Death Of a Star Researcher
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Marc Connolly was a big hearted opposition researcher who died of an apparent heart attack on vacation in Egypt last week. He was 31 years old.
He was sort of a Lower East Side Lee Atwater, a brilliant political mind enclosed in an unruly body, blessed with exuberant spirit.
He did not walk, he bounded; his lightning fast repartee could be as overwhelming as it was contagious. Possessed by a mercurial personality – alternately intense and bracingly generous – he was a man who enjoyed indulging his appetites. He was no saint, and was too honest to want to be remembered falsely.
Opposition research is a dark art – this is the negative attack squad, well-compensated political operatives working in dark rooms, doing round the clock research on the Internet and in libraries. It is trafficking in information designed to discredit the person deemed the political enemy of the highest bidder. It is mercenary work – there are few white knights in this profession.
But opposition researchers are also among today’s best investigative journalists. At a time when instant access to the Internet has made many reporters – let’s face it – lazy, opposition researchers follow leads into obscure paths of public records for days at a time. If part of the dedication comes from the fact that they are far better paid than most reporters, they have to live with the fact that some of their best work will never see the light of day.
It requires a special combination of talents, and Marc Connolly was gifted in this arena – perhaps that just means more dogged, quicker in his insight, more encyclopedic in terms of the references at his easy mental reach. And in his case, genius was rewarded – he was perhaps the most successful opposition researcher of his generation.
Political consulting today is like baseball before the renunciation of the reserve clause – once you sign with a team you are de facto affiliated for life. Marc worked for Republicans, mostly in the northeast, but his services were in demand across the nation.
Marc came to the Republicans at least partly in reaction to the Dinkins-era New York he experienced growing up in Queens and attending Stuyvesant High. Now the middle-class kid who couldn’t sit still in class was advising some of the most powerful people in the country, and they were listening. What began as an affiliation with the Pataki camp had branched out into a serious company, competing with many of his mentors – 2006 and 2008 were slated to be the biggest years of his career. But he was already looking forward to finding a way up and out.
Politics is a passion that combines statistics and soothsaying. It is an extension of the thrill of trading baseball cards as a grade-school student, with the added allure of influence, government, and philosophy behind it. But the money and spin-cycle that lingers behind the process can disillusion the most earnest entrants in time. He knew the game so well that he had come to question the rules, even as he worked to take down the state Democratic machine with the zeal of a new generation displacing the old. He sat out the 2004 presidential race and left me more than one phone message while watching “Tupac: Resurrection,” convinced that the slain rap-star could have been a great political figure if he had not died before his time.
If Marc was partisan in his politics, he was defiantly open-minded in his friendships. There were no litmus tests; if you were on his team that was enough to be repaid with boisterous loyalty. He believed that all people were extra-ordinary, but that a few friends rose to the level of extraordinary. This was meritocracy in action to his mind: in general he took no comfort from limiting labels and tried climb over all barriers.
Opposition researchers are known to take off for weeks at a time when an election cycle is over. They use their loot to put politics aside and take exotic vacations, spending time with friends, and getting acquainted with sunlight again.
That was what Marc was doing – going on a 20-day trip to Egypt, the trip of a lifetime with his brother. On their first day, they rode camels and climbed the pyramids. The photos they took that day were hung on the walls of the funeral parlor in Middle Village, Queens, last week. Marc was beaming, happy, living the dream. That night he and his brother stayed up late talking, looking at the Pyramids that stood, bathed in light, outside their hotel balcony.
It is not a bad way to spend a last night on earth, but sudden unexpected deaths in bed are not supposed to be for people under 35 with their best work still ahead of them. Word quickly spread via phone calls and e-mails. At his funeral this past Monday afternoon in Queens a young and large crowd assembled, a combination of politicos, law school friends, and lots of family. Marc’s death quickly became a cautionary tale – a local version of the coverage that the heart attack death of 28-year-old Atlanta Hawks center Jason Collier received on ESPN this week. The shock of loss accompanied the chill of fall, spurring the usual meditations – appreciate every sandwich, carpe diem, etc. – but also the less expected slap of mortality, the fragility of the body, the importance of spending our days doing something we feel is truly worthwhile, because tomorrow is no guarantee no matter how vibrant we appear to be.