There are certain points in the year — like summer — when the country does not seem to be in the mood to think about politics or public policy. Nevertheless, we know where our duty lies, and it is not in celebrity name-dropping.
So let’s talk about something serious, like the rapidly escalating trend of extremely rich people running for high office. In Connecticut, it looks as if both parties are going to nominate candidates for governor and senator who live in the superupscale town of Greenwich.
Which is, of course, the place where LeBron James made his big basketball announcement. What was that all about, anyway? He lives in Akron, Ohio. He played in Cleveland. He’s moving to Miami. But ESPN said that James wanted to reveal his life plans in Greenwich.
Apparently, the site selection had something to do with James’s desire to attend the wedding of the Denver Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony to the television personality LaLa Vazquez. They’re getting married in New York City, and Greenwich is the place where very rich people go when they want to be in New York City but not actually.
“Greenwich amenities include great schools, country clubs, parks, beaches, shopping, restaurant, convenient access to airports and only 40 minutes to the center of the universe ... Manhattan,” says a Web site for a local realtor, who promises that you can be neighbors with “Ron Howard, Mary Tyler Moore, Mel Gibson, Diana Ross ...”
Not sure how many people are dying to hang with Mel Gibson right now. But if the primaries work out as most polls project, the next governor and junior senator from Connecticut will be neighbors, too.
For the United States Senate, the Republicans seem bent on nominating Linda McMahon, the Greenwich-based wrestling czarina who has promised to spend $30 million of her own money on the campaign. For governor, it’s probably going to be Tom Foley, the former ambassador to Ireland whose name can never be mentioned without pointing out that he owns a mansion in Greenwich and a 100-foot yacht.
The current leader in the Democratic primary for governor is Greenwich resident Ned Lamont. When we last saw Ned, he was spending $17 million of his own money in an unsuccessful attempt to win a Senate seat. The Democratic Senate nominee, Richard Blumenthal, is the poorest of the bunch, having spent virtually his entire adult life being the state attorney general, which pays $110,000 a year. However, his wife’s family owns the Empire State Building.
We hear a lot about how elected officials are afraid of being primaried by someone from the extreme right or left. But, lately, there’s been just as much danger of a superrich challenger dropping down from nowhere, like Paul the Octopus grabbing for the box of mussels covered with the Spanish flag.
In California, Democrats are in despair over how their gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown, is going to compete against Meg Whitman, a billionaire who spent $91 million just to win her primary. Brown is not personally wealthy, although he did once date Linda Ronstadt.
Florida, where LeBron James is going to be playing, is Rich Candidate Central. The presumed Democratic candidate for the Senate, Representative Kendrick Meek, now appears to be in danger of losing the nomination to a hitherto unknown billionaire named Jeff Greene.
Greene is moving up in the polls even though he made most of his money betting that the housing market would tank and suck hundreds of thousands Floridians into the maw of foreclosure. And Mike Tyson was best man at his wedding. And, we learned this week, he had Lindsay Lohan on his 145-foot yacht last New Year’s Eve.
“This is not what’s important,” Greene said about the Lohan connection. “Floridians are worried about jobs, getting results.”
This is an extremely common rejoinder these days. Try it in your own life. If your neighbor points out that your car is wrapped around her front porch, tell her that a lot of Americans don’t even have porches anymore. Because what they care about is not trivial traffic mishaps but jobs, jobs, jobs.
Meanwhile, in the Florida governor’s race, Bill McCollum, a Republican, is having a tough time dealing with his extremely rich guy, Rick Scott. Scott is the former chief of Columbia/HCA, a chain of for-profit hospitals. He has spent more than $20 million on campaign ads so far while McCollum has managed to come up with only about $6 million.
Scott’s argument is that the state needs a good businessman to run things. While he was C.E.O. of Columbia/HCA, the company paid fines, penalties and damages of more than $1.7 billion for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. But maybe Florida voters won’t notice, what with all the excitement over LeBron James.
