AMERICA:Former US envoy to Dublin Tom Foley could be Connecticut's next governor despite critics focusing on his riches, writes LARA MARLOWE
I DIDN’T expect to like a multimillionaire Bush administration appointee who played an important role in the occupation of Iraq. But there was something disarming about the way the former-ambassador-to-Ireland-turned-Connecticut-gubernatorial-candidate returned my phone call with a cheery, “Hi Lara. This is Tom Foley. Is this a good time to talk?”
Foley chuckled at my crass question: How much are you worth? “JP Morgan had a great line,” he said. “If you know what your net worth is, you’re not very rich. I don’t really know . . . You’d have to value assets that don’t have readily available market prices.” Back in 1985, Foley, a Harvard Business School graduate, founded a private investment company called National Textile Corp, where he was reportedly paid $4 million a year in management fees. These days, his main holding is Stevens Aviation, which maintains private aircraft in South Carolina. It must be nice to be able to say, at the relatively young age of 57, “I’m not really a company operator. I’m an investor. I built up a portfolio of companies I acquired. Most have been sold.”
Foley’s wealth has been an issue in Connecticut’s brutal Republican primary campaign, which he is well-placed to win on August 10th. His chief opponent, the lieutenant governor Michael Fedele, accused Foley of “buying” the ambassadorship to Ireland (where he served from October 2006 until January 2009) by raising over $100,000 for George W Bush’s re-election campaign.
Foley's 100ft yacht, the Odalisque, has also been mentioned. In a lively debate between three Republican candidates on Wednesday, Foley gave as good as he got, noting that "The lieutenant governor is a multimillionaire who, we've learned in the last couple of days, drives a Maserati and a Ferrari."
Out in California, Foley’s friend Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of the eBay shopping website, and Carly Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett-Packard, are also prominent Republican candidates. Has American politics become a sport for millionaires? “I don’t agree with the premise that I ‘bought’ the ambassadorship or that I’m buying this election,” Foley says. “If you’ve been lucky and successful and benefited from the system, you should give back.”
He also believes that people who “understand organisations, economics, job growth and how businesses function” should be involved in government.
Restrictions on campaign financing are another reason so many millionaires stand for public office, Foley suggests. He estimates the gubernatorial race will cost him up to $12 million.
As ambassador to Ireland, Foley reached into his own pockets to entertain. He was an eligible divorcé then, and was seen about Dublin with Sarah Owens and the broadcaster Mary Kennedy. “I was happy to accompany them to social events from time to time,” he says. “I find Irishwomen very attractive, very entertaining, and was always happy to be in their company.”
When Foley married his second wife, Leslie Fahrenkopf, a former lawyer in the Bush White House and a former vice-president of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, in April 2009, the Irish Government lent them Castletown House in Co Kildare for the reception.
In Iraq in 2003-2004, Foley's website says, "donning bulletproof vests, dodging rockets and mortars and avoiding IEDs became regular parts of the routine". Opponents have seized on a seemingly contradictory statement to the effect that it wasn't thatdangerous. As the man in charge of developing the Iraqi private sector, Foley says he was trying to encourage potential US investors. But from October 2003 on, the Green Zone where he lived was frequently attacked and several members of the Coalition Provisional Authority were killed. "It was definitely a lot riskier than hanging out in Greenwich, Connecticut."
The nastiest blows have come not from Iraq, but from two arrests involving Foley at the wheel of a car, in 1981 and 1993.
In the first incident, when Foley was 29, the occupants of another car accused him of deliberately ramming their vehicle. "I did not," he says. "Charges were dropped and it was never pursued." In 1993, Foley was going through a messy divorce and custody battle. "My former wife came to pick up our son at my home. It involved my trying to obtain information from her about where she and my son would be staying and a contact number for them," he wrote in a rebuttal to an article in the Hartford Courantnewspaper at the beginning of this month.
“I used my car to try and block her car from leaving my driveway and tried twice to obtain the information at intersections.” The incident was construed by Foley’s political opponents to constitute “abuse”, something he vehemently denies. “In my worst dreams, I never imagined I would have to publicly deny that I was abusive to anyone, particularly a wife,” he wrote.
Foley shrugs off the mini scandals surrounding his candidacy. “Politics is a contact sport,” he says. “I’m doing very well in the polls. I’m very popular. This is what opponents do when they’re desperate.”