"It was not a house of remorse," recalled Steve Kluger, another
former roommate.
Mr. Lazio also worked to keep his father in touch with the
Republican clique that once meant so much to him. Sometime during
Mr. Reagan's presidential campaign in 1980, he said, he put a
note "in somebody's hand who put it in somebody's hand," asking
that Mr. Reagan mention his father during a Long Island rally.
He later said he just wanted the celebrity to point to the man in
the wheelchair and say: "Tony Lazio, glad you're here."
It did not happen. But the next morning, Mr. Reagan called the
Lazio house to apologize, saying that he had received the letter
only after he had left the rally. Then Olive Lazio held up the
phone, Mr. Lazio said, so that her husband could hear the future
president tell him "how much he meant to the party, meant to the
nation, the community."
Remembering how the call thrilled his father, Rick Lazio said:
"It was a nice thing to do, something that didn't need to be
done. My dad -- it was a nice thing to do."
Able Prosecutor and Devoted Son
Two young men from Long Island, Rick Lazio and Michael Moriarty,
were studying at American University School of Law in Washington
one day when, according to Mr. Lazio, an acquaintance came up to
his friend and said: "Hey, man, Moriarty, I saw your sister.
She's pretty good-looking, man."
Mr. Lazio said he felt betrayed; he had been driving Mr. Moriarty
home for a couple of years and yet knew nothing of this sister.
"When am I meeting her?" he asked.
Mr. Moriarty, now a lawyer in Manhattan but forever an older
brother, decided such a meeting made sense.
"He had a seriousness that a lot of other guys didn't have, a
sense of where he wanted to go," Mr. Moriarty said, which was
reflected by Mr. Lazio's dedication to his family. "What he was
doing was not what a lot of unmarried guys in their early 20's
wanted to spend their time doing."
It was arranged for some law school students, among them Mr.
Lazio, to meet some nurses, including Patricia Moriarty, at a bar
near George Washington University Medical Center. The son of a
Suffolk County politico started talking with the daughter of a
New York City police officer, then walked her to the hospital,
where she was working the night shift.
"It probably took him about a good month to call," she later
said. And so began a slow-paced relationship.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lazio's interest in someday running for office had
grown so strong that he wrote a letter to James L. Buckley, a
conservative former New York senator, seeking advice -- a brash
move that yielded a lunch meeting. While becoming a prosecutor
was an honorable choice, he recalled the veteran politician
telling him, someone interested in elective office should work
instead on a few campaigns.
"Of course, I did just the opposite," Mr. Lazio said.
He landed a summer job with Patrick Henry, the Suffolk County
district attorney and a Republican. "He had known my dad," Mr.
Lazio said. "And I'm sure -- though he never said it -- I'm sure
it probably had something to do with that he felt that it was a
nice thing to do for somebody in need."
By now, Mrs. Clinton was the first lady of Arkansas, a prominent
lawyer and the mother of a toddler named Chelsea. And Mr. Lazio
was on the verge of becoming an assistant district attorney who
each morning packed the court papers he needed and the lunch
prepared by his mother.
"It was always a nice sandwich with lettuce and some healthy
fruit," recalled Marcy Rudner Flores, who shared a cubicle with
Mr. Lazio.
"Raisins," Mr. Lazio said sheepishly. "The transitional food: not
quite a candy or a fruit."
Ms. Flores recalled Mr. Lazio's being the office "golden boy" who
was always there to encourage others. Mr. Henry, now a State
Supreme Court justice, described him as an able prosecutor who
rose to become the office's executive assistant -- and an
attentive son, often seen pushing his father in a wheelchair at
Republican events.
In October 1985, Mr. Lazio won a conviction in a felony case
against the ringleader of a major bootleg record album business.
The next month, his father died, at 65. The obituary in Newsday
included a statement from former President Nixon that said, in
part that "the Nixon family has lost a good friend."
It was a generous gesture, Mr. Lazio said, considering that Nixon
barely knew his father.
The Road to Congress
In late summer 1988, Mr. Lazio left the district attorney's
office to open a general practice law firm in Babylon. It was
time, he later said, to get on with his life.
For one thing, there was Patricia Moriarty, whose photograph he
kept on his desk. The casual long-distance relationship had
recently become more serious. She said she told him, "You need to
make a decision."
"He thought about it long and hard, and we stopped dating for a
couple of months," she said. "Then he came back one day and said:
'I really thought about this. I want to marry, but I'm not ready
at this point.' "
A month later, in January 1989, Mr. Lazio proposed at the Rainbow
Room. They would marry in June the following year and move into a
ranch house in Brightwaters, just three miles east of his
mother's house.
Then there were his political aspirations. Mr. Henry, his former
boss, was stepping down amid a state investigation into the
office's sloppy practices. And so Mr. Lazio, all of 30 years old,
spread the word that he wanted to run for district attorney.
The Republican Party committee instead chose James M. Catterson,
a man almost twice Mr. Lazio's age, but strongly hinted that he
had a future.
A few months later, in the fall of 1989, he easily won an open
seat in the Suffolk County Legislature, thus joining an 18-member
panel known for preferring an in-your-face style of democracy.
Shouting is common. A member once struck a colleague with a
pocketbook; another once dropped some tissues on an opponent's
desk, a sly reference to tears shed during a previous argument.
Rarely participating in the grandstanding was the gentleman from
West Islip, who was exceedingly friendly and always immaculately
dressed. Alan Binder, a legislator, remembered being so obsessed
with the perfect dimple in Mr. Lazio's tie that he confronted his
colleague in a parking lot and demanded that he share his
sartorial talent.
"Since then," he said, "I have had a dimple in my tie."
Although his party had the majority in the County Legislature,
some former colleagues say that Mr. Lazio's legacy does not go
much beyond the dimple now found in Mr. Binder's tie.
"He worked to not get out in front of the controversial issues,"
Paul Sabatino, a Republican and the counsel to the County
Legislature, recalled. "He was a pleasant person, but he left no
fingerprints."
Sondra M. Bachety, a former Democratic leader in the Legislature
who sat next to Mr. Lazio, agreed. "He would speak about things
and sound very sincere, but I never found him to be a stand-up
guy in that respect," she said. "He didn't take the tough votes."
Mr. Lazio cited several accomplishments, from helping to
revitalize downtown Bay Shore to working to recognize the
sacrifice of reservists during Desert Storm. Besides, he said, he
served only one two-year term. In 1992, during his second term,
he ran for Congress against a fellow West Islip High School
graduate who had become a Washington institution: Tom Downey.
After 18 years in office, Mr. Downey, who was usually elected by
huge margins, was one of the most effective members of Congress
and served on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Back on Long
Island, however, more than a few thought he had become distant,
too caught up with the clubbiness of Congress.
The Suffolk Republican leadership basically told Rick Lazio the
eager politician: go ahead, kid, give it a shot. But shortly
afterward, the same leadership delivered a message to Rick Lazio
the legislator: support its budget bailout package, a plan that
included an increase in the sales tax.
Mr. Lazio refused on principle, he said, and not because he was
concerned about how a vote for a tax increase would hurt him on
Election Day. He simply did not like borrowing money for
operating costs.
But many said the county had no choice, including Michael D.
O'Donohoe, the conservative Republican who headed the Finance
Committee at the time. "He kept saying there must be another
way," said Mr. O'Donohoe, "which used to drive me up the wall."
The bailout package eventually passed, but not before Republican
leaders vowed to get even. When the Lazio campaign held a large
fund-raising dinner at LaSalle Military Academy in Oakdale,
prominent Republicans boycotted the event, leaving the uneaten
canap�s to remind him that he could expect only lukewarm support.
The Republican freeze-out of 1992 has become part of the Lazio
lore, feeding the legend that he was a David to Mr. Downey's
Goliath.
In fact, he received significant financial help from a national
Republican operation that smelled blood. And he waged an
aggressive campaign that belied his boyish manner, accusing Mr.
Downey of abusing his position by overdrawing checks from the
House bank, of overusing his mailing privileges and of taking
government-sponsored junkets. (Such trips are common, but ABC
News had recently broadcast images of Mr. Downey on a Jet Ski
during one such trip to Barbados.)
Mr. Downey said recently that Mr. Lazio was "an affable, friendly
fellow," but that "when you scratched the surface, there was not
a lot there."
Even so, he said, "I made mistakes -- the trip to Barbados, the
House banking scandal -- and the economy was in such poor shape."
In retrospect, Mr. Downey said, the myth that Mr. Lazio was
woefully underfinanced galls him the most. The national
Republican leadership had dedicated "extraordinary resources" to
the race, he said. "The amount of money he spent made a material
difference."
Richard N. Bond, who was then the chairman of the Republican
National Committee, declined to say how much was spent on the
Lazio campaign. But, he added, "I took it as my cause to do
everything within legal boundaries to fund that race."
In late January 1993, the country had a new president, Bill
Clinton, and a new first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And the
Second Congressional District of New York had a new
representative, a gangly young man with a beguiling smile and a
reputation as a giant-killer. His new Republican colleagues
bathed him in applause.
Alliances and Ambitions
Eight years in Congress have matured Rick Lazio, beyond the gray
hair just now appearing at his temples. He is the representative
credited with steering a law to overhaul the federal
public-housing policy; the mediator between the conservative
Republican leadership and the moderate members known as the
"lunch bunch"; a deputy majority whip.
Paul A. Equale, a prominent insurance lobbyist who generally
supports Democrats, said of Mr. Lazio: "Unlike many of them, he
really gets his hands dirty in terms of legislative issues. He
gives direction to his staff, not the other way around. He
understands both the politics and the policy, and is generally
working hard on both."
And the traits that he first exhibited during his years at Vassar
-- establishing many relationships, avoiding controversy,
choosing his causes -- have served him well.
With the Democrats controlling the House his first two years, he
often supported the policies of President Clinton. In 1994, when
Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took control, he became more
conservative. When several Republican factions were vying for the
House leadership in 1998, he lobbied hard for the majority
leader, Dick Armey, a rock-solid conservative from Texas who is
rarely mistaken as a friend to the interests of the Northeast.
As a result, Mr. Lazio's credentials as a moderate are sometimes
called into question. In late 1998, for example, he surprised
many in his district by voting for two of the four articles of
impeachment against his future opponent's husband.
Critics say that his alliance with Mr. Armey smacks of
opportunism and forces him to lean conservative on tough votes,
but Mr. Lazio is unapologetic. Friendship is at the root of a
relationship that also helps him in his legislative duties, he
said: "You have the ability to be around the leadership table and
provide another perspective."
And for all of Mr. Lazio's persona as Everybody's Friend, he has
had his share of battles over the years and is known for being a
demanding, driven boss. "I'm not a yeller," he said, "but I'm
pretty demanding."
There is also that bubbling ambition, reflected in the way he
persisted in promoting himself as a Senate candidate -- even
after the state Republican leadership cast its lot with Mr.
Giuliani -- and in the way he seeks publicity.
Some of his New York colleagues still grumble that he took most
of the credit for getting federal reimbursement for the money
Suffolk County spent in the aftermath of the Trans World Airlines
Flight 800 disaster. They say that Representative Michael P.
Forbes deserved credit for seeking the appropriation; besides,
the plane crash was in Mr. Forbes's district.
"It wasn't going to happen with Mike Forbes," Mr. Lazio said of
the appropriation. "Trust me."
Of course, in finally winning what he has lusted for these last
few years -- the Republican nomination for Senate -- Mr. Lazio is
learning that every photo opportunity, every vote, every move, is
under scrutiny. The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking
into a profitable investment he made a few years ago, and even
his struggle to restrain that disobedient forelock has become
newsworthy.
At the moment, Mr. Lazio seems to be moving even faster than
usual. Dimitri Cruz recalled seeing his old Vassar classmate at
their 20th reunion last month. "We gave each other a hug, said
hello," he said. "And he kept on running, kept shaking hands."
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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