Bill Leighty: Virginia's Capitol Secrets
This week, Michael and Thomas are joined by Bill Leighty, former Chief of Staff to Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and author of "Capitol Secrets", where he dives into his long history in Virginia politics--from Kaine and Warner's leadership styles, the legislative tricks of Senator Ed Willey, and convincing Tom Hanks to film a historical miniseries in Virginia.
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
I'm Tom Bowman.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast that is about to reveal some capital secrets. We are joined by the author of the book Capital Secrets. A man who will be familiar to many people in our audience because he served as chief of staff to Governor Mark Warner and chief of staff to Governor Tim Kaine. His new book is dynamite. And we are really pleased to welcome Bill Leighty. Thanks for joining us.
Bill Leighty
Well, thank you, Mike and Tom. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about the book. It's been quite a journey, getting it done and getting it out there. And so far, I haven't had anybody yell at me about it.
Michael Pope
So far, so good.
Thomas Bowman
Alright, well, you wrote that Governor Mark Warner would yell at you when he was mad, but Tim Kaine would put his arm around you and just tell you how disappointed he was. How would you describe their different leadership styles, Bill?
Bill Leighty
Oh, they were completely different. Mark Warner loved to have 10 or 15 people in the room, yelling at him and yelling at each other when he tried to make a decision. Tim Kaine likes to be by himself in his office with a 30-page written decision, legal decision brief, the half-flat Diet Dr. Pepper and classical music in the background.
Michael Pope
So my favorite part of the book is your portrait of Senate Finance Chairman Ed Willie; you write that he had a preference for secretaries with British accents, which contributed to this regal nature that he had. Had you detailed how he developed a series of hand signals for whipping votes on the Senate floor? And one of my favorite passages is when you talk about him intentionally inserting errors into his bill so that he could work the ego of the House Republican appropriations chairman. What was it like to work in the Senate Finance Committee in this era of Chairman Willie?
Bill Leighty
Oh, it was absolutely fascinating. Of course. I was fortunate in that he took a particular interest in mentoring me over the years and gave me the benefit of his wisdom on a number of occasions. But watching a master at work was just absolutely incredible. And to be able to watch it up that close. And behind the scenes, behind those closed doors was just absolutely fantastic.
Michael Pope
Explained this hand signals thing. So he explained how this worked in terms of whipping votes on the Senate floor as these bills were being discussed.
Bill Leighty
Well, if you look at the Senate of Virginia, the floor is eight slices of five seats and 40 members, and in each of those eight slices, Ed Willie had a confidant who he could count on to count and whip votes for him. And so when it got time to vote, he would nod to Hunter Andrews, the Majority Leader, who would stand up, and that was the signal to each of the confidants to quietly signal with a hand, you've got three votes here, you got two votes here. And so Ed Willie would just scan those eight pods. Of course, he had the eighth one, so he didn't need to do that. But the seven pods plus him, and he would instantly know what the vote was. That group was affectionately known, not publicly, but affectionately known as the secret seven.
Thomas Bowman
Following up on that, did other members know these hand signals? Or I'm sure they saw them, but did they understand what they meant?
Bill Leighty
I don't think they did. I mean, they knew that it really had a secret seven, but they didn't know how it operated or even, in many cases, that they were being counted.
Thomas Bowman
So you wrote that one of the lessons about revenge from Chairman Willie is this. The goal is to screw them over so completely. They need your help getting out of the situation. How does that work?
Bill Leighty
Well, you missed the second part of that; you have to screw them over so completely yet so obliquely that they come to you for help. Because if you screw them over directly, they're not going to come for you to help. But if you do it surreptitiously, then they won't know you did it, and they'll come to you to get get it fixed.
Thomas Bowman
Is there an example you can give us about a time when that may have happened?
Bill Leighty
Well, I certainly never did it. But Senator Willie was fond of doing it. Now it probably happens quite a bit today, but there was a rather junior member of the Senate that Willie didn't particularly care for. And he told him, gosh, got this really good bill for you. It's a really good pro-American bill, be really good for your folks back home. Why don't you drop it in instead of me doing it, and you'll get all the credit for it. Of course, it was a very explosive bill that got the guy into a lot of trouble that he really didn't have anything to do with.
Michael Pope
You also wrote about him intentionally inserting an error into a bill that he would later use as leverage to explain how that worked.
Bill Leighty
Well, he put in an error. I had drafted the bill, and he told me to fix it with this error. And I tried to tell him it was an error. And he just yelled at me and told me he knew what he was doing. And so it passed the Senate 39 to one because, apparently, one Senator actually read the bill. We've got over to the house. And the House Finance chairman told him that he liked Senator Willie's build in general but that there was a problem with it. And Chairman to Chairman, would he mind if they made an amendment to the bill and fixed an error that Willie had put into the bill. And as we walked out, Willie nudged me and said, See there, boy, you've learned something today; there's no way House Finance is ever going to ask a chairman of Senate finances bill without doing something to it. I just gave him something to do.
Michael Pope
So your birthday is July one. So you were born to budget. And so happy birthday a few weeks in advance.
Bill Leighty
Thank you.
Michael Pope
What's your take on the current budget standoff, which does have some obvious echoes to your time in the Kaine administration? You say nothing about that experience in the budget standoff was simple or fun. Do you think the Youngkin administration is going through something similar right now?
Bill Leighty
Not necessarily, because we are in the second year of a two-year budget, and we actually don't actually have to have a budget. They don't need to take action. It would be preferable if they did. I think the financial rating agencies would like it if they did. But when they fixed the fenders, equality error that the Department of Education had made in the original budget and agreed to the skinny budget. They really took away the impetus for a major need to have a budget this time. Unlike the first year of the Kaine administration, which was the first year of a two-year budget, we had to have a budget. But the second year of a budget is what is known as the caboose bill, which just fixes things that have come up in the interim from the first budget. So it's not critical that they actually pass a budget. Is that fair? Is that clear? Enough?
Michael Pope
Clear as mud.
Thomas Bowman
Yes. And that should not be news to anybody listening to this podcast. We've made similar comments before on the procedures there. But Mr. Leighty, I want to switch gears back to Tim Kaine for a second. And you wrote that Senator Kaine refuses to ever use prepared remarks.
Bill Leighty
Yes.
Thomas Bowman
How did that influence your role in his administration as Governor?
Bill Leighty
It made it really hard to keep up with him. Because, you know, he can go out and give a speech and make policy, and then we'd have to fix it when he got back and get caught up on it. I told both Mark Warner and Tim Kaine that I was going to give them prepared remarks, whether they used them or not. Warner grew to the point where he started using them a little bit more than Tim Kaine ever did. Of course, I didn't stay with Kaine long enough to finally convince him. But my rationale was very simple. When a governor makes a speech, they're making history, and it needs to be recorded. And so both with Warner and Kaine, I told them, we're gonna give you a speech, and that's what's gonna go in the record. If you don't want to give it, that's fine, but what history is gonna record is what we wrote for you and prepared for you in the first place.
Michael Pope
I would imagine not ever using prepared remarks is pretty extreme and would be keeping staffers constantly on edge like, what is this guy gonna say?
Bill Leighty
I won't say on edge. I mean, you know, you know, it's not like they're wild men out there just talking about stuff they have certainly have the parameters in which they will stay within when they go out and give a speech, and it's just that you're so much better off when you have a prepared speech, though. You know Mike, people have no clue. Really just how much death preparation it takes for any public event. But you know, when a Governor goes out and makes a presentation when he hops out of that limo or that SUV, whichever it happens to be. And the first person he greets, the Governor, has all sorts of background on that person. So that when he hops out of the limo, he can say hey Steve, gosh, it is great to see you again; I remember when you made those sandwiches for us in the campaign back in Martinsville, we'll they were some of the best sandwiches we ever had. So he's pre-prepared, briefed on all sorts of those kinds of social interactions in addition to the speech itself.
Michael Pope
So you admit to some dirty tricks. So your book is titled Capital Secrets. And there are lots of secrets revealed, including some of your dirty little tricks. So you once had a blank notebook labeled Democratic morning hours speeches that you used to bluff Paul Nardo, who was the speaker's Chief of Staff at the time. The notebook had blank pieces of paper, and the whole thing was a trick than the rest of the time; you had a notebook that was full of stuff; it was opposition research that you conveniently left on the table and then arranged to be called away for 15 minutes. So when the person returned, you threatened to leak one story at a time from the notebook. And then there's the 2:30 AM email that you actually sent at a completely sane hour, but you scheduled Outlook for it to land in somebody's inbox at 2:30 AM. So that you would develop a reputation Bill Leighty do the ends justify the means, you know.
Bill Leighty
I wouldn't classify any of those as dirty tricks. I would classify each and every one of them as using all the tools at my disposal. Pretty amazing; I had breakfast with some old friends this morning. And they were saying, how can you remember this stuff that happened 30 years ago? And, you know, an awful lot of what happened to me was very poignant and stark and be in the paper the next day. So it's not like it just all was one big blob of memory; admit this stuff happened, and it happened in a very sequential way, in a way he did when I was writing the book, and I could Google some of these things. And it would help cue my memory a little bit more about what had happened.
Thomas Bowman
Alright, Bill, throughout your book, you name-drop some big-time celebrities like Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Clint Eastwood, and more, and perhaps the most interesting story you've got about a celebrity is the time you got to give Tom Hanks a midnight tour of the Capitol. What happened there?
Bill Leighty
That's actually probably one of my favorite stories of the whole book because it sets the context for the entire book. But we were competing with Philadelphia and Boston to film the 10-part HBO series on the life of John Adams. Tom Hanks was the executive producer. So I went into brief Mark Warner and said Governor, it doesn't look good. Philadelphia's offering $2 million in tax incentives, and Boston's offering $4 million in tax incentives. Virginia's package is $400,000. And he said, dammit, Leighty. It's not about the money. It's about the people. It's about relationships. The problem here isn't money. The problem here is that you haven't gotten Tom Hanks to my house to have drinks. Well, certainly hadn't done that. So I guess I'd better. So I went into the other room, and I called Oprah Winfrey, and we arranged to have drinks with Tom Hanks could only do it at 12:30 AM. That's Sunday morning. 12:30 in the morning, and he arrives, and he and Warner are chatting. And we had Secretary Mike Schewel, Secretary of Commerce and Trade, at the same time. So it was Mike Schewel, myself, the Governor, and Tom Hanks in the mansion having drinks. Mark Warners is not making much headway because Tom Hanks is not drinking anything but Diet Pepsi. And that's just not Mark Warner's style. And so we're not making much headway, and there's a lull in the conversation. And I said, gee, Mr. Hank, how could you possibly want to build the life story of John Adams and not want to go sit in the Governor's chair in the office that is archrival Thomas Jefferson designed for the Governor of Virginia. Hanks lit up, and Warner said, yeah, let's do it. At this point is probably about 1:00 or 130 in the morning, and we're walking across Captial Square. I'm on my phone telling the Capitol, please open this door. Open that door, and turn these lights on. And I proceed to give Tom Hanks a tour of Mr. Jefferson's temple on the hill. And I'm talking and talking and weighing the significance of this statue in this painting. And Mark Warner says, damn it, we don't have time for the three-hour tour. Given the 30-second tour. Tom Hanks says, oh, no, Governor, I love history. I'm absorbing every word. He says. Mark Warner says I wouldn't if I were you, Tom; he makes most of that shit.
Michael Pope
But you landed the deal, right?
Bill Leighty
We filmed the whole thing in Virginia. Yep.
Thomas Bowman
All right. Well, we've covered a few of our favorite anecdotes from your book. Bill. Are there any of your favorite anecdotes that we haven't covered that you think the listener should absolutely be aware of as they make this decision to go purchase and read your book?
Bill Leighty
Well, I would say the two chapters I'm probably the proudest has in the book are the chapter on the disasters and my role in, you know, a litany of disasters ranging from floods to forest fires to avian influenza to earthquakes. And, of course, Virginia Tech. And, of course, my time helping out Governor Blanco with Katrina down in Louisiana. That is probably the most bedded section of the book because every emergency manager in Virginia, retired or current, has read it and given me comments on it, as did all of the principles down in Katrina, the Governor's press secretary down there, the Governor's chief of staff, the overall incident commander, all read that so it's a very strong particular section about what really happens behind the scenes in the highest office of the state during a disaster. And then I'm also particularly proud of the Queen's Visit chapter. Which I am told is longer than most people expected. But I've also been told that they enjoyed the chapter quite a bit because it's got so much detail about what it took to coordinate the Queen's visit. As you know, because you've read that as a result of all the work I did for the Queen's visit in 2007, I was invited to have a private audience with the Queen as one of the nine major principles that worked on her trip to the United States. And so I walked into the room, scared to death because this was the Queen of England. I stopped five feet in front of her like I was instructed to do, and I went to bow, and instead, I curtsy, and she just broke into laughter. And she looked down, and she said, young man, wars have been fought over less. Why do you Americans even bother? It was a great little moment.
Michael Pope
Bill Leighty, author of Capital Secrets. It's a great book. It's a great read; our listeners will love it. It's out now and available wherever fine books are sold. Thanks for joining us.
Bill Leighty
Thank you for the opportunity; Mike and Tom really appreciate it.
