The unbearable rightness of being Nancy

Mayer contemplates life after politics

by Elissa Silverman

After more than an hour's worth of discussion about unfunded liabilities, state disability, pension culpability, and, last but not least, her own electability, Rhode Island General Treasurer Nancy Mayer offers her opinion on a beat covered regularly in the Phoenix news section, but written exclusively by freelance writers: the personals. "I find them so amusing and fun to read," says the state's chief number cruncher.

Who would have guessed that Nancy Mayer even knew such a thing existed, except, perhaps, if Kiplinger's Personal Finance ran its own classifieds in the back? (As in: "Married white female looking for hot bonds and exciting new money management techniques to arouse an otherwise mundane state pension fund. Competitive bidders encouraged.")

Sitting casually on the couch in her office, Mayer treats her interview with the Phoenix more as an afternoon talk show confessional than a Nightline-esque discussion of policy and politics. She answers the questions in a conversational and sometimes downright chatty manner -- hardly the brusque, abrasive style she's known for.

In her five years in office, Mayer has elevated the profile of the general treasurer from little more than a glorified accountant to the most controversial of all five generally elected state officers. Using her position as a bully pulpit, she has helped introduce and implement a number of reforms, both in the Office of the General Treasurer and, to much less success, in the General Assembly.

This legislative session, she is touting what she calls "A New Charter for Rhode Island," an ambitious and politically charged package of reforms that has many in the state questioning her intentions, motivations, and political ambitions.

The package is a grab bag of legislative wishes -- a few reminiscent of Newt Gingrich's long-forgotten Contract with America, a couple of campaign finance reforms, and some old standards dealing with state pensions and bonuses. While pensions and state perks have always been grist for the general treasurer's mill, others, such as term limits and campaign fund-raising, stray quite far from the general treasurer's turf.

Indeed, Mayer's appearance on behalf of a number of these bills has raised eyebrows about whether they aren't just a high-profile pep rally and an eventual launching pad for reelection in 1998. "Absolutely, no. I'm not running for reelection. No one really wants to believe it, but I'm not," Mayer says emphatically.

Still, no matter how many times she repeats it on television, in interviews, and even in person at events such as Taste of the Nation two weeks ago, some folks refuse to believe it. "I'm basing the campaign in '98 that she'll run," says Richard James, chair of the state Democratic Party and Mayer's opponent for general treasurer three years ago. "Nancy Mayer would come out of the gate as an odds-on favorite."

Recent opinion polls confirm that Mayer enjoys impressive job approval ratings and a high level of voter recognition as the queen of eliminating honest, and not so honest, graft. Many Republicans have privately encouraged her to run for reelection, and even the most partisan of Democrats admit she'd be a tough candidate to beat for general treasurer. In short, she'd be a shoo-in.

So what's stopping her? On a superficial level, her word. When Mayer announced her intentions to seek the party nomination for the US Senate seat vacated by Claiborne Pell, members of the Republican State Central Committee worried about giving up an almost guaranteed winner in the general treasurer's race in exchange for a very risky run against Jack Reed, the populist second-district congressman. But Mayer surprised many when she announced that they need not worry -- She had no intention of running for treasurer again because she was moving on to bigger and better things.

Cocky? Perhaps. But as we all know by now, the Senate race was a romp -- for Reed. "An unmitigated disaster," confesses Mayer. Even so, some people say her vow not to seek reelection as treasurer is one promise they wouldn't mind seeing a politician break.

"We've been lobbying her to do otherwise," says Joan Quick, the newly installed chair of the state Republican Party. "The party's urging her to run again for general treasurer."

"Duplicitous and disingenuous"

Part of Mayer's appeal is that she is hardly your average politician or, as she might say, your "professional" politician. She doesn't feel your pain. She doesn't say "yes" today and "maybe" tomorrow. Her word is her word, for better or worse.

"I think it is right that there are some things on which I simply won't compromise," says Mayer. "I'm beyond the point in my life where I'm going to do this sort of very delicate minuet, where people have to guess that which seems to be inscrutable. I just assume say it." A refreshing comment indeed in the age of spin doctors and political handlers à la Dick Morris.

Still, some believe that Mayer's principled stands are more of a hindrance to effective government than a help. Just listen to former Rhode Island governor Bruce Sundlun, who served his last two years with Mayer as treasurer. "Nancy Mayer is duplicitous, disingenuous, politically dishonest, and personally disagreeable," says Sundlun.

"Damn disagreeable," he adds for emphasis.

Asked why Sundlun has such an ax to grind with her, Mayer quickly dismisses his remarks. "I'm just one person who makes him see red," she says. "Governor Sundlun and I were more often than not at loggerheads."

One issue of contention between them was how the state should invest and maintain its pension fund. And Sundlun wasn't the only voice of dissent. Battles were waged at meetings of both the State Investment Commission and the Retirement Board, of which the general treasurer dually chairs.

Mayer often approached the meetings less as a facilitator than as a dictator, sources say. Consequently, rebellions erupted. Retirement Board members fought the treasurer tooth and nail over her efforts to reform Rhode Island's bloated pension system -- often with their own constituent concerns in mind. At one point, relations got so rancorous, a majority of the board testified in favor of a bill challenging both Mayer's direct ascendancy to the chair and her right to choose the board's legal counsel.

"My observation is that people don't work with Nancy Mayer," says Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and a former member of the state Retirement Board. "You either agree with her, or you don't."

In recent years, Mayer has loosened her grasp a bit and become more democratic in her leadership style, those who work with her say. But in the political body count, her change of heart may have come a little too late.

Poppasquash politics

No doubt, Mayer is best known for her role as Rhode Island's pension goddess. With much fanfare and critical acclaim, she has eliminated many of the Byzantine rules once used to exploit the state's pension and disability benefits.

But although she's quick to take credit for seizing this issue, the fervor over pension reform didn't emerge out of a vacuum. Mayer ran with her reforms after a series of investigative stories in the Providence Journal-Bulletin beginning in late 1991 exposed how interested parties, including prominent union and state assembly leaders, had cashed in on sweetheart pension deals.

Today, Mayer's tenacity in pursuing these cases is a primary reason for her rave reviews from work-a-day taxpayers, but it is also a source for vehement criticism from unions representing state employees -- a vocal constituent and ally to many on Smith Hill.

Mayer's most recent clash with the unions stemmed from her proposal to make educational incentive bonuses for state employees an issue of public record, as they are in most states. "She's using reform spin to blast state employees, hard-working, underpaid people with salaries averaging $22-24,000 a year," says Scott Greco, a member and lobbyist for SEIU local 401. "It's self-motivated for headlines than anything else."

Mayer is unpopular among her political peers for other reasons as well. Being an outspoken Republican in a heavily Democratic state is one. And being a wealthy Republican woman only compounds this.

So Mayer learned last month, when she testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of a campaign finance bill calling for the elimination of state matching funds to political action committee (PAC) contributions.

At the time, Teresa Paiva-Weed, chair of the committee, remarked that the bill might have the unintended effect of putting even more emphasis on individuals who contribute big bucks, such as those who attend "cocktail parties at Poppasquash Point at $1000 a head."

Poppasquash Point, of course, just happens to be Mayer's Bristol address, so the general treasurer naturally took offense at the remark, seeing it as a personal dig. Paiva-Weed, however, insists Mayer is just overly sensitive.

"I simply was asking by way of analogy. I was attempting to raise issue of the difficulties of wealthy contributors," she says.

Even within Mayer's own party, relations aren't as chummy as appearances would indicate. Rebuked for her moderate social views, Mayer barely survived the nominating committee's stamp of approval for her US Senate race against Reed. John Holmes, the Republican Party's chairman at the time, actually had to save her at the last moment by breaking a 7-7 tie among members deciding between Mayer and her socially conservative rival, Tom Post.

The close vote was a definite warning to Mayer, says Holmes. "Nancy had not spent much time in the politics of the party. She said she wasn't interested in being a torchbearer."

This independent streak of Mayer's has also caused some tension with her fellow GOP general officers. Although she reports her relationship with Republican Governor Lincoln Almond to be hospitable, she admits to icy relations with some members of his staff.

"I'm not sure why," says Mayer. "I think there was some feeling on his staff that I should have voted to reduce Mr. Malachowski's salary when that came up with the Unclassified Pay Board. I asserted a degree of independence that created some tension, but those are my personal beliefs," says Mayer.

Chair of the Public Utilities Commission, Malachowski had opposed an electric utility restructuring bill stripping the PUC of some of its regulatory powers. Supported by both Almond and the House leadership, the bill passed in the General Assembly anyway. And soon after, the Unclassified Pay Board (chaired by Almond's administrative director) reduced Malachowski's pay, arguing that he had less responsibilities as a result of the restructuring.

Others, however, say they felt the salary reduction was political retribution. Mayer was among them. Casting the only vote against the cut, she publicly commented that she was "embarrassed and humiliated to be on this board."

Tension might have also flared after Mayer exercised an almost unprecedented period of silence over Almond's proposed overhaul of the state pension system. Today, sources on both sides of the aisle say, this tension leads right to the top tiers of Almond's staff.

If this is true, Mayer is left with few allies -- and a virtual army of enemies. Still, outgunned as she is, Mayer is more than capable of sticking up for herself.

While she advertises herself as an independent thinker, nary beholden to partisan concerns, it's hard to believe that some of the items on Mayer's legislative agenda aren't designed (at least a little bit) to tweak some of her most vocal foes -- Democratic members of the General Assembly.

To wit: "Reform Our Legislature: Maintain Citizen Legislature," the title of her legislative reform bills, which are hardly an olive branch to her House and Senate counterparts. The first bill calls for eight-year term limits for state legislators; the other, to allow the General Assembly to meet once every two years.

This political pettiness of Mayer's is quite noticeable even to those in the General Assembly Mayer might consider friends. "The press releases her office sends out give the impression that the legislature doesn't want to do any of this [Mayer's reform package] because they are corrupt, dishonest, immoral," says state Representative Antonio Pires (D-Pawtucket), who works closely with Mayer on the Retirement Board as chairman of the House Finance Committee.

But the partisanship flies both ways. During the House's consideration of Mayer's bill concerning educational bonuses for state employees, the debate deteriorated into a Disney-like catfight last month.

"I sat there and watched George Caruolo [the House Majority leader] stand up there and talk quite vehemently about the treasurer's goofy legislation and about how partisan it was, and how if it weren't for me, the state would be in better financial shape, which is absurd," says an exasperated Mayer. "I watch that and ask, `Why is he doing this?` I would never stand up on the Senate floor or in testimony and say that someone or someone's legislation was goofy. It brings the debate to a level that just doesn't serve anyone's interest."

Mayer's bill, of course, went down in a highly publicized blaze of defeat last week, while other bills of hers suffered less glamorous deaths in House and Senate committees.

Still, a few might see the light of day yet -- one restricting disability payments to those with permanent injuries, for instance, and another revoking pensions for dishonorable state service. A third bill calling for the creation of college investment accounts, essentially tax-deferred IRAs for college savers, may also eke its way out of committee. But that would take a little (make that a lot of) compromise from General Treasurer Mayer, which she says she is willing to do.

But in her lonely quest for reform, voter approval is not enough for Mayer. The political casualties have been too high. And this leaves Nancy Mayer as a candidate with no where to run. Not that she wants to, of course.

So where might Nancy Mayer be five years from now? Where all good reformers go, of course -- back to public policy school. During her interview with the Phoenix, Mayer mentions the most prominent among these, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, a favorite retirement home among the burnt-out and frustrated.

Or perhaps Mayer will go in the opposite direction, she says -- to Wall Street. Or maybe even to the best-seller list. "I'd love to write a book, maybe a trashy, comic novel with a political theme," says Mayer. Rhody Colors, by Anonymous?