Here’s the Deal: A Memoir
Genres: Biographies
Book Preface
Born to Run It
By every imaginable metric, I should have been a Democrat.
And a liberal. A feminist. Probably a man-hater, too.
I was raised in a house of al adult women. Four Italian Catholic women. In a
smal town in southern New Jersey between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. The
only male in our al -female household was Pudgy the dog, and he stayed outside.
(The inside dog, Beauty, was a girl.) This was the golden age of the women’s
liberation movement. Roe v. Wade. No-fault divorce. My father left us when I
was three with no child support and no alimony. I was half Irish, half Italian.
The men in my life—uncles, cousins, family friends—were union members.
Al arrows pointed to me growing up at a time and in a way that should have
had me, on January 20, 2017, my ftieth birthday, ironing my pink pussy hat,
printing my protest signs, and joining the “Women’s March” in Washington,
D.C. Instead, I wore a red hat and stood in front of the U.S. Capitol, steps away
from President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence as they were
sworn into o ce, and then began my new job in the West Wing as counselor to
the president. I should have been running Hil ary Clinton’s campaign or at least
helping “the nation’s rst female president” nd her way into the same White
House Madonna said she “thought about blowing up” and where I now
worked.
By then, I’d spent a quarter century as a ful y recovered attorney, plying my
trade as a pol ster, a political strategist, and a TV talking head. I know al the
reasons why some people become Republicans and other people become
Democrats and a growing number join no party at al . I was a child of 1970s
New Jersey, raised in a hardworking blue-col ar area by a single mom whose
friend sent her copies of Ms. magazine. Do I sound like a future Republican to
you?Yet there I’d been months earlier, on August 12, 2016, on the glittering
twenty-sixth oor of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, staring across
Donald Trump’s battleship of a desk, on the verge of going to a place no woman
had ever gone before. And I’d be going there with the highest-pro le real estate
developer, reality TV star, and business leader in America, whose immediate
goal was stopping Hil ary Clinton from becoming America’s rst female
president while he became the nation’s rst president with no prior military or
political experience. I had earned my way in, but it was the last place I imagined I
could be.
I was already working on Trump’s 2016 campaign as one of the ve pol sters
and a senior advisor to a thoroughly uninterested Paul Manafort. He literal y fel
asleep during my PowerPoint on how to close the gender gap with Hil ary. (He
must have stil been on Ukraine time.) But the morning of the twelfth, I got a
cal from Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, saying, “Mr. Trump is asking for you.”
The candidate was recording videos for a few events he could not attend in
person. The taping wasn’t going so wel . When I breezed in, there were a dozen
anxious-looking people in the o ce and one hair-and-makeup artist who had
just been told (by Trump) not to go near him. I could tel immediately he was in
a t of pique.
“Look at that,” he said to me, motioning toward a video monitor. “Why am I
pink? Who hired you people? Kel yanne, tel them I look like a pink, three-year-
old baby.”
Oh-kay, I thought to myself. I’ve had babies. I’ve had three-year-olds. They were sorta pink. Let me see what we can do about this. When the taping nal y
wrapped, Trump announced: “I want everybody out of here except Kel yanne.”
“Are you coming on the plane to Pennsylvania?” he demanded as soon as the
room cleared out.
“No, sir, I…”
“Why not? I thought you said you were.”
“It’s a smal er plane, I think. It’s okay. I’l come next time.”
“It’s not okay,” he corrected me. “Why do they keep putting the same people
on the plane?”
“I don’t know how that works,” I answered. “I went on the road yesterday
with Governor Pence. North Carolina looks like Trump country.”
I took advantage of the extended pause. “But what’s real y going on?” I asked.
Something had to be troubling him beyond the camera lighting and the airplane
seating chart.
He leaned back in his huge leather chair and folded his arms. “Everybody tel s
me I’m a better candidate than she is.”
I nodded and smiled. “That is empirical y true.”
“But she’s got the better people.”
“She’s got many more people,” I said. “She has a person whose only job is
Lackawanna County.”
One arched eyebrow.
“We have, like, one person in charge of Pennsylvania and three other states,” I
said. “So, yes, it is di erent.”
That’s when he got to what was real y on his mind.
“Do you actual y think we can do this?” he asked me, which I took to mean
beat Hil ary on November 8, less than three months away.
I didn’t sugarcoat it.
“Yes, you can win, Mr. Trump—but right now we’re losing. You’ve come this
far. It’s been remarkable. Look, she’s too much Hil ary and not enough Clinton.
Bil was the charmer with the everyman appeal. People are skeptical of her. She
rubs people the wrong way. She is seen as direct, but curt and not honest. Right
now, sir, the entire conversation and election are about you.”
“I know.” He cracked a faint smile. “I get the best press coverage.”
“You get the most press coverage,” I retorted. “For you to win, the election
needs to be about her, or at least more about her. The bal ot won’t say
‘TRUMP’ or ‘NOT TRUMP.’ People wil have to actual y suppress how they
feel about her to vote for her.”
“Go on.”
“The pol s are rough right now. And the window is closing. But, of course,
you can win. I’ve been talking about the ‘undercover, hidden Trump voter’ for
weeks now and met international ridicule. Those voters are real, and they wil be
there for you. The question is, are there enough of them? We also need to
convince the fence-sitters, the crossover voters, and the conscientious objectors.
They cal themselves Independents not because they are not focused on politics
but because they are. They don’t like Washington, the career politicians, the
system. They’re on the outside, just like you.”
I stil had the oor.
I kept going, “I don’t know a bil ion things about a bil ion things, sir, but I
know consumers. I know voters. And I know pol s.” Then I dished up a quick
version of the presentation Manafort had dozed through and others in
campaigns past had ignored. “Look,” I said, “women who are running for o ce
usual y have three distinct advantages, and Hil ary can’t claim any of them.”
Trump always liked reviewing Hil ary’s de cits. He perked up at the prospect
of hearing some new ones. “Women candidates are typical y seen as fresh and
new. There’s a reason you’ve never heard of the ‘Old Girls Network.’ There isn’t
one. A couple of years ago, Joni Ernst cleared the primary threshold of fty
percent and then became U.S. senator. Iowa had literal y never sent a woman to
Washington before. The second advantage is that women are seen as less
corruptible, more ethical, beyond reproach. Fairly or unfairly, often after a man
is caught behaving badly in o ce, people immediately say, ‘We need a woman.
We need a woman.’ ”
Trump smiled at that, and I pressed on.
“Nobody sees Hil ary as fresh and new,” I said. “Nobody sees her as ethical
and beyond reproach. In both cases, it’s the opposite.” And then there was the
third advantage that Hil ary lacked. “Women candidates are often viewed as
peacemakers, earnest negotiators, consensus builders, as general y interested in
how they can hammer out a deal with the other side. Who sees Hil ary Clinton
that way?”
“Nobody,” Trump agreed.
As I laid al this out, I could tel I stil had his attention, which was saying
something. “Hil ary’s blue wal is real,” I said nal y. “But if we can break
through it, you wil win.”
Then came the surprise question, the one I wasn’t remotely expecting when
I’d walked in the door. The world-famous dealmaker wanted to make one with
me.“You can do that?” he asked me.
“I can do that.”
“Do you want to run this thing?”
“What do you mean, ‘run this thing’?”
“The campaign.”
“The campaign?”
He was serious. That made me nervous, so I just kept talking. “We need to
focus on the states Obama-Biden carried twice with more than fty percent and
where Hil ary is now pol ing below fty and a Republican governor and/or
senator was elected during the Obama years. We know people aren’t al ergic to
Republican leaders in those states.”
It wasn’t the rst time I had made that pitch, but it was the rst time Trump
had heard it, uninterrupted, and with less than one hundred days to go. He liked
what he heard. Jared and Ivanka were on a cruise on the Danube. Don Jr. was
hunting out west. This was a Friday, so Manafort’s weekend in the Hamptons
had begun a few days earlier.
Donald Trump waited for my response.
I wanted us both to succeed. So getting to yes required a few additional
conditions that I wasn’t even certain I could demand without sounding
disrespectful or dissuaded. There was no use doing this if we couldn’t do it right.
“I’l need direct access to you at al times,” I said. “Given the limited time before
Election Day, we’l need one other new person in the C-suite. And I’l need the
latitude to look at data more granularly, more situational y. Forget the national
pol s about the ction of electability, which portends and pretends who can and
can’t win. The Electoral Col ege is how you do or don’t win.”
Trump agreed to al of it. We had a deal.
“Who do I need to tel , sir? Who else needs to meet with me?”
Trump looked to either side and looked puzzled. “You talk to me. Just me.”
If you’re going to make history, who needs hierarchy?
The political warrior in me was elated. I’d just been handed the opportunity
of a lifetime. I had earned it but never thought I’d achieve it. A man who’d been
o ered that job would have walked out of presidential nominee Donald
Trump’s o ce and immediately leaked the news to a favored reporter or
commanded an impromptu press conference in the Trump Tower lobby. “I’m
the new campaign manager,” he’d have announced to the clicking cameras and
klieg lights, exuding con dence through his jutted jaw and furrowed brow.
“Everything’s di erent now. We’re going to win this thing.” But I didn’t do that.
The political warrior was one thing, but I was also that girl from South Jersey,
raised in a household of loving yet self-denying women, who had a hard time
accepting yes for an answer. I had triumphed over some men but let other men
trample al over me.
“You know what?” I said to Donald Trump. “We’l talk about it again
tomorrow after you get back from Pennsylvania. See if you’ve changed your
mind.” I handed the legend Donald Trump, also my party’s presidential
nominee, a chance to rethink his o er and maybe even renege. What man would
do that?
“Okay, honey,” he said as I reached for the o ce door. “Leave it open, Kel,”
he added, a harbinger of things to come. “This is going to be great.”
I was numb as I walked down the hal way toward the elevator, nodding
goodbye to his trusted assistants Jessica and Rhona. Instead of hitting 14, where
my o ce was, or lobby, where the press were, I re exively hit 24 and changed
elevators on the residence side. Would he tweet it? Had people overheard us?
Would I blurt it out to the thirsty press corps corral ed in the main lobby waiting
for scoops and sound bites? Instead, I went down to the residence lobby and ran
smack into Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee.
“Hey, Kel yanne, are you coming with us to Altoona?”
“No,” I replied, avoiding eye contact and heading toward the side exit on
56th Street.
“So whadaya think? Can he real y do this? It’s too late—right?—the pol s,
the tweets.”
“Yes, of course he can win this,” I said. “I smel change in the air. Things are
looking up. He’s making some moves.” I was as cryptic as Reince was frantic.
The only person I told that day about Trump’s o er was my husband,
George. “You’re doing this,” he said to me without a whi of equivocation and
with a tear in his eye. “This is your shot. I’ve listened to al these people deny
you, dismiss you, and sel you short for al these years. They never took your
advice, and maybe he wil . You’re going to do this.”
I nodded, knowing George’s support was genuine and unconditional.
“Kel yanne,” George said, “Trump can actual y win with you.”
George was certainly right about the rst part. I’d been cut down and cut o
and cut out by some of the most famous and infamous men in business and
politics. George had been around for plenty of it. He had little regard for the
Republican consultancy that rewarded failure, operated like a walking RICO
violation, and, lately, had never seen Trump and his appeal to a broad coalition
of voters coming.
And so began the wildest adventure of my life, personal y and professional y.
I would certainly be changed by it, and so would America. I had talked my way
into being Donald Trump’s campaign manager. Now we’d see if I could talk him
al the way into the White House. But rst I had to talk myself into believing I
was worthy of the historic moment.
I LIKE TO talk. Then again, that’s not exactly breaking news.
I have spoken mil ions of words in public. On TV. In speeches. At ral y
podiums in front of roaring crowds. Before more modest but no less captive
audiences in converted barns, in fancy living rooms, in hotel bal rooms, in wood-
paneled boardrooms, on rooftops, and on hil tops. But I also like to listen.
That’s what good pol sters (and moms) do. We listen. Careful y.
Perhaps I’ve never had more to say than I do right now. When someone told
me that a book like this one is usual y around one hundred thousand words, my
reaction was perfectly predictable: “Is that al ? I’ve crammed that many into a
single TV appearance.”
Talking is what I love to do. It’s also how I make things happen. It’s a big part
of who I am. I chat up strangers and nd common bonds. I reconnect with old
friends and reveal something new. The world is my focus group. I want to listen.
And laugh. And learn.
Put it like this: I like to talk almost as much as my husband likes to tweet. On
Twitter. About my boss, the president. George loved how I talked about Donald
Trump, until he decided one day he couldn’t stand it and chose to throw our
lives into an uproar. Opposites may attract, but similars endure. I live my life
mostly o ine. George spends a major part of his day online. Then and now.
That may be our greatest divide… and America’s.
I’ve never had much of a lter between my brain and my lips. No notes, no net:
That’s been my MO al along. Announcing exactly how and where and among
whom Donald Trump was going to win the presidency. Cheerful y appearing on
ve Sunday shows. Delivering unscripted speeches that make people ask, “Is she
using a teleprompter? Is someone in her ear?” No, that is not the way I do it.
But, yes, living on a limb like that also has its perils. When the whole world is
listening and you’re out there al alone—too little research, too little sleep—
things don’t always come out artful y or as intended. I made my bones in
traditional media, live television, and ten-minute uninterrupted live radio, which
is much more di cult than sitting around, writing, curating, editing, and
tweaking the perfect tweet.
Alternative facts… remember those?
The jackals sitting on their asses lying in wait to pounce had for years played a
one-way parlor game of parsing a phrase here or there from the mil ions of words
I’ve spoken, hoping to denigrate and castigate me. No matter. They are the ones
who often have thick skul s and thin skin (and marbles in their mouths when
they speak). These elites were never my audience, anyway. The people are. I was
speaking to them and sometimes for them. Rather than lash out and clap back at
every mean post or miserable person, I decided to take the high road and the
long view. That didn’t happen quickly and that hasn’t come easily, but it has
kept me safe and sane, improved my outlook, and al owed me to retain joy on
the journey of life.
I’ve been a little quiet lately, quieter than I usual y am. I even took a long
break from television. I jumped o while so many others were begging to get on.
When I announced on Sunday night, August 23, 2020, that I was leaving the
Trump administration as senior counselor to the president—one of Donald
Trump’s longest-serving senior aides—Election Day was stil a few months away.
I had decided to spend some much-needed time with my four growing children
—ages ten, eleven, fteen, and fteen—and disconnect from Washington for a
while. I’d given at the o ce. It was time to do more giving at home.
I went o the grid just as I’d promised to. George not so much, though he
had vowed to give his poison Trump obsession a much-needed breather. I held
my tongue, stayed out of the media, drove lots of carpools, and started nagging
my children face-to-face again.
That time has been important, for al of us. But you knew I couldn’t sit
quietly forever. This book is cal ed Here’s the Deal for a reason. Rest assured, this
is not one of those al -MAGA-al -the-time titles, packed with obsequious
fawning, written by someone who lacked my daily proximity to or rst-person
perspective on President Donald Trump. This is also not another insu erable
“tel -al ” from an author spinning through a cycle of incredulity who has decided
to place profit over principle, fame over friendship, attitude over gratitude.
Lots of people already know who I am. But not from where I’ve come, what
makes me tick, how I found myself in the middle of incredible opportunities and
wild dramas.
The Jersey girl, raised by independent women, who left home with hope and
passion and strong beliefs. The young entrepreneur who made it to the highest
levels of politics and media and did it on her own terms. The public servant who
began at fty and marveled at how decisions and actions could positively a ect
so many lives. The wife and mother who did her best under excruciating
circumstances, as wives and mothers almost always do. The political professional
who stared down entrenched careerists, petty jealousies, the old boys’ network,
the new boys’ network, lies, personal attacks, and a man the president of the
United States cal ed the “husband from hel .” Who else has had a life like mine?
It’s Quite The Story.
And it al began in a tiny town cal ed Atco.
Part I
Jersey Girl
Chapter 1
Golden Time
I have an early memory of my father.
The two of us are eating pancakes together, sitting at the kitchen table like
normal families do, acting as if the scene was certain to repeat itself a mil ion
times over. So here’s what’s strange about that father-daughter breakfast: I’m
not sure if it real y happened or if it’s only wishful thinking on my part. But I
cling to that early, early memory of us because it’s the only one I have.
John Kainath Fitzpatrick was his name. I was three when he left for “the
other woman” and “the other child.” He and my two grandfathers had eight
children with their wives and another eight children out of wedlock with their…
nonwives. The men in our family didn’t just have side pieces. They didn’t just
have comares, as we say in Italian. They had side families. And it wasn’t a secret to anyone. They al went o to be with those other families, leaving their original
wives and children to face their own new normals and fend for themselves.
Which is how I came to be raised by a houseful of strong, independent,
wonderful y loving women who were pretty sure the whole world revolved
around me.
I was born Kel yanne Fitzpatrick in Camden, New Jersey, on January 20,
1967. I favored my father’s Irish side, with light skin and bright blue eyes,
quickly becoming a stocky and curious little girl who was bursting with energy
and thought almost everything was fun. My mother, Diane DiNatale
Fitzpatrick, 100 percent Italian, the youngest of four sisters, had expected to
devote her life to raising a big, happy family. Instead she was married at twenty-
one, had me at barely twenty-three, and was divorced at twenty-six, never to
seriously date again. When my father left, she got busy, not mad, ready to do
whatever it took to provide for herself and especial y for me—shielding me from
adult problems and letting me be a kid.
Jobs at her father’s Chrysler-Plymouth auto dealership, the local bank, and
then a higher-paying position as a gaming supervisor at Atlantic City’s Claridge
Casino al owed her the dignity of work and an ability to spoil me by 1970s and
1980s New Jersey standards (read: inexpensively). We moved back in with her
mother and two unmarried sisters at the old homestead, 375 Hendricks Avenue
in tiny Atco, where the four women shared bedrooms so I could have my own.
My grandmother, Antoinette Lombardo DiNatale, was the unquestioned
matriarch of our family. She, like my father’s mother, Claire Muriel (Kainath)
Fitzpatrick, had the sel essness, patience, and poise of a woman who had
trudged through the Great Depression, foreign wars, and battles at home.
Grandmom, as we cal ed my mother’s mother, su ered through a devastating car
crash in her forties that took the life of her sister-in-law and left Grandmom
bedridden for a year. She was told she would never walk again. She heard what
the doctor said, then wil ed her way through it with prayers to St. Jude (the
patron saint of lost causes), a fused hip, the hint of a limp, and zero self-pity.
My father’s mother had crippling arthritis and buried two of her eight
grandchildren, one from leukemia at age eight and another from an automobile
accident at eighteen. Despite my father’s long absence, I maintained loving
relationships with his sisters, Aunt Gail and Aunt Ruth, and their children,
Gail ynn, Tony, Sammy, Diana, A.J., and Jil ese, and later my father’s son Scott.
Grandmothers Antoinette and Claire did nothing for the glory, for the
praise, for the honor, or for the money. Nothing. They were ladies with limited
formal education and endless wisdom. They certainly had plenty to complain
about. But to this day, I never remember either of my grandmothers
complaining about anything. They smiled through their physical pain and
emotional scars. They made our lives easier. And they would remain friends and
travel buddies for decades past their children’s divorce.
They were just spectacular.
That stone rancher at the corner of Route 30 (White Horse Pike) and
Hendricks Avenue was bursting with love. Grandmom and my aunts Rita
(“RoRo”) and Marie (“MiMi”) al took a daily hand in raising me, as did the
aunts’ married sister, GiGi (for Angela, whom we also cal ed Angie), who
stopped by nearly every afternoon with her two children, my rst cousins and
rst friends, Renee and James (“Jay”). Together these vibrant women were
South Jersey’s version of TV’s “Golden Girls,” with housecoats, biting humor,
late-night dessert benders, and life lessons. Grit was practical y a genetic trait
with them, but so was an ability to make everyone feel welcomed, special, and
loved. Our wooden kitchen table was like the town square. Visitors l ed their
bel ies and eased their burdens. Laughter was the theme song.
My mother’s sisters were charitable with their time and modest treasure,
frank in al their attitudes, and, as I can see looking back, way ahead of their
time. Aunt Angie and her husband, Uncle Eddie, owned Mama D’s Italian
Specialties and the Country Farm Market, thirty yards in front of my house.
Aunt Rita had been a technician in a doctor’s o ce for decades and then owned
a “custard” (soft-serve ice cream) shop and mini-golf course with Angie and
Eddie next to the market. MiMi, who’d helped her father run his businesses,
later returned to teaching eighth-grade math. She was known to her students as
strict and mean because she didn’t take excuses for late assignments and didn’t
try to be their friend. Then, years later, when they’d run across her around town,
they’d often remark, “Thank you. You cared about us. You prepared me for high
school. You taught me how to think.”
These women didn’t preach equality. They lived it. Why march in a parade or
label yourself when your back door swings open for al comers, your heart and
home open to al ? My values and compassion for others were instil ed by them,
their careful nudging, our shared Catholic faith and their adherence to the
Golden Rule. They knelt for the Lord and stood for the ag. Their love was
unsparing and unconditional. What al that meant for me was an unshakably
secure upbringing despite whatever circumstances might have pointed the other
way. Whenever I felt awkward or unsure of myself, as al kids do, those women
were right there for me, tel ing me how unique I was, that I could do and be
anything, and that if I changed my mind (or couldn’t cut it in “the real world”),
I could always come home. Most parents and loved ones convey this to their kids. Mine absolutely meant it.
As mil ions of women know, you don’t need to have a child of your own to
love children. We al spoil someone else’s son or daughter at some time. My
aunts Rita and Marie forwent marriage and motherhood and instantly had the
center of gravity in their home shift to the needs of a little one. GiGi found
herself with a niece/third-child combo. Led by Mom and Grandmom, this circle
of sel ess women took al the love they had inside them and lavished it on me.
FROM THE DAY I started talking, I didn’t stop. Probing. Ponti cating. Pol ing
people. Performing every chance I got. Constantly asking questions that started
with “how come…?” I’d line up my dol s and stu ed animals like I was in a
courtroom and they were my jury. They al sat there in stunned silence as I
played judge, prosecutor, defense counsel, and al the witnesses. I loved to mimic
whatever I’d just seen on television, and we certainly watched a ridiculous
amount of it. I had an aptitude for remembering names and numbers, dates and
data. I had zero skil s (stil ) for designing, decorating, or drawing anything. By
the time I was four, everyone agreed I should grow up to be a lawyer.
My formal education got o to a bit of a rocky start when I dropped out of
nursery school (pre-K). I went dutiful y for a few weeks, then decided the whole
thing was stupid and I’d rather hang out at home and get a real education from
Grandmom. We folded clothes, cooked, and crocheted. I helped to rol the
gnocchi and snap the string beans. We watched soap operas, more game shows,
and, every night at six, the Channel 10 news with John Facenda or Channel 6
with Larry Kane and his successor Jim Gardner, the same Philadelphia newscasts
Joe Biden was watching in Delaware. Grandmom would tel me stories about
the old days and o er her perspective on handling di erent people and di erent
situations. She’d sneak in a little crème de menthe or sloe gin. Her lessons seemed
wise at the time, and they stil do. Even as a little girl, I recognized that our family
was di erent. Not di erent-bad, but di erent. When I entered kindergarten at
St. Joseph’s Catholic School in nearby Hammonton, where I would stay for the
next thirteen years, I was the only child of divorce in my class.
We didn’t know what we didn’t know, but our days and lives were constantly
ful . Five nights a week, we played poker, dominoes, pinochle, and Kings in the
Corner at the kitchen table. Lifelong friends and new acquaintances from work
or church slipped in the back door unannounced. It was 30th Street Station in
there. God forbid that anyone thought of cal ing rst. They knew a hot meal and
warm conversation would always be waiting. Maybe they’d stay a night or three.
I realized later that the conversations were contemporary and the content
somewhat controversial. Abortion, divorce, homosexuality/AIDS, alcohol, drug
and gambling addictions, adultery, arrest. The family friend who left his wife
and ve kids for another man. The nun who left the convent to get married. The
local business owner who lost it al at the craps tables. Yet I cannot recal a single
political conversation. Not one. I suppose the women of the house voted for
Democrats, at least until Ronald Reagan came around, and certainly for that
handsome young Catholic, John F. Kennedy. But the pictures that hung on our
wal s weren’t of presidents or politicians. They were the pope and the Last
Supper and my latest artwork from school, along with the cruci xes, scapulars,
and saint statues that loomed in almost every room. I was taught to rely on God,
my family, and myself—not some politician who would never know me…
literal y.
The one exception to the “politics-free” childhood occurred in August 1974.
I was seven years old. The Watergate hearings were on TV. And I was prancing
around the house with homemade “Impeach Nixon” buttons on my cotton
dress. I’d cut them out of a piece of paper and used safety pins. I hardly knew
who Nixon was. I certainly didn’t grasp the concept of impeachment. I’d heard
people saying Nixon should be impeached, and I guess I was fol owing the
crowd, annoyed that these tedious hearings had preempted our regularly
scheduled game shows and soap operas.
My cousins Renee and Jay slept over almost every weekend. The three of us
were less than three years apart, and I was the youngest. They were like siblings
to me. The card players had us empty ashtrays and fetch mixed drinks. Saturday
mornings meant Jay trying to pry me awake so that my nearby sleeping mother
couldn’t hear us, then us dumping an entire box of sugary cereal and the entire
sugar bowl into the biggest Tupperware we could nd, grabbing two ladles, and
watching cartoons for hours before Renee and I would leave for dance school.
Renee guided me through the female rites of passage and gave big-sister, tough-
love advice. We spent countless nights side by side in her canopy bed, dreaming
and scheming, imagining our future husbands, children’s names, and destinies.
Jay, ten months my senior, made me the brother he never had, and I have al the
scars on my knees and elbows to prove it. From sliding into home plate on the
concrete “ eld” to ying o his Hu y bike. From Jay I also got an above-average
knowledge of al things footbal and became a eld hockey fan who’d yel
“Pandemonium!” from the sidelines.
Every winter, Grandmom and Aunt Rita headed to Florida for three months.
Mom and I would move in with Aunt Angie, Uncle Eddie, Jay and Renee, so
there would be someone to look after me while Mom was at work. Uncle Eddie
treated me like one of his own, including me on hunting and shing trips, even
letting me cal him “Uncle Daddy” when I was terri ed to participate in the
Father’s Day celebrations in elementary school.
Once or twice, someone may have suggested show business as a possible
career for me. I took dance and voice classes and did a stint at modeling school.
And my growing repertoire of imitations was vastly expanded by the premiere of
Saturday Night Live. I was al owed to stay up late and watch because my aunts
loved that show. By Sunday afternoon, I was slaying my smal audiences with my
kil er reenactments of Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna and of Dan
Aykroyd and Jane Curtin’s point-counterpoints on “Weekend Update.”
“Dan, you pompous ass.”
“Jane, you ignorant slut.”
Shades of CNN and Fox segments to come, even if I wasn’t entirely sure yet
what al those insults meant. But I had my doubts about showbiz as a career for
me, and a lot of it was how I looked. Until around fth grade, I was tal er than
the boys and chubbier than the girls. Thankful y, nature and hormones did their
thing. I slimmed out, the boys shot up, and al was right with the world again.
The friends I made in those years would stil be my friends decades later,
indeed some of my very closest friends in life. Christine Ordil e and I found each
other in kindergarten. She was the youngest of seven. Her father died when she
was nine. She spent a lot of time with our family, and me with hers. We’d stay in
my room for hours, experimenting with music and makeup and talking to boys
on the phone. So many of us went through K–12 in the same school together:
Linda, the Kathys, Sheri, Patty, Rohna, Francine, Antoinette, Steven, and
Benjamin. My neighbors Jimmy Baker and Todd Ferster have been by my side
for decades.
High school brought more friends and lots of Petrongolos, including
Michaela, with whom I’ve shared life’s biggest, best, saddest and funniest
moments. She was the only person I’d ever met named Michaela, decades before
every third girl seemed to have it, and her friendship came without jealousy or
judgment. Since Michaela was one of ten children and I was one of one, we had
very di erent backgrounds. There were Petrongolos in every grade. Her parents
and siblings are in my life. Her sisters Marina and Angela are among my very
close friends.
Given my father’s disappearing act and the family tradition he was carrying
on, I certainly could have developed an anti-male ethos. But my upbringing
oriented me di erently. Uncles, cousins, and male family friends provided
strength, compassion, and life skil s. And incredibly, the women never spoke il
of the men who had wounded them. The prevailing wisdom was that a family’s
dirty laundry should remain inside the house. What I saw as restraint, grace,
resilience, and self-reliance, others might view as a failure to dump good-for-
nothing jerks who’d refused to honor their wives as equals worthy of respect.
What I got was an education—unspoken but potent—in women’s
empowerment. My mother, grandmother, and aunts made their own way on
their own terms, independently and self-reliantly.
The fact is, I never heard a negative word about my father from any of them.
That helped fortify me when, at age twelve, my father suddenly reappeared,
watching from the back of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church as Jay and I
and other parishioners received the Catholic sacrament of Con rmation. My
mother had run into him somewhere and invited him.
Soon after that, my father asked if the three of us might meet for dinner. I
agreed to go, more for my mom than for me. I was curious, but I could have
gone either way. Then I had to decide whether to invite him into my life.
Christine gave great advice. I said yes, got myself a father and a half brother,
Scott, and learned the value of forgiveness, redemption, and second chances. He
quickly became a cool dad, taking my friends and me to arcades, scary movies,
and Phil ies games, and would stay in my life and grow in my heart for the next
forty years.
Though I wasn’t even a teenager yet, I could see there was a certain unspoken
tragedy to him, just leaving my mother the way he did. He missed out on a great
wife. He stepped back into my life at an age when girls real y need paternal
attention and a ection. When I nal y had children of my own, I’d see no point
in passing on any of that pain or regret to the next generation. We loved having
PopPop John active in our lives.
OUR LITTLE ATCO wasn’t even o cial y a town. It was just a speck on the map in
Waterford Township, Camden County, a part of New Jersey that looks more
toward Philadelphia than to New York. This was a part of New Jersey that
deserved the slogan on the license plates: “Garden State.” I always felt at home
with the wide-open spaces, the solid traditions, and the genuine simplicity. Atco
wasn’t even named for a person or a geographical feature, the way most places
are. It was named for a company. Local lore has it that, in 1904, when the
Atlantic Transport Company of West Virginia placed an order for four large
vessels with a shipbuilder in Camden, the surrounding township became known
as Atco, a sign of appreciation for al the new jobs. To the extent that outsiders
know the place at al anymore, it’s often because of the high-octane Sunday
afternoons at the Atco Dragway, New Jersey’s rst drag strip. My mother’s
father, a short, stocky man ironical y nicknamed “Jimmy the Brute,” had owned
the Atco Speedway, another drag strip, which closed before I was born.
Though our house was only half a block o White Horse Pike, the old Route
30 between Philadelphia and Atlantic City, the scattered subdivisions hadn’t yet
crowded out al the fruit farms and other open spaces around us. I got my rst
summer job at twelve, packing blueberries at a farm just down the Pike in
Hammonton, the self-proclaimed “Blueberry Capital of the World.” The
operation was owned by Bil y DiMeo and his family. Bil y and my mom were
high school classmates and the adult leaders of our parish youth group. They
may have regretted bringing impressionable tweens and teens to see movies like
Grease and Saturday Night Fever. In the early years, my friend Brenda would walk down the path from her grandmother’s house to my grandmother’s house
by seven thirty every morning, and my mother or an aunt would drive us to the
Indian Brand packing shed. For eight solid summers, I would do my best to
uphold Hammonton’s blueberry pride.
Blueberry packers took the pints l ed by blueberry pickers and covered the
containers one by one with cel ophane, using a little square form to make sure
the seal was even and tight, before wrapping everything with a rubber band and
putting the pint into a crate. Each crate held a dozen pints. We were paid sixteen
cents for each crate we l ed, and I was so fast, people would come by to watch
me. My mother stopped by sometimes to help, but we would usual y end up
ring her because she kept eating the blueberries instead of packaging them.
They were delicious, plump, sweet, and warm from the sun.
The blueberry shed is where I learned the meaning of working hard. The
DiMeos, Mike DeLuca, Gina, the Roseannes, Lynnie and Shel ey, Renee, Jay,
and Christine worked there, too. Whatever gifts God gives, I came to
understand, depend on the rocket fuel of hard work. With that, almost anything
is possible.
In our family, money was just a means to an end, not the end itself. My
mother taught me this not only through her own prodigious work ethic but also
by the way she always put her family rst. No matter how much or little we had,
I learned early on that what mattered was to give more than you take and to
work harder than everyone else. If you outwork them, you’l probably outsmart
them. There was so much to learn from my mother. When I got into my teens,
sometimes I would wait up for her to drive home from her night shift, and we
would talk while she ate a late dinner. Even though she was often working, she
was always present and available to me. I cal ed her at work regularly, almost as
often as my kids FaceTime me now. Feeling neglected wasn’t ever an issue as
Diane’s daughter.
Despite her warm and supportive nature, Mom was anything but a pushover.
Her standards and sense of propriety were as plain as the gold cruci x around
her neck. In the fal of 1981, my freshman year of high school, I was sitting on
our powder blue velvet couch with Michaela, watching TV. Something came on
—I can’t remember what it was—that somehow o ended fourteen-year-old me.
“God damn it! ” I hissed from the living room couch.
My mother was stirring a pot in the kitchen. I could see her in the distance.
The words had barely come out of my mouth when she came whipping around
the corner and straight toward me. I swear that cruci x was bouncing o her
chest.
“What did you say?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “What did I say?”
“I heard you. What did you say?” Her question was even sharper the second
time, and now she was raising the wooden spoon she was gripping in her hand.
Michaela looked terri ed. I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking, Your
mother is going to hit you with that spoon! My mother would never hit me,
though she probably should have sometimes. I could see the sauce dripping from
the spoon. She was steaming mad.
“Mom—”
“You took God’s name in vain! Son of a bitch!”
“I just—”
“That’s a commandment. Don’t ever take God’s name in vain again. I don’t
care if you say ‘Motherfucker! To hel with this shit!’ But don’t you ever take
God’s name again.”
It was a classic case: My mother, this loving woman who wore a gold cruci x
and no other jewelry and had this humble, self-denying life, also had a drunken
sailor’s potty mouth. My father was the truck driver, but Mommy actual y spoke
like one.
Decades later, when the pre-K teacher would summon me the day after
Easter to say that my sweet, wel -mannered four-year-old son had acted out of
the ordinary and said, “Son of aaaa BITCH! ” complete with intonation and
hand gestures, I would know exactly where that came from.
“Oh. He was mimicking his mommom. That’s just what my mother said
after Easter Mass yesterday when someone pul ed in front of her in the church
parking lot,” I explained.
“At the church?” the teacher asked me, half amused, half in horror.
“Yes,” I said. “I guess that’s why we go.”
Chapter 2
Beltway Bound
You think I’m busy now? You should have seen me in high school.
I sang in the church choir and performed in the school plays. I took dance
classes. I had eld hockey practice from three to six every afternoon. I worked on
the oats for our local parades. I was the homecoming princess for my grade and
a staple of the rst honor rol (al As). High school was a whirlwind. That
doesn’t mean I was particularly excel ent at any of it except for my schoolwork,
but I liked having a lot going on. The idea of skipping school or not having my
work done never even occurred to me. When I turned sixteen, I got my farmer’s
driver’s license, thanks to my stil -roaring career in the blueberry packing shed at
the DiMeos’ farm. Final y, Brenda and I didn’t need my mother to drive us on
summer mornings anymore. We made the trip to Hammonton in my Subaru
BRAT with the open-bed back and two backward-facing plastic seats, and, later
on, in my far sportier Camaro Berlinetta with a T-top. My blueberry triumphs
continued. I was crowned Blueberry Pageant Princess (no swimsuit portion,
merciful y). I won rst prize at the town’s blueberry festival one year for packing
thirty-nine crates and nine pints (477 individual pints) in thirty- ve minutes,
thanks in large part to the supervision and coaching of the DiMeos’ niece and
my lifelong friend, Donna Mortel ite.
The summer of 1984, between my junior and senior years, I attended a
program at Georgetown University, living on campus for three weeks and taking
intermediate French and American government. The girls from Chicago,
Miami, Los Angeles, and South America had style—panache—and designer
goods I’d seen only in magazines. It wasn’t my rst time in Washington, but it
was the rst time I’d spent more than a couple of days there. I like this place, I
thought to myself. Later that summer, our local paper, the Hammonton News,
asked me to write a guest column about the Democratic and Republican
national conventions. I was beyond excited that an Italian Catholic woman,
Geraldine Ferraro, had been chosen to run for vice president on the Democratic
ticket. I couldn’t wait to sit in front of the TV and hear her rousing address to
her party’s convention in San Francisco. I planned to center most of my column
around her speech. But then I watched President Ronald Reagan address the
Republicans in Dal as. A man old enough to be my grandfather. More familiar
with Hol ywood than Hammonton. No common denominators whatsoever
with my young life in South Jersey. And yet he had something I’d never heard
from someone whom people described as a leader. He was aspirational and
accessible. Patriotic. Resolute. It was like he was talking straight to me.
He became the lead in my column.
Then, on September 19, 1984, something amazing occurred. President
Reagan came to Hammonton to campaign. This was a major deal for us. Our
little corner of New Jersey didn’t get a lot of presidents passing through on their
way to the G7. Twenty- ve thousand people packed downtown that Wednesday.
The schools closed so the students could attend. In his speech, the visiting
president even sang the praises of a local hero.
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