The Son Of A Bootlegger
The Pataki farm was a family compound. It was purchased by his paternal grandfather after he emigrated from a small town in Hungary. Barely eking out an existence it served as home to Pataki, his brother, parents, both sets of grandparents, nine aunts and uncles and twelve cousins. The twenty-nine family members lived in six houses spread around the farm. It was a unique experience, Pataki told me. “My cousins are still like brothers and sisters.”
From his father’s side Pataki learned the importance of hard work and forward planning, as is the life of a farmer. When it comes to farming, Pataki told me, “there are no short cuts.” It was a whole different ballgame on his mother’s side. His maternal grandfather moved “from one moneymaking scheme to the next – not all of them within the boundaries of the law,” Pataki described him in his self-titled autobiography. This included a distillery that he set up in the tub during Prohibition. Pataki laughed as he told me that at age six his mother was “putting Gordon’s Gin labels on the bottles.”
I asked Pataki about this curious combination that makes up his DNA. But he didn’t see it as so unusual. “In a sense, it is typically American because Americans have that diversity in most of our backgrounds. And hopefully it leads us to have the best of all these different traits come together.”
One of Pataki’s favorite farm stories is his father’s annual effort to corner the local tomato market. Every year he planted tomatoes in early April, six to eight weeks before everyone else, knowing that the plants were likely to succumb to an inevitable frost. However, if they survived, he’d be the only one selling tomatoes for a time. But, despite Pataki and his father covering every plant with plastic and baskets, Lucy always pulled the football away.
Pataki’s father did not become a tomato magnate, but the lesson of planting tomato’s in early April stayed with Pataki. Whether it’s in law or politics, he told me, “you keep trying to do something that others think can’t be done. Often times they are right, but there comes that exceptional time when you do something no one else thought was possible. And when you accomplish that you can change things in a way that, by simply going along with conventional wisdom, you never have the chance to do.” But Pataki hastened to add “so long as you don’t bet the ranch on it.”
From Farmer To Wall Street Lawyer
Pataki made his way to Yale University, where he started out as a science major. But then he “discovered beer and politics,” he told me. And unlike a history or English course, he explained, that he could do in one night, “quantum physics you couldn’t quite do in one night. So I switched my major.”
Yale was followed by law school. Pataki had fallen in love with political debate and political ideas and he explained that “having an understanding of the law really mattered to me as being able to do that better.” But he was also looking to the future: “The thought arose that maybe someday I’ll run for office. And being a New Yorker, going to law school in New York, would be something that probably made a great deal of sense.”
Pataki entered Columbia Law School in 1967. At that time, societal debates and protests, even violent, were the order of the day. Some named the lounge outside the library the Pataki Memorial Lounge, on account of his constant presence there, discussing issues. Pataki called Columbia a “crazy time,” describing it as “having the most radical campus in the country.” “Everything you believed in,” he told me, “every fundamental view that you thought everybody else accepted, often times nobody else did. It made you rethink and it challenged you and that’s always a good thing.”
Following graduation Pataki landed at Dewey Ballantine in New York City. His annual salary, $15,000, was three times that of his mailman father. But Pataki quickly realized that being a Wall Street lawyer wasn’t in his makeup. He had come from a place where a handshake was as good as a contract. He wasn’t good at thinking in terms of how the other side can take advantage of you. “I loved Dewey,” he told me, but it wasn’t the right fit: “I like to trust people. I don’t like to be cynical. A lawyer always has to consider the possibility of someone not acting in good faith. Growing up on that farm that wasn’t the way it was.”
Ironically, Pataki would return to Dewey’s office. The firm was named for Thomas Dewey, New York’s Governor from 1943 to 1954.
The Transition To Politics
Pataki, now with his wife, returned to the family farm – to a house with no heat or toilet – and the life of a small-town lawyer. He also began to think about the possibilities of state government. His first foray was as a member of a joint legislative task force on court reorganization. It was instrumental in the passage of a constitutional amendment providing for the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, to be comprised of appointed, and not elected, members. Ironically, Pataki was, unknowingly, creating a future responsibility for himself. As Governor, he would appoint six judges to the court.
I kidded Pataki that his task force should have also taken the opportunity to correct New York’s goofy and confusing court names – where the Supreme Court is the trial court and has justices, while the highest court is the Court of Appeals, served by judges. “It’s so backwards,” he agreed. We joked about the waste of words it creates -- every time a news story writes New York Court of Appeals, it has to add “the highest court.” But “I think it’s here to stay,” he concluded.
Despite once having felt an excitement for the public service possibilities offered in Washington, Pataki turned his attention locally, where “decisions made at the state level had a direct impact on people’s lives.” He served as Mayor of Peekskill from 1981 to 1984, and then eight years in the New York State Assembly followed by two in the New York Senate.
I told Pataki that I figured out the real reason why he decided to turn away from the law in favor of politics. He gave me a look that said -- bring it on. It can all be found, I explained, in a 1978 decision from the Eastern District of New York called Bohack Corp. v. Borden, Inc. Pataki represented a creditor who lost in Bankruptcy Court and appealed to the District Court. The decision is eye-glazing. It had something to do with the doctrine of set-offs under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. I can barely figure out who won. [Pataki didn’t. He was now 0-2 in the case; but prevailed before the Second Circuit.].
I pointed out to Pataki that the decision, which discussed an English statute dating back to 1645, as well as tracing the history of a U.S. statute starting from 1800, is so deadly dull that it would make anyone switch to inactive status.
Pataki remembered the case like it was yesterday. “I won that case and I changed the law!” he declared, adding that the decision went on to be an important precedent. “I was sure that the court was wrong.” He saw my point about the decision being dry, but I have it all wrong. “I loved that case. One of the reasons was I wasn’t with a big firm. There were only four or five of us so I had to do the whole thing. And history and intellectual development has always been fascinating to me. So the idea of going through that. I loved the Bohack case.”
Ironically, the District Court decision includes a passage from Justice Benjamin Cardozo in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion. Cardozo sat on the New York Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, before heading to Washington. Once again, there’s a foreshadowing of Pataki’s future involvement with the Court of Appeals.
The Governor’s Office
In 1994 Pataki entered the race for New York Governor. It was a task as tall as a corn stalk. He was, as The New York Times called him then [on page B.4], “a little-known Republican lawmaker from Putnam County.” His opponent was the state’s political Goliath -- three-term Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo. Not to mention that New York had two million more registered Democrats than Republicans. Pataki’s platform was tough on crime (bring back the death penalty) and tough on spending. He defeated Cuomo by two percentage points. Pataki went on to serve two more terms as the state’s chief executive. He was at the helm in the State’s response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Rudy Giuliani called him a “total partner”) and played an important role in the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site and building of the 9/11 memorial.
But something doesn’t make sense. Pataki made the decision to leave Dewey Ballantine when he realized that corporate law wasn’t suited to someone who liked to trust people and didn’t grow up considering the possibility of someone not acting in good faith. But if such idealism wasn’t right for Dewey, how did he handle New York politics all those years? After all, New York’s capital is well-known for being pretty rough and tumble. Nobody is going to confuse Albany for Mother Teresa’s place in Calcutta.
I asked Pataki about this seeming inconsistency. But he didn’t see it the way I did. “It wasn’t that hard,” he told me, “because you know principles you believe in and other people don’t agree with those principles or agree with the principles but for whatever political reason won’t support those principles and you just try to figure out the motivation of people. When you believe in something it is pretty easy to do your best to try to advance that belief.”
From Howard Stern To Oprah
Let me ask you about Howard Stern. “My opponent,” Pataki replies.
Pataki’s first run for Governor could have easily been derailed by the brash radio show host. In 1994 Stern entered the Governor’s race as the Libertarian Party’s nominee. His campaign platform was simple – he favored the death penalty and wanted road construction to be performed at night. Stern’s plan was to accomplish these things and then resign, turning the state over to his lieutenant governor. The radio host gave speeches, raised money and got tremendous press coverage. But, most concerning for Pataki, he was polling at ten to twelve percent. Pataki’s contest with Cuomo was surely going to be very close. It is likely that Stern would have siphoned off enough Pataki votes to hand the race to Cuomo.
Thankfully for Pataki, Stern dropped out -- to avoid having to comply with the state’s financial disclosure laws -- and endorsed Pataki. While on the campaign trail the would-be Governor constantly heard from people that Stern’s support was the reason they would be pulling the lever for him. With Pataki’s thin margin of victory over Cuomo, what Howard Stern could have taketh from Pataki he probably ended up handing him.
Twenty-plus years later Pataki would run for President and come-face-to face with another candidate who, like Stern, was a brash celebrity, enjoyed tremendous media coverage and owed his success to connecting with disaffected voters. Now there’s talk, at least by some, of Oprah Winfrey throwing her hat into the 2020 Presidential ring. I asked Pataki if the “celebrity candidate,” who can monopolize the media airways, is the “new normal” for politics? “I certainly hope not,” he said. “While political experience can be a negative in the public’s eyes, Pataki acknowledged, “I hope that people now don’t disqualify someone because of that and look for the celebrity candidates, but [instead] look at the person’s philosophies and principles.”
Criticizing And Shaping The New York Court Of Appeals
Shortly after taking office as Governor, Pataki took aim at the New York Court of Appeals. In particular, he criticized the court’s decisions in criminal cases that he thought overturned convictions based on the defendant’s denial of rights that he considered technicalities. He called some decisions “irrational, mindless, procedural safeguards – not for those who are wrongly charged but for criminals who can get off.”
Pataki told me that he was “critical of junk justice because the most important thing the government does is provide for the safety of its people. And New York State was failing at that. And it was failing for a lot of reasons. One of which was the abandonment of common sense in the application of the law by courts from the trial courts to the Court of Appeals and that had to change.”
Pataki’s criticism of the Court of Appeals made the well-publicized 2010 State of the Union incident, between President Obama and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, over the Citizens United decision, look like a Tupperware party.
Given how harsh his attack, was Pataki worried that it could backfire? Judges are still human. Might they retaliate and double down? No, Pataki told me, he did not have this concern: “I have great faith in people and I wasn’t calling them out personally. I was criticizing the logic behind their decisions and their, in my view, abandonment of the appropriate interpretation of law. So I thought that to criticize people, based on an intellectual analysis, as opposed to, ‘you’re a jerk,’ is something I thought, if you are a judge of that caliber and that stature, you should be able to listen to that.”
On the subject of Pataki’s Court of Appeals appointments, I shared with him a 2014 law review article, from Albany Law Review, where New York lawyer Benjamin Pomerance devoted a staggering 36,000+ words to analyzing Pataki’s high court selection criteria. Given Pataki’s harsh criticism of the Court, Pomerance’s focus was on the role that a candidate’s likelihood to be pro-prosecution played in his or her selection. Pataki was unfamiliar with the article and seemed dubious that someone could figure out what was in his mind. I read the article’s conclusion to him: “A tendency towards supporting the prosecution in criminal cases and a firm stance in favor of the death penalty certainly augmented the likelihood of receiving Pataki’s favor. However, a lack of information in either of these categories certainly was not fatal to the individual’s chances of appointment either.” “I’m impressed,” Pataki said of Pomerance’s work. “That’s pretty accurate.”
Pataki’s Current Practice
Pataki’s current practice at Norton Rose has an energy and environmental focus. He described his firm as having “the best green energy practice in the country by far.” Environmental issues are nothing new to Pataki. As Governor, he championed numerous environmental initiatives, including many associated with cleaning up the Hudson River.
Environmental causes are not usually associated with Republicans. But, for Pataki, it was personal. As a kid, living near the Hudson River, he saw first-hand its polluted condition. “It would be summer in the Hudson Valley, 95 degrees, 95 percent humidity,” he told me. “And there would be all this water and you couldn’t go in. It was just something you wondered how this happened and fortunately I had the chance to try and do something about that and we did.”
The Office Copier
Between growing up on a farm, and spending twelve years in the Governor’s office, where I’m sure Pataki had a few assistants around, I’m curious if he can handle one of the most important tasks required of a lawyer – the office photo copier. It should be on the bar exam.
Pataki paused for a few seconds - I could see him thinking -- and finally said “no.” But, he was quick to add, “I can probably figure it out.” I told Pataki that I wouldn’t ask my follow-up question – can he fix a paper jam? He shouted through his closed door: “Amy, can I fix a paper jam in the copier?” A voice from the other side came back: “no.”
As Pataki was showing me out he walked around to his assistant’s area and pointed to a large button on a machine on her desk. “I just push this button here,” he declared. “Actually, Governor, that’s the printer,” I informed him. “Ah.”
Once A Farmer…
Pataki’s office is most notable for what it’s lacking – photos of himself with Presidents, world leader and A-list celebrities. Surely Pataki’s walls could resemble the old Carnegie Deli. But he’s just not interested in that he told me. Instead the photos in his office are devoted to his family. And, of course, he showed me one of the farm in Peekskill.
Sadly, Pataki told me, the farm had to be sold to assist with the education of his four children on a government salary. But he has since purchased a farm on Lake Champlain. “I try to get up there as much as possible and get out there and work and do stuff.”
Despite going on to practice law in the big city nearby, and spend twelve years running one of the most important states in America, George Pataki never stopped being a farmer from Peekskill. “That’s who I am.”
As New York’s Governor, George Pataki held a job with no term limits. The same can be said of his life as a farmer.