Prosecutors-turned-governors’ advice for newest in club: Compromise, but not too much

Lesson 1 for prosecutors-turned-guvs: Compromise

TRENTON, N.J. — Chris Christie built his reputation putting elected officials in prison.

When he becomes New Jersey’s governor on Jan. 19, the former U.S. attorney will have a very different relationship with politicians: He’ll have to work with them.

Many have found the path from pit bull prosecutor to government executive bumpy a one, though some have thrived. Most learned that success hinged on one word: compromise.

When they’re sworn in as governors this month, Christie and Virginia’s Bob McDonnell — former state attorney general and prosecutor in Virginia Beach — join a handful of chief executives who come from strong law enforcement backgrounds.

It’s a popular path to higher office. At least a half-dozen state attorneys general are running this year for U.S. Senate or governor. Just this week, Conn. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced he was running for the Democratic nomination for the seat of retiring Sen. Chris Dodd, while Mass. Attorney General Martha Coakley is the top contender in the Jan. 19 special election for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.

Neither Christie nor McDonnell, both Republicans, is a political neophyte. McDonnell was elected attorney general — a traditional steppingstone to the Virginia governorship — and spent much of his time prodding the Legislature, in which he’d previously served. Christie, a former county official, was appointed U.S. attorney by President George W. Bush after working in Bush’s 2000 campaign.

Both come from worlds where many of their decisions dealt in absolutes, where the heart of the job was busting bad guys and where lawmakers didn’t second-guess them.

Those who’ve gone from prosecutor to top executive say that gave them some advantages in their new roles.

William Waller Sr., a former county prosecutor in Mississippi and one-term governor in the 1970s, said being a tenacious prosecutor is good training for running a state. He twice prosecuted, though unsuccessfully, Byron De La Beckwith in the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

“A weak, pussyfooting governor can’t get anything done,” said Waller. “Call them prosecutors, or persecutors or whatever, a governor’s got to have a position and stand by his program.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat and former district attorney and mayor of Philadelphia, is widely credited with overseeing a fiscal renaissance in the nation’s fifth-largest city. He butted heads with the city’s powerful labor unions over his cost-cutting efforts.

“You’ve got to develop the art of delegating, and more importantly, the art of compromise,” he said.

Rendell said Christie and McDonnell should expect to lose at least some clout: “The easiest that I got my phone calls returned was when I said, ‘This is the district attorney calling,’” he said. “Everybody’s scared of the prosecutor.”

Author and former reporter Buzz Bissinger, who covered Rendell as D.A. — then practically lived with him when Rendell became mayor in 1993 — wrote in his book “A Prayer for the City,” that Rendell was more conciliatory when he was in charge of the whole city.

“I think one of the reasons Ed was successful was that he learned not to act like a prosecutor,” Bissinger said.

Eliot Spitzer, a former Manhattan D.A., was twice elected attorney general in New York before sweeping into the governor’s office in 2006 as a corruption-buster. He was known for taking on Wall Street’s high salaries and promising campaign-finance reform in a state where the Legislature is often described as “dysfunctional.” A Democrat, he lasted a little more than a year on the job before a prostitution scandal brought him down in 2008.

Even before the scandal, Spitzer had a rough ride as he fought often — and loudly — with political leaders used to a more statesmanlike approach. His foes routinely called him a bully and cautioned him to stop trying to govern like a prosecutor.

“Spitzer probably carried with him the same aggressive personality that served him well as AG, but didn’t serve him well as governor,” said John Coffee, a white-collar defense lawyer now a professor at Columbia Law School who has watched Spitzer’s career.

Spitzer declined an interview.

Another high-profile politician had success — for a time — by governing a bit like a prosecutor.

Rudy Giuliani, a mob-busting U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York through much of the 1980s, was elected New York City mayor in 1993 on a pledge to make the city a better place to live. He cracked down on street-level drug-dealing and took on other problems from the city’s ubiquitous squeegee men to smut on Times Square.

Giuliani was a polarizing figure in the city, seen by some as the city’s savior and vilified by others who thought his tactics quashed civil liberties.

Giuliani said that while crime was the main issue, he did find that negotiations over complicated budgets went differently than plea bargaining with criminals.

“As U.S. attorney, you are in a superior bargaining position,” he said. “You hold all the cards.”

In New Jersey, Christie became known best as the man whose office convicted, in seven years, 130 public officials, including some key state lawmakers.

His new job could create some awkwardness with lawmakers: He subpoenaed several of their offices during those investigations.