Weld’s Flash
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By meeting with the chairman of New York’s Republican State Committee last week, William Weld stepped from the shadows of the New York political scene and into the lights. By arranging for the meeting to take place at the Manhattan offices of Mayor Giuliani, Mr. Weld showed that he is already thinking strategically: as his first official gesture in seeking the Republican nomination for governor, it was as flashy as it was smart.
Polls show that Mr. Giuliani is the only person in America capable of beating New York’s attorney general and likely Democratic nominee, Eliot Spitzer, next year. His endorsement will be prized, perhaps even more so than Governor Pataki’s, by any Republican seeking the Republican nomination. Mr. Weld’s first message to would-be primary challengers was potent: Rudy’s on my side.
Mr. Weld’s Republican challengers aren’t the only ones who would have been impressed with the Giuliani connection. Stephen Minarik acknowledged last month that Mr. Giuliani was his favorite in the race for governor. With Mr. Giuliani flatly ruling out a run for statewide office, Mr. Minarik might view Mr. Weld as a surrogate. Asked if Mr. Giuliani would be a factor next year, Mr. Minarik responded, somewhat mysteriously, “Rudy Giuliani is always a factor.”
Mr. Minarik denied that the meeting at Mr. Giuliani’s offices was a sign that he plans to side with Mr. Weld against a field of potential Republican candidates that so far includes a former minority leader of the state Assembly, John Faso; New York’s secretary of state, Randy Daniels; and a number of state legislators. “It was convenient,” Mr. Minarik said of the Midtown Manhattan meeting place where he and Mr. Weld spoke for an hour.
Yet Mr. Minarik might simply be working to reverse his well-known difficulty at being subtle. He came under fire for his early and open support of Jeanine Pirro in the race against Senator Clinton and could be trying on a new, if transparent, style.
Mr. Minarik made the “convenient” comment over a cell phone while waiting for a commercial airplane to take him back upstate after his meeting with Mr. Weld.
Convenient for Mr. Weld, perhaps.
Forming early alliances will help Mr. Weld, but he is not likely to depend on them.
A recent poll Quinnipiac poll showed Mr. Spitzer burying the former Massachusetts governor in a hypothetical race by a margin of more than three to one. Yet Mr. Weld had less than 5% name recognition when he entered his first successful race for governor in 1990. He ended up becoming the first Republican governor in Massachusetts in more than 25 years and went on to win another term by the widest margin in more than 100 years.
Two years after the landslide, Mr. Weld left office, moved to New York, and remarried. It was just one of many retreats in Mr. Weld’s career: He left the Department of Justice during the Reagan administration; left the Massachusetts Statehouse during his second term; left his first wife, with whom he has five children; left a managing partnership at law firm; and is now readying to leave his work at a private-equity firm to run for governor again.
Mr. Weld’s critics call this pattern a lack of seriousness. His supporters say it reflects a carnivorous approach to life. “This is a very serious person who has accomplished exceedingly serious things in life and who has an air of a happy warrior in the sense that he enjoys life, enjoys politics, enjoys the ups and downs of it, enjoys people,” a longtime adviser to Mr. Weld, Stuart Stevens, said. “I think Bill Weld is definitely the underdog in this race, and I don’t think he’d have it any other way. That’s the position he’s most comfortable running in.”
Speculation that Mr. Weld took something of a dive after divorcing his first wife, Susan Roosevelt Weld, and moving back to his native state five years ago is not likely to hurt him, friends and associates said. They said his open-armed manner with the press and flamboyant personality would instead serve as a tonic to New York’s sometimes-prickly Mr. Spitzer. As Mr. Weld himself once remarked: “Much is forgiven anyone who relieves the desperate boredom of the working press.”
Though Mr. Weld has talked openly about his interest in running for governor of New York since moving back to the state, friends say he decided definitively on the run while standing in as a surrogate for John Kerry in private debate preparations with President Bush during the 2004 presidential elections. As a possible surrogate for Mr. Giuliani in next year’s race against Mr. Spitzer, Mr. Weld will be a tough sparring partner with an imposing title going into the debates: governor.