The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg

by Eleanor Randolph

  Bloomberg repeatedly denied Garrison’s claims, and one of his lawyer’s responses to her accusations included a copy of her self-evaluation in 1994. In that document, she rated herself an eight out of a possible nine on “Quality Image.” She added, obviously adopting the jargon of her workplace, “With a boob-job, this could be a ‘9.’ ” She also wrote that Bloomberg is “the best fucking co [company] in the world.” Her salary went from $35,000 in 1989 to $206,070 in 1995.19

  Depositions in the case accused employees of activities that were both alarming and simply crude. In one affidavit to the New York State Division of Human Rights, Rowland Hunt said he was fired after he complained about a Christmas party when a female employee who had recently given birth was presented with a “pair of rubberized women’s breasts that squirted fluid through the nipples. At the party, people were squirting the breasts at one another. I wanted nothing to do with it.”20 There were other times when the jokes weren’t so harmless. Garrison, who is Japanese American, accused Bloomberg of calling her a “Jap,” and said that she was such an aggressive saleswoman that she had destroyed “centuries of Japanese culture.”21

  Bloomberg’s early response to employee complaints about the tone of the workplace was just short of dismissive. Asked in a deposition in 1999 if he had said he would like to “do” this or that woman employee, he said, “It does not have a real life meaning. It is a term that is used in jest, not as a serious term.” He added about such commentary, “If it happens very seldom, I see nothing wrong with it. I can’t control everybody’s conduct and have no right to keep people from having normal conversation.”22

  The Garrison complaint was quietly settled before the 2001 elections with a confidentiality agreement and no admission of liability by Bloomberg and his company. “After a long period of time, I settled because the lawyers believed the suit could drag on for years and disrupt the company’s focus,”23 Bloomberg explained later.

  Another complaint had surfaced in those years from Bloomberg employee Mary Ann Olszewski, who accused males at the company from Bloomberg on down of harassing and degrading women. Her case was closed in 2001 after a dispute with her lawyer. Another plaintiff withdrew her suit, and a fourth lawsuit in this period was dismissed.

  These cases brought out details about Bloomberg, the person, and Bloomberg, the company, that might have been an inside joke for some, a private humiliation for others. In one important deposition in 1998, Bloomberg said that even though he might tolerate the frat house atmosphere and the after-hours mischief, he kept himself separate from the workers.

  “I don’t socialize with anybody in the company,” he said. “That is my policy, correct.”

  Q: Have you at any time leered at any employee?

  Bloomberg: “No.”

  Q: Or looked up their dresses.

  Bloomberg: “No.”

  And later,

  Q: Have you ever had an intimate relationship at any time with any employee of Bloomberg?

  A: “Certainly never.”24

  Bloomberg not only denied everything, he also took a lie detector test and passed, his aides insisted, although they refused to release the results. Instead, Paul K. Minor, the FBI’s former chief polygraph examiner who administered the test for him, put out a statement that “all Mr. Bloomberg’s responses were truthful.” Bloomberg later said his company had investigated all of the cases thoroughly and that these women were basically saying, “If you don’t give me what I want, I’m going to make a fuss.”25 He had once put it a little differently. “As far as I am concerned, that is out-and-out extortion, and I think companies caving in to that sort of thing are making a terrible mistake. And we will go and fight all three of these, and I, in my heart of hearts, believe that we have done nothing wrong.”26

  As the company grew, there would be other lawsuits from women and from those of both sexes complaining about the long work hours (and lack of overtime pay).27 The most important of these was a complaint that reached the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2007. The commission argued that Bloomberg LP had routinely discriminated against pregnant women who took maternity leave, and their action eventually included seventy-eight individuals. Bloomberg was mayor at the time and contended that he knew nothing about these problems. But he was still the owner of the company and forced to testify. A clearly irritated Bloomberg argued that his company valued hardworking employees and did not create a hostile environment for women. “Around the world we treat everybody the same,” he testified.28

  The case went to Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, who was an appointee of President George H. W. Bush and was on the short list for supreme court nominees for President George W. Bush. Judge Preska would dismiss charges of discrimination against Bloomberg in a sweeping and pointed sixty-four-page order. The EEOC had argued that the Bloomberg company “has tended to follow Wall Street’s model of having few women in top management positions.” But the judge said the EEOC had relied on anecdotes, not data, and that “J’accuse” was not enough.

  Perhaps more important, she stressed that the law did not mandate a work/life balance. “In a company like Bloomberg, which explicitly makes all-out dedication its expectation, making a decision that preferences family over work comes with consequences.”29 The judge quoted the EEOC’s version of Bloomberg’s “code of standards” for employees that included the admonition that Bloomberg “is your livelihood and your first obligation.” She cited Bloomberg’s lawyers, who had produced numbers that showed many of the 78 women complainants (of 603 female employees who were pregnant during the time period of February 1, 2002, and March 31, 2009)30 were compensated better on average than others who took leave for other reasons like a family emergency. The work may have been relentless, but they made good money—one woman’s salary went from $219,534 in 2001 to $304,187 in 2008.31 The judge quoted Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, who said, “There is no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”32 She concluded that Bloomberg’s company did not have “a pattern or practice of discrimination.”

  Her ruling outraged many women, especially members of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women. “I don’t know if it’s too harsh to call the judge ignorant,” said Sonia Ossorio, then the group’s executive director. “But she certainly has a fundamental misunderstanding of how discrimination plays out for working mothers.”33

  The Preska ruling could not give much comfort in later years to Michael Bloomberg, the very public billionaire. Social views were shifting, and women had launched a new era in the fight against years of abuse and discrimination. Questions about Bloomberg’s view of women and the occasional eruptions of his old Wall Street vocabulary would not go away.

  7

  THE BLOOMBERG WOMEN

  “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  —Frequent advice from Bloomberg’s mother

  “I’ve worked for him for 25 years, and women have always been in senior leadership roles.”

  —Patti Harris

  It might have seemed easy to turn the Mike Bloomberg of Bloomberg LP into a crude, two-dimensional, Wall Street macho man, given the easy patter about women’s cleavage or his proclamations that females need to wear high heels or dye their hair when the little gray roots started to show.1 There was plenty of that which he would deny. And deny. And deny.

  But in the end the undeniably rough talk or old jokes that would cause him trouble as he became a public figure were overshadowed and largely forgotten as the media charted the astonishing upward trajectory of this billionaire politician. And in reality, Bloomberg, who had spent his life surrounded by powerful women, would owe much of his public success to one woman, Patti Harris, who would eventually become an adviser, friend, chaperone, guide, nothing short of privy counselor.

  Bloomberg hired Patricia Edith Harris in 1994, when she seemed to be a quiet thirty-eight-year-old who k
new a lot about public relations. Bloomberg had just gotten divorced, and he seemed to be having trouble arranging his schedule and organizing his philanthropy. He had his schedule in a little black book in his pocket, and he was taking all press calls himself. He hired Harris as a kind of quasi–press secretary (there are few titles at Bloomberg LP), but slowly this stealth-like woman took control of more than his daily routine. She would soon advise her boss on every difficult question about politics, arts, culture, philanthropy and, in general, life beyond Wall Street. Perhaps more important, she became the one person who could get Mike Bloomberg to listen when he was being unusually stubborn or apologize when one of his outbursts had given offense. As he moved steadily into the limelight, Harris moved even more steadily into her role as guide and guardian.

  Once, during a deposition after a former political consultant stole Bloomberg’s campaign funds for his own personal use, Bloomberg was asked about his relationship to Harris.

  Q: Now, Ms. Harris, how long have you known her?

  A: Seventeen years.

  Q: And she’s a close friend, is that fair to say?

  A: She is a close friend and a business associate and my confidante, yes.

  Q: A close confidante?

  A: Very close. She runs my foundation and she is the first Deputy Mayor of the City of New York authorized to act on my behalf when I am out of town.2

  Harris has told colleagues about an incident that happened shortly after she was hired. Bloomberg sent her to a board meeting to represent him as a big donor, and the males on the board began referring to her as “Mike’s girl.” When she came back to report on the meeting, she added that she was now known at that board as “Mike’s girl.” “Outrageous,” Bloomberg fumed. “That’s not cool.” So for the next board meeting, he came along with Harris, and every time one of the elders asked Bloomberg a question, he bounced it to Harris. Finally, they got the message that she was Bloomberg’s representative, not his girl.3 And very quickly, word got around that Patti Harris was the go-to person in much of Bloomberg’s world.

  By most accounts, Harris had pitch-perfect instincts, especially about everything outside Bloomberg’s business empire. She nudged him into the art scene, helping him collect and support the arts as an individual and as a donor. She directed his philanthropy, guiding the way a mogul like Bloomberg could move upward in the social strata of New York and even London. When he was mayor, she would promote public art and even helped him take on such dramatic projects as The Gates, the 7,503 tangerine-colored panels by Christo that billowed throughout Central Park, brightening the winter of 2005. And she would be the first woman to hold the top job as first deputy in any New York City administration. “Run it by Patti” was often the first task for anybody who had a new idea or a problem in city hall.4

  A native Manhattanite, Harris went to Ethical Culture Fieldston, a progressive private school in the Bronx, then graduated in 1977 from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a degree in government. (Bloomberg later surprised her by matching donations up to $1 million for a building at her college that is now called the Patricia E. Harris Center for Business, Government & Public Policy.)

  Harris always seemed to be around for any big Bloomberg moment. Watching her, you saw a kind of calm, as if she had some magical power that kept everything under control. Dressed immaculately for the cultured world, she seemed to make everyone around her look rumpled and slightly frantic.

  Former police commissioner Ray Kelly, a very tough ex-marine, had been impressed watching Harris negotiate with the U.S. Secret Service in 2002. Shortly before the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a team of U.S. Secret Service agents met with her to describe their demands before President George W. Bush would attend the ceremony. They wanted everyone to walk through metal detectors. Harris would explain, quietly and repeatedly, that family members still grieving would not be asked to go through the detectors or face searches by agents. This was New York City, and those were the mayor’s rules. The Secret Service eventually retreated.

  “She is not a yeller,” Kelly said later. “She gives you the sense that this is what she wants and she is going to get it with a smile and she is going to get it collegially, but she is going to get it done.”5

  Married to Mark D. Lebow, a New York lawyer, they raised three children, and despite her duties that seemed to increase every year, Harris made certain she could wrangle time to scuba dive at the best reefs around the world. It was no accident that shortly after she took over Bloomberg Philanthropies, saving the oceans became a growing concern. When she was not around, the mischievous old Mike could slip back into his old ways. Dirty jokes, the chuckles with the boys about how he would “do” that particular woman “in a minute.” Soon that one was shortened to just “in a minute.” Her appearance could quiet even the ribald references to the eel in the main office aquarium.

  Harris avoided interviews and maintained a tight smile through virtually all public appearances. Aides explained that she always seemed to be “in charge of everything,” and Bloomberg looked to her to get things done and to keep him out of trouble. Bloomberg once put it this way: “She has the ability—not just with me, but with everybody—to tell you when you don’t have any clothes on, but in a way that you say she’s right, and you don’t want to strike out at her.”6

  Harris knew her boss well and knew details of the criticism and the lawsuits by women at the company. When asked about it, she responded that “I’ve worked for him for 25 years, and women have always been in senior leadership roles. I’ve seem countless women grow professionally, earn more opportunities, and get promoted as they also raised families.

  “Not long after I started Mike told me: Make sure you make time for your kids. He meant it,” she continued. The company benefits were “extremely family-friendly,” and even though “there are going to be complaints,” she added, “anyone who works hard and performs well is going to be rewarded, regardless of gender or race or sexual orientation or anything else.”7

  * * *

  Bloomberg had learned early in life about the powers of a strong woman. His dominant mother certainly offered plenty of evidence that even if he enjoyed the sexism of the fraternity or Salomon Brothers or Wall Street, he should recognize that women could have a full set of brains and often a lot more wisdom. His wife, Susan, who left after she grew tired of his high-energy and increasingly public lifestyle, would remain friendly and even work in his campaigns.8 And his two daughters inherited the Bloomberg family mettle.

  In many ways, Emma and Georgina Bloomberg were like separate versions of the man himself, as one Bloomberg friend noted. Emma, born in 1979, was the brainy Bloomberg, the one who graduated magna cum laude from Princeton9 and then earned two master’s degrees from Harvard in business administration and public administration. She helped with some of her father’s most important issues in city hall—like the establishment of the city’s 311 information line. She also worked hard to organize the Republican Party convention in 2004 (a success for Republicans, a horror show for protestors who were arrested by the hundreds). Emma would go on to help fight poverty with the Robin Hood Foundation and her own political nonprofit called Murmuration (named for a flock of starlings), but, in this case, designed to help the nation’s children. She has said she likes golf,10 which must please her golf-obsessed father. And occasionally she could be seen in the society news pages, like when she and her husband, Chris Frissora, “combined their names into a portmanteau,” as the Times wrote in 2015.11 Their daughter, Zelda, would have the last name Frissberg, as in half Frissora and half Bloomberg.

  Georgina, nearly four years younger than Emma,12 inherited her father’s sporting and social genes. A superb equestrian and a regular on the glamorous side of the philanthropy circuit, she often shared the limelight on her father’s arm, later alone as she grew more famous herself.

  Georgina had a shelf full of awards for her horsemanship, besting other riders in Florida, New York,
Spain, Canada, and France. She also co-wrote a series of popular books about girls and horses for the teen set. But Bloomberg’s elfin daughter also inherited her father’s grit. She won third place in the Hampton Classic in 2013 when she was pregnant with her son, Jasper. And she suffered mightily in other ways. George, as friends call her, broke her collarbone three times, fractured an ankle, broke her back twice, and suffered one concussion when the saddle slipped and she fell in 2010. After that tumble, she went to the nearest bar with friends. But when even a drink did not stop the pain, she finally made it to the emergency room, where doctors found another break in her back. Soon, she agreed to have surgery to straighten a crooked spine (spondylolisthesis). Surgery in 2011 kept her off the horses for months, but by the summer of 2012, she had won her first post-surgery jumping event in Massachusetts. This was one tough woman.13

  Bloomberg has made his daughters and their families comfortable. He has given money to their causes and even learned not to flinch as George and her horse took the high jumps. But there was one particularly special gift that only the mayor of New York City could give his two daughters. In 2007, the Sandhogs, the union workers who dig tunnels deep under the city, offered to let the mayor name the massive Herrenknecht drills that would grind through underground Manhattan to extend the number 7 subway line. Bloomberg named the giant machines Emma and Georgina.14 For Mike Bloomberg, the trained engineer, that was love.

  * * *

  With help from friends, Bloomberg managed to hide any hurt about his failed marriage, and soon, he could be seen with some of New York society’s most glamorous women. He mostly liked women his age, a bit unusual for the Wall Street crowd, but that still could include Broadway or movie stars like Ann Reinking and Marisa Berenson. He escorted friends like Barbara Walters and Annette de la Renta to the city’s most luxurious galas. He told the London Guardian in 1996, “I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. What do you think? It’s like a wet dream.”15