August 19831 $2.00 ers NOJ.£lN!NN38 811 £jtSO 110~ NOJ.£lNINN38 D LS~~W f£vH ELOOOOON Hel 309955 26 GOOD INTENTIONS: THE RELENTLESS ruSE OF ANNE WEXLER How she became Washington's Rolodex queen. by David Owen NNE WEXLER'S office in Washington is still EXLER'S YEARS in politics have given so new that most of the furniture in it is her firsthand knowledge of the way rented. There are shiny antique reproduc- government works. She may like what A. tions alongside curving, tufted, modern W she does but she doesn't like what she things. The carpet is a shade of purple whose pre- sees. "I spent three years in the White House work- cise name must be known only to decorators and ing with interest groups," she says, "which made me children with lots and lots of crayons. Standing on question a lot of things about the way politics is or- the carpet, leaning against a wall, are a dozen or so ganized and think a lot about how it could be orga- framed photographs attesting to their owner's inti- nized better in the national interest. I worry about macy with various important persons: Anne Wexler the impact of special-interest groups on public pol- with a pope, Anne Wexler with a president, Anne icy, and about how it's possible to build consensus Wexler with Paul Newman. Up on the mantel, also in order to move issues on. It's hard to do. And it's waiting to be hung, is a silk-screened picture of the hard to create leaders who don't have to mortgage White House, inscribed-to Anne-by Jimmy Car- their souls in order to get elected." ter. The print was a reward for the two and a half Of course, as a lobbyist, Wexler is in the busi- years she spent as Carter's assistant for public liaison. ness of mortgaging politicians' souls at the behest Today Wexler is the leading partner in her own of clients who can afford to pay her fees. Major cor- lobbying firm, a booming "legislative strategy" group porations don't hire "legislative strategy" firms out . whose clients include Bendix, the National Football of an abstract fascination with the workings of gov- League, the Kellogg Company, the Motion Picture ernment. And while Wexler may indeed worry about Association, Aetna, and Tasca Corporation, the "the impact of special-interest groups on public pol- shale-oil people. Jimmy Carter has retreated to icy," her anxieties haven't driven her into a different Georgia and obscurity, but Wexler has risen to per- line of business. "You know," she says, "there are manent importance in Washington. Her firm has two chairs, one on each side of the desk, and the been so successful that, after just two and a half people in those chairs are really players in a game. years in business, she is already one of the capital's And I think that the thing to strive for is to get most sought-after influence brokers. seats at the table for all the people who ought to be Wexler scored a major strategic triumph of her there. I mean, I get paid to have a seat at the table own not long ago when she signed up Nancy Clark by a lot of people who think they have a right to Reynolds as a partner. Reynolds, you see, is a be there, and they do. But sometimes there are other staunch Republican and a close friend of the Rea- folks who don't have a seat at that table, but should." gans. Wexler is a lifelong Democrat whose political The particular table at which we are sitting right genealogy runs back through Gene McCarthy and now holds a White House ashtray, a standard ac- George McGovern. Their alliance, forged with un- cessory in Washington influence boutiques: there usually frank commercial calculation, impressed the aren't many people who can afford to stub out lobbying industry. "Between the two of them," fel- cigarettes here. But these ironies are vaporized by low lobbyist Loyd Hackler told The New York Wexler's substantial charm. She imbues her office Times, "they've got all the bases covered." The firm, with the feel of a friendly living room. She is fifty- Wexler says with a satisfied smile, is now "admin- three years old and there is a good deal of gray in istration-proof. " her sensible hair. She is wearing a purplish cardigan HARPER'S/ AUGUST 1983 27 several crayons removed from the carpet on her OR MOST Americans in 1966, the war in floor. Her manner is charming but never frivolous. Vietnam was all light and no tunnel. The She is solicitous but unflatterable-"a Jewish moth- Tonkin Gulf Resolution was just two years er with a big Rolodex," a friend once described her. Fold, the Tct Offensive still two years away. The Rolodex is over on her desk, encased in a dull- Condemning the war was hardly the path of ambi- gray metal hood that could stop small-caliber bullets. tion in American politics. Yet John Fitzgerald, a The names and phone numbers it contains are the member of the Westport, Connecticut, zoning board, accumulation of thirty years in politics. When she decided to run for Congress on an antiwar platform. flips through it, the names fan by like turbine blades When the time came to select a campaign manager, in a small, powerful generator of access. he turned to a zoning-board colleague whose energy Access, Wexler emphasizes, is very important in and instinct for politics had impressed him deeply. Washington. But there has to be "substance behind Her name was Anne Wexler. the facade." Success in "this town" has a great deal Wexler's campaign strategy emphasized the pains- to do with "just liking people." Some people are taking grass-roots vote-building that reshaped the "people people," others are not. The former go far- Democratic Party in the late Sixties and early Seven- ther than the latter. But you can't be successful un- ties. Working out of cramped offices and borrowed less you "understand a lot of issues," too. Being dining rooms, her army of volunteers set out to ring successful also involves "knowing what happens" in every doorbell and dial every phone number in the Washington, and especially in the government. "And district. There were tremendous telephone banks and I don't mean at a superficial level," she says. "This piles of dog-eared directories. Teetering stacks of in- town revolves around people who work for the gov- dex cards. Yards of tangled cable. Wexler believed ernment, people who work for the press, and people that the way to approach a complex task was to break who work for people who want to influence the it down into its thousand constituent crises and re- government. In this town, that's what it's all about." solve them one at a time. She made lists of voters, "This town." That's how influential Washing- lists of addresses, lists of assignments, lists of lists. tonians like Wexler almost always refer to their city. She taught her volunteers to count their supporters The expression perfectly embodies the wa~ they like on one finger at a time. Their job was to sell a sin- to think of themselves, as commonsensical pragma- gle-issue candidate to people who by and large had ticians for whom politics is a folksy calling that falls not yet begun to think of the Vietnam war as an somewhere between growing alfalfa and playing a issue at all. When the local delegate primary rolled professional sport. In fact, Thistown might make a around, the campaign manager held her breath and better name for the nation's capital. waited for the returns. Fitzgerald won by four Anne Wexler's story is the story of how to suc- votes. ceed in Thistown. Whether the ending is happy or Wexler, a bored suburban housewife whose life- sad depends on your point of view. long fascination with politics had lately given her a Ol ::J.• o :r 2! :s:E ..s:Ol Anne Wexler in the White House, 1980. "It's hard to create leaders who don't have to mortgage their souls." HARPER'S/ AUGUST 1983 28 welcome escape from domestic tedium, was born in liberal who inevitably and consistently ran out on a New York City on February 10, 1930, the eldest limb, whatever that limb was, and spent the rest of child of a prominent architect. Her childhood was my time sawing it off behind me." comfortable, cosmopolitan, and Jewish. She was Wexler swallowed her misgivings and went to meet graduated from Skidmore in 1951. Two weeks later Joe Duffey, who surprised her by being other than she married her first husband, a future ophthalmol- a run-of-the-mill ADA-nik. He was a thoughtful, ogist. She worked in public relations at a New York soft-spoken Protestant minister who had a master's City radio station, and later as an assistant to the degree from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. in the- head of the Chesterfield account at an advertising ology. His dissertation had been on Lewis Mumford. firm. From her vantage point on the lower rungs of His professorial manner and horn-rimmed glasses the entertainment industry, she watched her employ- belied a humble background: born in a coal-mining ers submit to the pressure of Joe McCarthy's Holly- town in West Virginia, he was the son of a sometime wood blacklists.