What Really Happened

by Rielle Hunter

  One day at the end of May, when Johnny called me at home in New Jersey, he said, “We have a problem.”

  He was at an event, and Elizabeth had called with an emergency. She said, “Someone has stolen your bank card. There was fifteen hundred dollars taken out in New York.”

  Johnny said, “No, it’s not stolen. I took out that money.”

  “Why do you need that much money?”

  They had a big fight. Her radar was up.

  He was angry. He knew from the beginning that getting me money to travel to see him was going to be a problem.

  I told him I would figure something out.

  I found it strange but I didn’t say a word about their money dynamic. Couples have the oddest money issues. I don’t know many who are exempt from this. He seemed to have no control or awareness of the money he made. She was in charge of spending; he wasn’t supposed to spend.

  I flew to West Palm Beach, Florida, at the end of May and had dinner in the hotel while I waited for him and his entourage to arrive. Once they showed up, I watched them from the dining room while they unloaded their cars. I remember watching Johnny get his own bag out and wheel it into the hotel. I was touched watching a “big wig” wheeling his own bag. I remember having the same feeling when I watched Al Gore wheeling his own bag through airports in An Inconvenient Truth.

  Johnny called me and told me when the coast was clear. Josh was not along on this trip, and no one he was with would recognize me. I remember going down to the lobby in the morning and withdrawing the new limit of four hundred dollars out of the cash machine and bringing his card back to him. I saw his staffers in the lobby and walked right by them as I hopped in a cab and went on my way to the airport.

  To solve our problems, both logistical and monetary, I came up with the idea of shooting a documentary, which quickly evolved into doing shorts for the web as well. I had made many shorts in LA while one of my scripts was in development, and documentaries are my favorite. When I pitched it to Johnny, he loved it. He was crazy about the idea of showing the campaign “behind the scenes,” showing the real him, and also the idea of me traveling with him and putting me to work. I told him I would write up a treatment for him. We were both excited about this development.

  In June, I flew to Moline, Illinois, and drove to the Radisson Hotel in Davenport, Iowa—the very place Johnny was staying when I fell in love with him over the phone. The hotel had an open eating area and indoor atrium in the center, with the rooms opening on to the atrium. I went directly into the bar and ordered a glass of wine while I was waited for my call. Johnny called right on schedule to say that they had brought his dinner, but uh-oh, dinner disaster! They had forgotten the ketchup, so he asked me to sit tight while they brought back some ketchup. Sure enough, I saw the man whom I would later meet as John Davis, an earnest blond who was very clearly a political staffer. He was coming down in the glass elevator. I waited for the big ketchup delivery to be complete before joining Johnny for dinner in his room. The food was great. We celebrated his birthday with the presents I brought him. One was a pair of classic aviator Ray-Bans. He was only fifty-three years old, but not the hippest guy in town. He later got many comments about how those sunglasses were “too cool” for his homey Southern husband image. His operatives didn’t really need to worry too much because, like most of his sunglasses, he ended up losing them shortly thereafter anyway.

  A big mistake I made that night: I taught Johnny how to text. He told me soon after that night he started receiving texts from other women. I assumed that the woman who bought him the phone had noticed on the phone bill that he was now texting, so she started using it as another method to attempt to reach him. I read some of the texts, if one came in while I was sitting there. (He hid nothing from me.) The ones I always read were from the old girlfriend, the one he went to dinner with at the beach. Irritating? That’s an understatement. Clearly this “friendship” was not ending soon enough for me.

  In the morning, we went running together. I went out in my running clothes; and he joined me five minutes later and we ran together, right out in the open, next to the Mississippi River. I really couldn’t believe we were running together side by side in light of day. I still can’t believe it. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared.

  After he left the hotel, I took a shuttle bus to the airport and rented a car to drive to Des Moines, Iowa.

  I took a little tour of booming Des Moines and ended up at the Hotel Fort Des Moines. I parked my little white rental car in the parking lot across the street and went into the restaurant. I ordered a burger and red wine. As I was eating, I saw John Davis, the ketchup guy, walking outside, talking on his cell phone. Johnny called me on the phone and told me I had to wait until they brought him food from Centro. I really didn’t realize that being a mistress would involve so much waiting. I ordered another glass of wine.

  The next morning, I put a bandana over my wet hair, and my small purple Paul Smith sunglasses. As I walked out of the hotel, a tall guy in his late twenties, with disheveled hair wearing glasses, was walking into the hotel as I was walking out. I knew this was a staffer but I didn’t look at him closely. I wanted out fast. I went out to my car and realized I’d forgotten to get a validation from the front desk of the hotel to get out of the parking garage. I walked back, hoping that the staffer would be finished with his checkout, but he was standing there, checking out the room number I had just stayed in.

  The lady at the desk asked what room I was in before she validated my ticket. I panicked, said, “Never mind,” and hightailed it out of there.

  I kept thinking that the staffer must have known something. I just had a feeling that he knew me. I was freaked out. Did I just get Johnny busted over a parking validation?

  I paid the parking garage and drove to the airport, my mind racing the entire time. This was all my fault, I was in trouble, and I was going to get punished. What would the punishment be? He would break up with me.

  When Johnny called me later, he laughed. He said nobody saw anything, and if they did they didn’t tell him.

  But who was that guy in the glasses? Johnny didn’t know which staffer he was. My description did not ring a bell, but more than that, he didn’t seem to care. He was more interested in the contents of my mind. He thought it was hilarious that my little run-in had triggered the notion that he was going to break up with me. But mostly he seemed to be in awe of the fact that I shared the whole experience with him. Nobody else in his life was ever open with him.

  FOUR

  Working Girl

  “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.”

  —Joan Crawford

  I wrote up a treatment but I knew from my years in LA attempting to get projects off the ground that to get the video project up and running, I needed someone who could bring what I was lacking to the table: big credentials. This was low-budget filmmaking in uncharted waters. And at that time, I happened to know a guy, Cary Woods, who was known for being a groundbreaking indie producer. His movies had much bigger budgets than this, but he was an innovative guy, and I was pretty good at guerrilla filmmaking, given my experience writing and directing many shorts on very small budgets, so I thought it might work.

  My first step was to talk to Cary about producing or consulting on this documentary and/or the shorts for the web. He wanted to meet with Johnny to see if he liked him. I set up a dinner meeting at Serafina with Johnny and Cary in NYC and they hit it off, as I suspected they would. I joined them for part of the dinner. It was a go, but because of Cary’s schedule, he only wanted to commit to consulting.

  The next step was for Cary and me to meet with Nick Baldick, the guy running Johnny’s political action committee, or PAC as the people in politics call it. I set up the meeting in DC and took the train down the night before the meeting. I was in Johnny’s living ro
om, eating takeout from Paolo’s, when Nick called to get my date of birth for a flight. Nick wanted our info because Cary and I were invited after our meeting to travel via private plane to Raleigh with Johnny for a Dave Matthews Band concert. I was excited about this because, thanks to Mimi, I was a new Dave Matthews fan.

  After I hung up with Nick, Johnny’s “other woman” cell rang. He didn’t answer, but boy I was not happy about it ringing. It was his old girlfriend (again), which really bugged me. He insisted (again) that she was his friend, and he wanted to handle it the right way. Because I am friends with most of my exes, and he wasn’t hiding this from me at all, what could I say? After I expressed my jealousy, I dropped it.

  The next day I met with Cary, who had taken the train down from New York. Cary told me he could not go to the concert because he needed to return to New York right after lunch. I called Johnny from the lobby of the Ritz Carlton where we were meeting Nick for lunch to tell him about this new development.

  Cary and I had a good meeting with Nick. Both of us were surprised how much we liked him. Despite his political operative side, Nick had a really soft, nurturing side and a good sense of humor.

  After the meeting, Cary and I parted way. I went back to Johnny’s house, where I met with Matthew Nelson, one of Johnny’s staffers. It was funny to discover Johnny’s alias (the name his rooms were listed under) was a real person who worked for him. Matthew and I waited and chatted in the living room while Johnny showered and got dressed so we could drive to the FBO, or fixed-based operator. An FBO is basically the small airport, often next to the large commercial airport, used for private planes. Apparently Matthew had earned himself a seat on the private plane and a concert ticket because Cary couldn’t make it. I don’t know who decided this (Johnny or Nick or maybe both of them), but someone thought that it probably didn’t look good for Johnny to be arriving in North Carolina with just me on a private plane. This was my first experience of the micromanaging that goes in politics. Every move was handled: What will it look like? How will it affect the candidate’s image? Will this help us or hurt us? Welcome to politics. Many cooks in the kitchen all armed with their own recipes.

  We landed, and Johnny’s loyal aide Andrew Young was there to meet him. I was told before we landed about Andrew’s love for the senator. There were many jokes within the PAC: Andrew was so in love with Johnny that he would meet him with rose petals to scatter under his feet as he walked.

  This was my first meeting with him, and initially, I really liked Andrew. He was working for Johnny, someone he very obviously loved, so he radiated happiness. He was completely joyful and a little flirtatious. But he also displayed signs of a pattern I observed with most of the people around Johnny. Like so many of his aides, Andrew had a false sense of his own importance. Andrew was not the first one (nor would he be the last) who believed Johnny was gifted but couldn’t cross the street, let alone get to the White House, without his assistance in every last matter. In fairness, Johnny’s behavior played into this pattern completely.

  With Andrew, though, it was endearing. He so clearly believed himself to be in charge of everything and he so clearly wasn’t. As I chatted with Andrew about the great state of North Carolina, I wondered to myself why Johnny surrounded himself with people who believed that he was a very talented simpleton who couldn’t function without them. Because the Johnny I knew was no fool.

  We got to the concert and went to the back where all of the Dave Matthews Band tour buses were; the number and the size of those buses were humbling. There was an outdoor tent, drinks, and buffet food. Supporters surrounded Johnny while Boyd Tinsley, who I later learned was the violin player for the band, was holding court. I met Cate Edwards (who later told her dad she thought I was cool), a friend of hers, and many of Johnny’s supporters. They were all very friendly; some expressed their excitement that I was going to be making a documentary about their guy.

  Boyd was giving some of Johnny’s supporters an inside tour of his bus, and I was invited to come along. When I stepped inside, Boyd was talking about his passion for tennis and doing musical things outside of the band, like scoring films. I asked if he would be interested in doing some music for the documentary I was about to start making for Johnny, and he said yes, very much. I exchanged numbers with one of his two assistants, we chatted for a second, and then I went to get dinner from the buffet.

  We were all sitting in the audience. During the concert Andrew gathered Johnny and some folks to go up to the side of the stage and watch from there. Johnny, of course, had a seat; everyone else stood. After the show, Andrew drove Johnny, Matthew, and me back to the plane.

  The night before I wrote this, Johnny, Quinn, and I were having dinner, and because I was working on this section of the book, we were talking about that particular ride. Johnny remembered that The New York Times had a piece about him coming out that we read in advance via BlackBerry on the way back to the plane. I remember a lot of laughter and joking amongst the group. Andrew had gotten us all concert T-shirts, and Andrew and I were talking about the band and the song “Steady As You Go.” Andrew and I both agreed that we loved that song. Later Andrew would claim it was going to be Johnny’s and my wedding song, which isn’t something we ever talked about. I had been married once and did not want to do it again.

  Boyd and his assistants flew back to DC with us. I remember Matthew and I dropped Johnny off at his place first, then Matthew dropped me off at the Georgetown Inn. And then I walked back to Johnny’s, a few blocks away.

  In the morning, as I was getting ready, Johnny went running. I left his place and took a cab to Union Station in order to check my bag and then took a cab to go hear Johnny give a speech on poverty in America. Johnny called as I was in the cab and asked if I saw anyone when I left his place. I said no; apparently I had just missed a staffer.

  At the speech, I sat with Boyd and his assistants. Josh Brumberger was there. It was the first time I had seen him since the night at the Regency. He did not do a very good job of either hiding his feelings about my new job or his judgments about me. I believe he was mostly bothered by the fact that I was hired without his knowledge or control.

  After the speech, Matthew escorted me up to say goodbye to the senator.

  The senator and I said farewell, and I told him that I was looking forward to working with him. It was sort of funny, pretending to be formal and acting like I had no other relationship with Johnny. This was the first time I really felt like I was living a double life. And then I hopped a cab to Union Station and headed back to New Jersey.

  I had no illusions or doubts as to why I had joined him in this secret life; my choice was to love and support the man I was in love with as he (I hoped) ended his double life. He wanted truth, he wanted authenticity, he didn’t want to hide—this I know for sure, even though he sometimes fought himself tooth and nail.

  How do I know this for sure? He never would have fallen in love with me if that hadn’t been the case. True or not, I believed it.

  FIVE

  And Away We Go

  “Being president is like being groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.”

  —Bill Clinton

  In early July, as the contract for the documentary was getting worked out with the lawyers, I grabbed a camera and set off to join Johnny for two weeks of development, in order to check out his world and the people in it. My biggest concern was how I was going to turn this world of political preparation into something interesting.

  Once I got to DC, I took a cab to the PAC offices and spent a few hours chatting up some staffers. I still remember John Davis (the same one who went for ketchup) as such a likeable, fresh-faced Iowa guy, sitting at his desk explaining the importance of Iowa to me.

  Then I took a cab to Nick Baldick’s office, where Johnny was making phone calls and having a meeting with Nick and D
avid “Mudcat” Saunders, a political strategist known for making very colorful statements. To me, Mudcat was quite a character, a man who couldn’t seem to get enough camera time.

  Johnny told me later that he and Nick were meeting about Johnny’s desire to replace Josh Brumberger. Johnny’s reasoning was that traveling with someone all the time was hard, and without getting into all the details of why Josh was wrong for him, he just wanted him replaced. But for some reason it didn’t happen.

  I would soon see a very disturbing pattern from the PAC leaders who supposedly wanted their candidate to reach the highest office in the land: Johnny would request something, and the request would go unheeded because the folks working for him thought they knew better. I wondered, is this from his marriage too? Or is it just youth and ego? Or is it all of politics? Welcome to Washington, DC, the stagnant capital of “I am right and you are wrong.”

  I went to the Daily Grill, ate my favorite Cobb salad, and checked into the Georgetown Inn, where I stayed the night. Johnny came to visit me later that night for a few hours, which was easy for him because it was just a few blocks away from his house.

  We flew to Iowa the next day. Johnny’s first event was at a small coffee shop/cafe. I shot a few “man-on-the-street” interviews along with his stump speech. One was with an older female supporter and her husband. She was hilarious. She thought Johnny was the cat’s meow, and she had clearly dragged her husband down there to see him. She showed up in the afternoon, at a different event hours away, having ditched her husband, this time with a girlfriend in tow. I would see her at almost every event in Iowa and was beginning to learn that in some cases, there is a fine line between stalker and supporter.