Consider Ed Rollins, the Republican consultant who had bragged about–and then denied–doling out money to hold down the black vote in the recent gubernatorial election in New Jersey. When he showed up in Newark last week to talk to federal officials, he was engulfed by a media horde worthy of a Buttafuoco photo op. He escaped afterward in star style, by sneaking through a loading dock.
Then there’s James Carville, the Democratic consultant whom Rollins had bested in the New Jersey race. On the same day that Rollins bragged about his exploits to Washington reporters, Carville was treated to an engagement party at the White House–an event timed to coincide with the private premiere of a documentary about Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. The consensus star of “The War Room”: James Carville. “I can’t go out on the road anymore,” he says, more in wonderment than anger. “Everybody knows me, or thinks they do.”
New Jersey voters probably think the recent election in their state was about choosing Republican Christine Todd Whitman over Democratic Gov. Jim Florio. How naive. In Washington, the race was and remains–a contest between Rollins and Carville. Rollins “won” on election night. But his self-destructive boasts put Carville ahead in the postelection contest for consultants’ bragging rights. Whitman, Carville maintains, was “illegally elected.”
According to a copy of a deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK, Rollins said under oath last week that he had made the whole thing up–“Two minutes of unadulterated bullsh-t”–in a round of “idiotic game playing” designed to flummox and one-up his nemesis, Carville. Rollins also sidestepped questions prompted by a NEWSWEEK report that he had bragged at a dinner party about holding down the black vote in New Jersey. But two other participants–the host, columnist Roland Evans and another guest–told NEWSWEEK that he had. It seems unlikely that investigators will find enough evidence of Republican misdeeds to overturn the New Jersey results. But the contest and its aftermath underscore the ever more visible, distracting and corrosive role of political consultants. “They’ve become full-fledged celebrities,” says political scientist Larry Sabato, who has chronicled their rise for 15 years. “It’s totally out of hand. Their egos–and the media’s willingness to feed them–now overshadow issues and candidates and parties.”
The New Jersey controversy exposes the incestuous world of Washington consultants, who mix vicious partisanship on the road and insider coziness at home. Carville and Rollins own nearby cabins in a plush campground in the Virginia mountains. Relaxing after New Jersey, the first person Rollins went to see was his neighbor, Carville. “I said, ‘You ran a great campaign’,” Rollins recalled in the deposition. Also at the cabin was Carville’s fiancee, Mary Matalin, another member of the handlers’ tribe. She was the late Lee Atwater’s chief of staff at the Republican National Committee. Now a cable-talk-show host, Matalan is a contender to replace Rollins as a commentator on the “Today” show.
Whitman said last week that she was “puzzled” about why Rollins had made his initial boast. She wouldn’t be puzzled if she knew more consultants. For them, winning isn’t the only thing; the object is to explain how you made it possible. Each election cycle now is followed by self-serving seminars at which handlers explain, with clinical dispassion, who did what to whom. It was at one such seminar that the issue of “voter suppression” in New Jersey was first broached. And there is an unspoken oath among panelists: no one dares say that they had little or nothing to do with the outcome. “The fact is, it’s the candidate who wins it or loses it,” says Democratic media consultant Frank Greer. “But, to some of us, it’s not convenient to say that.”
Carville and the rest of the gang from the Clinton campaign–consultant Paul Begala, media adviser Mandy Grunwald and polltaker Stan Greenberg–are different from the GOP crew that preceded them. Republican operatives were eager to cash in during the Reagan and Bush years, unabashedly taking on corporate and foreign clients for whom they lobbied the administrations they had helped elect. Carville & Co. aren’t in it for the corporate buckraking; none of them will do lobbying. The coin of their realm is something else: White House kibitzing power. All are on retainer from the Democratic National Committee, hold coveted White House entry passes and drop in at will. “They have all the access and none of the on-line responsibility,” grouses one senior Democrat.
They do represent a host of campaign clients. But Carville’s too busy to add more. He’s getting married this week to Matalin. “The War Room,” a puff piece of a movie in which Carville is as rivetingly determined as Tommy Lee Jones in “The Fugitive,” is playing to good reviews. He’s making speeches to corporate audiences for $15,000 a pop. And then there’s the book he and Matalin are writing (which NEWSWEFK has bought the rights to excerpt). Come next fall, Carville says, he’ll be too busy to do a host of campaigns. “I’m already committed to do a book tour,” he says. By next year, Rollins may be doing one of his own.
