When Roger Stone, the blond and perpetually tanned
Republican consultant, first floated the idea of a challenger to Governor
George Pataki for the Conservative Party nomination, it seemed he had found the
perfect vehicle: Phil McConkey. The good-looking former New York Giants wide
receiver, now a Wall Street banker, had some experience in politics. And just
the mention of his name elicited some positive press.
For conservative Republicans, running Mr. McConkey would
serve the Governor right. Mr. Pataki had betrayed conservative principals, they
said-increasing the state’s debt, mushrooming the
budget, supporting gun control. Worst of all, he had “cozied up” to the
Reverend Al Sharpton on the issue of Naval bombing in Vieques-unforgivable to Mr.
Stone and his crowd.
But the selection of Mr. McConkey, it seems, may have been
premature. He’s not registered to vote in New York City,
where he gives a Columbus Avenue
address, according to city Board of Elections spokeswoman Naomi Bernstein. Nor
is he registered in Hunterdon County, N.J.,
where he ran for Congress in 1990. He wasn’t registered in 1990 either,
according to Irene Ballantine, who works for the Hunterdon Board of Elections.
Not registering to vote-or not voting in at least a decade,
according to the public records-does not preclude Mr. McConkey from pursuing
the Conservative Party line in 2002. But it does signal a rough start to a
candidacy that Mr. Stone clearly hoped would force Mr. Pataki slightly more to
the right-if not fully undermine his chances for a third term. (As
conservatives like to point out, no Republican in 25 years has won election to
statewide office without the Conservative Party line.)
Complicating things for Mr. McConkey is his contribution in
June to Andrew Cuomo, one of Mr. Pataki’s Democratic challengers and the son of
former Governor Mario Cuomo, who is still the very face of liberalism to
conservatives. The donation has caught the attention of Conservative Party
chairman Michael Long, who has already put out fund-raising letters listing Mr.
Cuomo as the conservatives’ Public Enemy No. 1.
Mr. McConkey has explained the $500 gift, saying he was
asked to donate by his friend Christopher Cuomo, Andrew’s younger brother. Mr.
McConkey, however, not only gave money to Mr. Cuomo, he attended a “Young
Professionals for Cuomo” fund-raiser at the club Light in late spring, The Observer has learned.
Christopher Cuomo said Mr. McConkey is his friend-one he
sees “not as often as I’d like. He’s someone you would go out with, but you
don’t always have time to.” He said he invited the 1987 Super Bowl star because
he is “not poor,” and because “on a lot of levels he respects my brother. Phil
would not have given money just because I asked him.”
Mr. McConkey’s donation to Andrew Cuomo was especially
notable, since it’s one of the few donations he’s made over the years. Federal
electronic databases, which go back 13 years, show that he gave $1,000 to Dick
Zimmer in 1990 after losing the Republican congressional primary, and $1,000 to
George W. Bush in 2000. State databases, which go back three years, show no
donations other than the one to Mr. Cuomo.
The revelation that Mr. McConkey attended a Cuomo event will
doubtless fuel speculation-much of it fanned by the Pataki camp-that the McConkey
candidacy is a revenge plot cooked up by
Mr. Stone, in cahoots with Andrew Cuomo. Mr. Stone’s marquee client is Donald
Trump, who has been fiercely trying to stop Mr. Pataki from allowing casino
gambling in New York. Mr.
Cuomo-who is facing his own challenge to the Democratic nomination, in the form
of State Comptroller Carl McCall-could obviously benefit from a challenge to
Mr. Pataki, should Mr. Cuomo be the Democrats’ choice.
Both Mr. Stoneanda Cuomo spokesman,
Peter Ragone, vehemently denied that the two have dreamed up the McConkey
candidacy together, though they acknowledged knowing each other.
But the Associated
Press, which is not prone to speculative reports, ran a story on July 16
quoting two Republican sources-one named, one unnamed-who said Mr. Stone told
them he was helping Mr. Cuomo. The unnamed source said he overheard a
conversation between Roger Stone and Andrew Cuomo about a Conservative Party
primary. Both Mr. Stone and Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman denied that the conversations
took place.
A Memorable Catch
Mr. McConkey declined to be interviewed for this story. Mr.
Stone, however, speaking for him, explained that Mr. McConkey had registered in
Manhattan as a Conservative in late June (a few weeks before Mr. Stone began
floating his name as a candidate), but said the form was sent back because Mr.
McConkey had forgotten to check the box that said he was a U.S. citizen.
Mr. Stone said Mr. McConkey believed he had registered as a
Republican in New York in 1996,
but added the former football player could not remember the last time he’d
actually voted. Mr. Stone insisted that his client’s lack of a voting history
would make little difference in a primary where voters are motivated by
ideological causes.
Certainly, Mr. McConkey is an attractive candidate. He’s
best known for making a diving catch in the 1987 Super Bowl against the Denver
Broncos that put the ball on the one-yard line and led to a touchdown that
busted open the game. The McConkey catch also had sentimental value. The former
Naval Academy
player was seen as a scrappy wide receiver who was short and not particularly
fast, but who made up in hard work and dedication what he lacked in physical
gifts.
After retiring from the N.F.L. in 1989, he became an
insurance broker. But in the late 1990′s, he displayed some of that old
gridiron scrappiness by suing a former employer, Frank Zarb. He accused Mr.
Zarb-who by the time of the lawsuit had come to head the parent company of the Nasdaq stock exchange-of making false promises when he
recruited him. Mr. McConkey, who is now an investment banker at Garban
Intercapital, won a $10 million judgment against the company, though Mr. Zarb
himself was dismissed as a defendant; the case is now on appeal.
In 1990, Mr. McConkey ran as the most conservative of four
candidates seeking the Republican nomination for a New
Jersey Congressional seat that eventually went to Mr.
Zimmer. Now he’s mulling the New York
State run.
In a July 13 letter to Mr. Long, the Conservative Party
chair, Mr. McConkey said he was interested in running because “the Pataki
Administration has veered sharply left.” Among the slights Mr. McConkey listed:
increasing the budget, fiscal gimmickry, increased state debt. But most galling
to Mr. McConkey and like-minded conservatives was Mr. Pataki’s joining “Al
Sharpton and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in opposing the U.S.
military bombing of Vieques.”
Already he’s received
favorable billing in the New York Post ,
the Buffalo News and, most glowingly,
in conservative pundit Tucker Carlson’s column in New
York
magazine. Mr. Carlson depicted him as a man who could pose a serious threat to
Mr. Pataki. “He is well-spoken, self-consciously ethnic (half-Sicilian and
proud of it) and he has a great bio: Naval Academy graduate, helicopter pilot,
self-made Wall Street guy,” Mr. Carlson wrote in his Aug. 13 column.
Christopher Cuomo describes him as a “real mensch …. To a
lot of people, when Phil was playing football he was the common man’s champion,
because he wasn’t the biggest or the strongest. Then he gets in the insurance
business, and he gets involved in this huge imbroglio with Frank Zarb, and he
takes on the man who was then the chairman of Nasdaq and wins on the principle
[that], if you tell somebody something, [you] should have to deliver …. I’ve got a lot of respect for that. Most guys
wouldn’t take on that fight, you know?”
First Is Long
That’s the kind of grit that some conservatives are looking
for-though it’s unclear whether Mr. Long is one of them.
William Newmark, the Bronx County Conservative Party
chairman who’s among a handful of state Conservative Party leaders publicly
supporting a Pataki alternative, says Mr. McConkey is a man of principle; Mr.
Pataki, he says, is not. Mr. Newmark said he’s not sure whether Mr. McConkey
will be Mr. Long’s man. “What it comes down to is,
will patronage win out over principle? For Mike, patronage comes first; for me,
principle comes first.”
Mr. Long angrily denied Mr. Newmark’s characterization,
saying if all he cared about was patronage, he would have supported Rudolph
Giuliani for the U.S. Senate, and he didn’t. Mr. Long also came to the defense
of Mr. Pataki: “The Governor, while he’s done some things we totally disagree
with on the conservative side of things, he has consistently cut taxes-one of
the biggest personal-income-tax cuts in the history of the state. He has peeled
away regulations, and clearly I give him credit for holding the line on the
budget this year, refusing to negotiate an upward budget.”
So far, the Conservative Party has supported Mr. Pataki.
Indeed, the thinking goes, it gave Mr. Pataki his margins of
victory in 1994 and 1998-even though the Governor is pro-choice, pro–gay
rights, pro-environment and supports government-funded health insurance for
poor children.
But “cozying up” to Al Sharpton may have turned the tide,
the Governor’s critics said. And a likable popular former sports star with a
lot of money is just the ticket for them-especially one who’s had a bit of
political experience.
Mr. Stone’s firm has performed a poll-one widely disputed by
Mr. Long and Pataki advisors-which found that Mr. McConkey could easily defeat
Mr. Pataki in a Conservative Party primary. (One of the questions in that poll
referred to Mr. Pataki’s recently named Secretary of State, Randy Daniels:
“Governor George Pataki recently appointed a black liberal Democrat as
Secretary of State. Does Governor Pataki’s appointment make you more likely or
less likely to vote for him?” Fifty-nine percent said “less likely.”)
But countering the Governor’s lack of conservative bona
fides is that Cuomo donation by Mr. McConkey. Mr. Long is already attacking Mr.
Cuomo in fund-raising letters. In a letter that frequently invokes
“ultra-liberal Andrew Cuomo,” Mr. Long talks about the “painful impact of Mario
Cuomo–style Big Government policies.”
Meanwhile, Pataki spokesman Mike McKeon hasn’t been shy
about getting into the controversy, accusing Mr. Stone and Mr. Cuomo of being
“two dirty tricksters” working together. The vehemence of the response
indicates that Mr. Pataki does not want a Conservative Party primary. (It also
suggests that Mr. Pataki has decided Andrew Cuomo is going to be his opponent;
Mr. Cuomo has already pulled even with Mr. McCall in the fund-raising race,
despite being officially in the gubernatorial contest only since January.)
It would certainly be troublesome, to say the least, for Mr.
Pataki to have a Conservative Party primary. “When there’s already a primary on
the ‘D’ side, you just want to be above the fray,” one Republican strategist
said. No Republican candidate wants to defend his conservative credentials on
the one hand, while also reaching for the center, where the vast majority of
New York Republican votes lie. Indeed, upstate populations (where the
Republicans reside) are shrinking, while the metropolitan region, rife with
Democrats, is growing. That dynamic helped propel Democrats Hillary Clinton and
Charles Schumer both to Senate victories.
Mr. Stone says the Pataki camp is so worried about Mr.
McConkey that Pataki associates have approached his candidate with offers to
support him if he ran on the Comptroller’s line instead of for Governor. He
said one friend of the Governor also hinted that the appeal of Mr. McConkey’s
lawsuit would be dropped if he got out of the race.
To which Governor Pataki’s spokesman made an indignant
response: “Roger Stone has got more conspiracy theories because he is involved
in more underhanded things than he can shake a stick at,” Mike McKeon said.
“What’s going on here clearly is: Roger Stone and Andrew Cuomo are two dirty
tricksters working together. People will see it for what it is and reject it.”
-with Joey Cohen
Follow Andrea Bernstein via RSS.
