Recalling Russert as Political Operative in New York

[ProSense]

On the Campaign

Recalling Russert as Political Operative in New York

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: June 16, 2008

WASHINGTON — For most of Washington, Tim Russert was known as the successful moderator of “Meet the Press” on NBC and a premier chronicler of the presidential campaign. His accomplishments and status could be measured in the flood of tributes that poured in from his colleagues, competitors and the people he covered.

Yet there was another chapter in Mr. Russert’s career that is less known, and that offers another insight into his personality. And it is one which he arguably thrived at nearly as much as he did sitting behind his desk at NBC News: as a political strategist and operative in one of the most brutal political environments in the country.

Mr. Russert worked in the early 1980s as a counselor to Mario M. Cuomo, the Queens Democrat who had just been elected governor of New York; I was covering the new administration for The Daily News. Albany was a political roughhouse, and all the more so with a hard-driving new administration with big goals for Mr. Cuomo, working in what was a fiercely competitive media atmosphere.

Arguably as a matter of necessity, Mr. Cuomo’s political operation — run by his son, Andrew M. Cuomo, who is today the state’s attorney general — was relentless in its dealings with members of the state Legislature, political foes (and allies), party leaders, lobbyists, and newspaper reporters, editors and publishers.

People who worked for Mr. Cuomo spent a lot of time yelling at, undercutting, manipulating or punishing those who were perceived to be unfriendly to Mr. Cuomo’s interest, and rewarding those who carried their interests. (To be clear, there is nothing wrong about any of this: It is the way the game is played on that side of the line, albeit more intensely in New York than most places).

Mr. Russert, who had previously worked Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York — where a well-timed leak of damaging information by Mr. Russert about a potential Moynihan foe knocked the opponent out of the race — at first seemed taken aback by the ferocity of this battlefield. One of his earliest lessons came when one of Albany’s toughest reporters walked into his refuge of an office — with its 20-foot ceiling and view down State Street toward the Hudson River — and accused Mr. Russert of leaking a story to a competitor as a way of currying favor with a rival newspaper. (Mr. Russert denied doing any such thing, for what that’s worth).

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[ProSense]

1. No comment?

I thought this was an interesting article.

[UTUSN]

2. The article ended too soon. So G.E.Russert *needn't* have worried about

running into this author who knew about his seedy past? Need more information!1

[karynnj]

3. It is interesting - as a behind the scenes story

The most interesting idea is the balance between the public's need to know and the interests of the politician you are working for. It is true that in that job, Russert's job was to make Cuomo (or Moynihahn) look good and the opponent bad. But, the choice of whom you work for determines to a very real degree how easy it is to do both. Naugorney ignores that as a high level NYT reporter, he is not fully independent either - in 2004, he and the other NYT reporters clearly were not even handed. Russert, himself, on NBC hid what he knew on Valerie Plame in October 2004 - I would bet that that action, out of concern for his career or for NBC, was more out of line with his values than anything he did in Albany - and his potential impact could have been to change the 2004 results.

You wonder how much of the last paragraph is projection on the part of the writer. It may be that Russert was as proud of his political work as his NBC work.