is his support for those like Mr. DeLay, whose positions on issues like abortion rights, gun control and government spending differ sharply with those of many New Yorkers.
But people in both parties say one answer may be that Mr. Pataki can. Not only is he the governor of what has been dubbed the A.T.M. state, a reference to New York's reputation as being flush with political cash because of its heavy concentration of wealthy, politically active people. But Mr. Pataki, who is safely ensconced in his third term, has an extensive fund-raising apparatus and a donor list that is the envy of Republicans and Democrats alike.
That fund-raising operation, which, according to campaign disclosure statements, is very well compensated for its efforts, is a vestige of the political machine once controlled by Alfonse M. D'Amato, the former United States senator from New York.
Mr. Pataki's efforts on behalf of the national party have renewed speculation about his ultimate ambitions. Some say he is shopping to secure a spot in a second Bush administration. Others say he is seeking to protect the interests of New York, a Democratic stronghold, at a time when Republicans control the White House and Congress.
But Mr. Pataki's aides and supporters contend that he is simply being a good soldier trying to help his party.
"Governor Pataki believes in the principles of opportunity and freedom that the Republican Party represents, particularly under this president, and is going to continue to work to help the party and President Bush in New York and across the country," said Lisa Dewald Stoll, the governor's spokeswoman.
People close to Mr. Pataki note that he was not always as willing to put his skills to work for the national party, largely because it was dominated by fiery conservatives like Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, through much of his tenure as governor.
Mr. Pataki, they say, feels far more at home with the moderate tone the national party has adopted under Mr. Bush, who campaigned as a compassionate conservative and who has sought to make inroads in groups that have supported Democrats, including labor unions and Hispanic voters, a course that Mr. Pataki has followed himself.
Perhaps as important, Mr. Pataki has developed a friendly relationship with Mr. Bush, a classmate at Yale who recently invited the governor and his wife, Libby, to be weekend guests at Camp David, according to Republicans in and outside the Pataki camp.
Beyond that, Mr. Pataki has frequent telephone conversations with the president's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, who has called on the governor to press his network of donors to help support the Republican efforts in 2004, according to Republicans with ties to the Bush and Pataki camps.
"The governor is a lot more comfortable with the party now," said one of Mr. Pataki's closest advisers, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "He feels there's more room with this leadership for a diversified Republican Party." Mr. Pataki's fund-raising efforts on behalf of President Bush have been such that the Bush campaign recently designated him a ranger, a member of an elite group of presidential fund-raisers. (As the Bush re-election campaign seeks to amass the largest treasury in history, many of the president's best-connected supporters are competing for the honor of being designated pioneers, people who have raised at least $100,000, or rangers, those who have raised at least $200,000.)
Even critics of Mr. Pataki's fund-raising practices say they are impressed by the scale of his efforts. "Pataki is turning out to be the Lone Ranger," said Blair Horner, a lobbyist for the New York Public Interest Research Group who has raised concerns about the influence of money in politics. "The governor is pulling out all the stops on behalf of the Bush re-election effort." In the next few weeks, Mr. Pataki will embark on a fund-raising spree that New York Republicans say will leave little doubt about the crucial role he now plays in the national Republican Party's competition with Democrats for campaign dollars.
Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, a Buffalo-area Republican who is one of the most successful fund-raisers in Congress and who was designated a ranger by the Bush campaign, suggested that Mr. Pataki's efforts were forcing national Republican leaders to think twice about disregarding the needs of New York, a heavily Democratic state that rarely factors into the national Republican political calculus.
"The governor has made sure that New York is an impact player in this election through his fund-raising," said Mr. Reynolds, who is also the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "You just can't write New York off as a Democratic state."
The next phase of Mr. Pataki's effort begins on Monday at the "21" Club in Manhattan, at a luncheon by his fund-raising operation to raise money for a political action committee for Mr. DeLay, Americans for a Republican Majority. Mr. Pataki's advisers say they expect the event to raise $100,000 to $150,000.
Mr. Pataki will be the featured speaker at five events — three in California, one in Oregon and one in Washington State — sponsored by local Republican state committees as they gear up for the 2004 elections. The trip is expected to raise several hundred thousand dollars, according to the Pataki camp.
Then, Mr. Pataki will hold a $1,000-a-ticket reception for the Republican Governors Association on Oct. 2 at the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. The governor's advisers say that event is expected to bring in as much as $500,000.
Mr. Pataki will then be the host of a $1,000-a-person reception featuring Laura Bush at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Plaza to raise money for Bush-Cheney 04 Inc., the re-election committee that Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney created this summer. That reception is expected to bring in about $500,000, according to Mr. Pataki's political advisers.
Mr. Pataki is also scheduled to be the featured speaker at the Iowa Republican Party's annual fall dinner.
Republicans and Democrats alike say Mr. Pataki's fund-raising ability reflects the strong political apparatus he has built during his past eight years as governor, with the assistance of a handful of close associates who have been handsomely rewarded for their efforts.
Among them is Cathy Blaney, a top Pataki fund-raiser who Republicans say was introduced to the governor by Mr. D'Amato, Mr. Pataki's political mentor and a leading architect of his 1994 victory over Mario M. Cuomo, the Democratic incumbent at the time.
Between Jan. 15 and July 15 of this year, for example, Mr. Pataki's main campaign committee, Friends of Pataki, paid nearly $400,000 to Cathy Blaney & Associates, a Manhattan-based fund-raising firm, according to the latest campaign financial disclosure statements. That amount represents almost 25 percent of the roughly $1.6 million that the committee spent during the same six-month period, according to the statements.
Mr. Horner, of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said he found it most interesting that the payments signal that the Pataki operation had continued to employ costly consultants even though the governor had just been re-elected in November. He added that the payments highlighted a concern that his and other government watchdog groups had raised about the Pataki administration: that it has turned governing into a permanent campaign.
"The way the governor fund-raises allows him to kill many birds with one stone," Mr. Horner said. "He develops personal relationships nationally, lays the groundwork for political alliances he could use later and keeps his fund-raising apparatus employed and in fighting shape. He can do this because he has some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in America in his state. I think it would probably be hard for the governor of Arkansas to play at this level."
nytimes.com |
