Jerry Mclaughlin and the passing of an era
Even when he crossed over to the so-called “dark side” as a political flack, Jerry Mclaughlin was respected by Capitol reporters as one of them.
He was forever a guardian of the Fourth Estate, who managed to perform a kind of legislative sleight of hand that betrayed neither his senator boss nor his allegiance to truth-telling. It was a testament to his integrity and genial nature that at his funeral last week, attendees came from both sides of the political aisle, former legislative staffers and reporters in equal measure. Mclaughlin died July 31 at 84 after complications from diabetes and other ailments. His career at the Capitol spanned six decades, eight years as a reporter and 47 as an adviser to governors and state senators.
I was a Senate journalism fellow in 1983, the year before I joined the Times Union. I knew Jerry from working in the Capitol — everybody knew Jerry — and stayed connected through our mutual friendship with Joe Persico, the late historian and author. Persico was a former speechwriter for Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, who lured Mclaughlin away from the Associated Press in 1968 with more money, better hours and state benefits.
Mclaughlin was a towering presence, about 6-foot-2 and solidly built. He played first base for the Legislative Correspondents Association (LCA) softball team and was nicknamed The Whammer from
the movie “The Natural.” His off-the-rack dark suits were never rumpled, but were a few years out of fashion. He did not countenance loud ties or pocket squares. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and used some sort of tonic, I think, to slick back his dark hair off a high, blocky forehead. Even in the windy concourse tunnels, I remember noticing that his hair never budged.
I got invited to lunch a few times with Persico and Mclaughlin. Their Rocky stories were marvelous, outrageous — and off the record. Jerry was easy to like. His voice was low and soft. He was quick with a joke and generous with praise. He wove tales with deadpan humor and never buried the lead or botched a punchline. He was well-read in the classics, but passed over 10-dollar words when a simple declarative sentence said what needed to be said. He was a Vermonter, from a blue-collar family of newspaper people. He never brandished his Ivy League journalism degree.
“Jerry was very modest. When people asked what he did for a living, he’d just say, ‘I worked for the state,’” recalled Mclaughlin’s wife, Marty. “If there was any bragging to be done about Jerry, I did it.”
Mclaughlin’s secret sauce during his long career in the Senate was institutional knowledge and an ability to bring a lighthearted air to staid proceedings.
“No matter how bad things got, Jerry always had a little smile at the corner of his mouth and he’d use humor to defuse tense situations,” said Stephen Sloan, former secretary of the Republican-controlled Senate.
Mclaughlin was press spokesman for Sen. John Marchi, a Republican who represented Staten Island for 50 years and was chairman of the powerful Finance Committee. Mclaughlin made regular visits to the cubbyhole of the Associated Press, where he had once worked, on the third floor of the Capitol. Three AP reporters crammed into a paperstrewn warren the size of a walkin closet. They barked into phones and pounded keyboards with a staccato urgency, under relentless wire service deadlines.
“Hey Jerry,” AP reporter Bob Bellafiore would mutter, barely looking up without breaking stride on his story. “When are you guys raising taxes?”
“Well, Mr. Bellafiore,” Mclaughlin would say, “I don’t have anything specific I can tell you, but as a seasoned observer you might realize that certain things are about to take place.”
And then Mclaughlin would lay out for Bellafiore, reporter Joel Stashenko and bureau chief Marc Humbert two or three issues in play in the Senate Finance Committee. He would let them connect the dots that would provide context for their stories.
“It was brilliant the way Jerry could thread the needle,” Bellafiore said. “He could turn a ‘no comment’ into a lesson in journalism. He stayed true to the people who paid his salary while understanding what reporters needed to do their jobs.”
“Jerry was kind and bonded with you, like you were family. He had a wonderful, sweet way about him,” said Humbert, one of the most hard-boiled reporters at the Capitol.
“Jerry instructed me in the nuances of the political game,” Stashenko said. “He knew how to talk to reporters as human beings, which is not very common in the flack game anymore.”
Mclaughlin had a soft spot for mentoring newbie reporters who stumbled around the marble corridors of power like deer in the headlights.
“For a young reporter to get approval from Jerry was like getting knighted,” Bellafiore said.
Mclaughlin’s death marked the passing of an era highlighted by Rockefeller’s swaggering ascendancy. The press corps at the time was a boozy men’s club marked by late-night card games in the LCA press room on the third f loor of the Capitol, a creaky relic that looked like a movie set for “The Front Page.”
Reporters and often the people they covered convened on “the shelf” in the LCA press room, a dingy mezzanine jaundiced from decades of cigar smoke. It held a ratty pool table, crummy card table and battered upright piano Harry Truman once played. Ink-stained wretches swapped war stories and busted chops as ice clinked in highball glasses and bottles of whiskey were drained. Legislation was done with a handshake over a stogie and tumbler of rye, as Republicans and Democrats horse-traded without rancor.
I witnessed the last hurrah of this intemperate era during my year as a Senate journalism fellow 37 years ago. Most days at lunch, Mclaughlin would join Senate Republican flacks and former newspapermen Charlie Dumas and Dick Mathieu, who both worked at the Daily News. They’d walk up to The Larkin restaurant on Lark Street and enjoyed what I assumed were two- or three-martini lunches. Mathieu returned in mid-afternoon, tie askew, face f lushed and eyes glassy. He told a secretary to hold his calls, closed his office door and dropped into the sofa with a soft thud for a nap.
This was colorful fodder for a novel, perhaps, but booze wrecked Mclaughlin’s life, as it had plagued his father’s. “It was a heavy-drinking culture back then,” Humbert said. “They all got drunk together after deadline and lobbyists dropped off cases of booze at Christmastime.”
Mclaughlin spoke openly about being a recovering alcoholic and how the drink nearly destroyed his first marriage. He got sober several years before his wife, Sandy, died in 1989. Mclaughlin was 53, with two kids to raise. He started running as therapy. He helped others with their sobriety.
He married Marty in 2007. Both in their 70s, their love blossomed at the Albany Jewish Community Center, where they were lap swimmers.
“Jerry was charming and funny and we hit it off,” she said.
At the finales of the annual LCA show, a spoof variety revue performed by Capitol reporters, Mclaughlin took his place on stage with the other the LCA alumni. They sang the closing number, “Goodbye, Boys,” a sentimental tune adapted from the 1914 Broadway musical “Chin Chin.”
It goes like this: “Goodbye boys, we’re through. We’ve had our little fun. What we have tried to do is let in laughter’s sun. If we have dealt severely, we all regret sincerely. And so we say to those who run, sing strong boys, our song girls, so long all, we’re done.”
Hearing that song causes a lump to rise in my throat. Next time I hear it, I will think of Jerry Mclaughlin and the Old Guard. So long.