Making rumors work for you

IT'S GETTING CLOSE to the trade deadline and rumors are flying like crazy. Baseball teams, and their general managers, often go out of their way to debunk these rumors, especially when they involve their own players, and why not? Why bruise your own player's ego by letting him think you are shopping him when the trade might fall through and you might end up keeping him? Who wants a disgruntled player on the roster?

But sometimes GMs will let an untrue trade rumor stay out there without denying it for ulterior motives. Why not let Team A, which has the outfielder you really want, believe you are looking at outfielders from teams B and C? It can only serve to make them more eager to (a) get the player they want from your roster, and (b) prevent their closest rival from getting him.

Not surprisingly, the same process and plotting exist in the world of politics. I have always said that sports and politics have a great deal in common and this is one of those areas. In my 34 years in politics, I have often let the media report stories that I knew were incorrect, and like those devious GMs, I did it for Machiavellian reasons. I always had an ulterior motive. In fact, sometimes we actually started the false rumors.

Back in 1992 during our very contentious labor negotiations, we spread the rumor that we were going to privatize all trash collection in the city. We even released studies showing how much money it would save. Now David Cohen, my great chief of staff, and I knew this was one function we would never privatize (we did privatize the operation of our trash-transfer stations). We wouldn't do so because we would lose the support of then-Council president John Street, who was very close politically and personally with Jim Sutton, the AFSCME Local 33 leader, and Sutton's union strength came from the 2,000-plus sanitation workers. Street's leadership was crucial to making the changes necessary to turn the city around and he did show real courage in standing up to union pressure as we privatized well more than 30 functions previously carried out by city workers. We knew we would draw the line here, but we let the rumor float so it gave us tremendous leverage when we "gave it away" in return for a wide array of other crucial work rule and benefits concessions. Had the union believed we never intended to privatize trash collection, giving it away at the end would have gained us nothing. So not denying a rumor I knew was untrue served us well.

Another great example of this occurred 6 years later when we were trying to get a political convention for the city in 2000. When I announced that goal in mid-1996, people scoffed and said Philadelphia had no chance - no major political party would pick us (another example of our city's wrongheaded inferiority complex). But we did a great job impressing the site-selection committee and we put a great bid together and, as a result, we made the short list of both political parties. There was no set time deadline for when they would make their selection, but someone in the media reported a rumor that the Democrats, because of my relationship with President Clinton, had decided to pick Philadelphia. I knew that this was not the case. Though President Clinton did favor us, he had decided that because Vice President Gore was to be the party's candidate, that he should make the pick. I knew that the vice president favored LA because six or seven of the party's biggest contributors lived there and the only way they wouldn't be picked was if they failed to put guarantees behind their fund-raising pledges as we had done.

There was a danger for us in letting that rumor go without injecting a note of caution because if we didn't get either convention, the spin would be that we had the Democratic Convention locked up but somehow blew it. But I thought it was a risk worth taking. So we used the media accounts to pressure the Republican Party to choose us right away. We implied the Democrats were days away from choosing us (remember I said "implied," not "lied") and the RNC site-selection committee pulled the trigger and selected us - a great victory for Philadelphia!

Fast forward to 2010 and Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff was reported to be leaving to run for mayor of Chicago. There was immediate speculation in some parts of the media that I would be a good replacement and was under serious consideration. I did nothing to dispel the rumor even though I knew President Obama and his key advisers would rather walk over hot coals than have me as chief of staff. In fact, I had never been contacted by anyone in the White House (not even the janitor). But I let the speculations continue. Why? Because to have media heavyweights like Jonathan Capehart, Margaret Carlson, Chris Matthews, Politico.com, the Washington Post and the New York Times talking about me as a potential chief of staff to the president could only increase my national stature, giving me more leverage to impact the issues I care about. And it did, big time.

The last example of this ploy also occurred in 2010. It involved Madame X, the Washington madam whose establishment helped bring down New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Early in 2010, she said that there was a second well-known governor who was a customer of hers who had a prominent wife. That started months of rumors that I was the second governor.

Even the New York Times filed an open-records request to see my schedule and phone records. The most persistent pursuer of this rumor, though, was the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post. On a number of occasions the Post contacted my press secretary, Gary Tuma, telling him it was close to running a story saying it was me and asking if I would like to comment. We replied "no comment." Why didn't I vehemently deny the story? Because I knew that I had never gone to a prostitute or even paid for sex and if they published a story saying that I had, well, I always wanted to own a newspaper, especially the Post, which was a great newspaper when it was owned by Dorothy Schiff when I was growing up. I would either own it or it would make me a very rich man.

Well, finally in the summer of 2010, a shock-radio show all but said I was the other governor and the blogs had me resigning in a couple of days. My media director finally persuaded me to act and debunk the rumor. But how? Well, the Lord intervened. On a Saturday morning, I got a call from a close friend who said that a political operative that he knew had called him and said that he was a friend of Madame X and that he could get her to issue a denial. I gave my friend the green light and Madame X put out a statement that denied that I was the second governor.

Ah, my name was finally cleared. I was innocent, but I never got to take any of Rupert Murdoch's money.