Passing of Carl Golden marks end of old-style press relations in NJ | Stile

One spring morning in 1994, Carl Golden spotted me as he made his way into the governor’s office on the first floor of the Statehouse in Trenton.

His start-of-the-day calm suddenly vanished. His eyes bulged with fury.

“Why the hell did you write that?" he barked, asking me about a story I wrote for the Trenton Times that was published that morning — but one I’ve since long forgotten. “I was so mad I wanted to punch you in the sternum.”

I stayed silent for a beat. And then replied:

“Where’s the sternum?”

Another beat — and we both burst out in laughter. I followed him into his first floor office and we came to a we’ll-have-to-agree-to-disagree standoff. And four hours later, I was back downstairs in his office pestering him about some other news of the next day. The news cycle churned on.

Golden, a widely respected, fast-on-his feet political operative who later served as communications director for two Republican governors and a liberal chief justice, died last week at the age of 86. He had a colorful career that he began as an ink-stained reporter of the old school at the Easton, Pennsylvania, Express and Newark News, and ended, in some respects where he started, back on the news sites as an adroit and evenhanded columnist, gazing down at current events from the high bluff of experience.

But for me, Golden's passing represents the end of a style of press communications that is sadly missing in this day and age of the easy text message. Golden believed in building dialogue with reporters, on a daily basis, and often in person in his first-floor office at the Statehouse.

Golden approached the press with respect — even in adversarial moments

Golden's door was almost always open and if it wasn’t then usually the governor was on the line — or inside hashing something out. A routine visit for a reaction to a story, or a request for an interview, would turn into a political bull session that lasted nearly an hour. Or he would sly try to soften the blow of an upcoming story. Or he would cackle in his retelling of his early days in Gov. Thomas H. Kean’s administration or on the campaign trail, often with a storyteller's keen eye for color and irony.

His career was shaped by an earlier time when cut-and-paste wasn’t a function on a drop-down window on your laptop — he could remember the days when scissors and huge tubs of rubber cement on your desk were how you moved around paragraphs in a story hammered out on cheap grade paper and on a manual typewriter. But he retained those old-school values as a spokesman and adviser. He approached his adversaries in the press with a predictable wariness, but also with respect.

The former reporter understood the pressures reporters faced, their demands under deadline and their needs to develop the governor's office as a beat. He walked in the shoes of the very people turning to him for information in the pressure cooker of competition.

He also understood that maintaining an uneasy bond of respect with reporters was crucial to his task of promoting the image and agenda of his two main bosses, Kean and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. In his view, regular access was the essential ingredient.

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It was also part of the media culture at the time. Reporters could freely knock on the door of the governor’s chief of staff or wander the outer office to pigeonhole other advisers without having to first get clearance from Golden or someone higher up. Nor did he have to go through layers of internal bureaucracy before giving an on-the-record response. Kean and Whitman trusted him to defend and promote their agenda.

Golden’s office had a steady, daily flow of reporters who listened to some of his gossip and occasional gallows humor wisecracks. Once during a routine drop-by, a tall figure in a brown overcoat and a fedora strolled by the door. He was shocked but also sensed a goofy news story unfolding. “I think that’s the governor!” he whispered in shock as he urged me with body language to go follow her.

I jumped out in the hallway and caught up with the disguised Whitman at the entrance of her office, when she took off the disguise only to see me standing there with a notepad. This was supposed to be a gag she played on her security detail, not for the press. Too late.

Part of this style also stemmed from his days with Kean, whose availability to reporters was legendary. The joke in Trenton was to get to Carl Golden, you had to go through Tom Kean. Kean occasionally wandered down press row to chat with reporters and actually answer questions. The approach also reflected the reality of the New Jersey media at the time. New Jersey's daily newspapers were robust and the main way of reaching voters. The newspapers were the gatekeepers, and administrations that tried to bypass or ignore them did so at their own peril.

This is not to say that the access was always free flowing. Golden could button it down with the best of them. The post-election day “street money” scandal — when a Whitman strategist, Ed Rollins, boasted that the campaign paid Black ministers to tone down their support for Democrat Jim Florio and Democratic campaign staffers were paid to stay home, became a national sensation and threatened to undue the legitimacy of Whitman’s election.

The storm passed when federal investigators found no evidence to support Rollins’ claims, but this was an era of crisis management and Golden guided the wobbly Whitman ship through a swarm of hungry news sharks. Like most communications staffers, he could be secretive and selective in a crisis. Ralph Siegel, then an Associated Press correspondent in the 1990s, was not alerted that Whitman had been hospitalized for the removal of a benign cyst -- the AP was expected to be first to report the health crisis involving the governor; 20 news outlets, including the state's largest papers, relied on the news agency as a backstop.

He fought bitterly with Golden over failing to alert him in time, leading to cool relations for a couple of weeks. (But, as Ralph recalled at Golden's funeral Tuesday in Burlington, Golden broke the thaw by wisecracking one day in the hallway, "I've got a dentist appointment today. I suppose you want me to send out a press release?")

And he had a way of softening some of the hard ideological edges around Whitman, who pursued an aggressive privatization of government services during her first term. But Golden, in his casual, off-the-cuff manner, spun it as a sound, good government move for taxpayers, and for a young reporter like myself at the time, it, didn't seem like such a big deal. But in many cases, it caused disruption of workers' careers while failing to yield the promised savings.

He was also a master of manipulating press row competition, boasting years later that he would give The Star-Ledger the scoop on a major policy initiative or speech for their Sunday editions, and the rest of the Jersey press corps would spend the next three days chasing the same story. It was a free-media bonanza.

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An enduring balance of respect and skepticism

But there was always a balance between skepticism and respect — something, frankly, that is sorely missing these days in New Jersey journalism. Today, social media is the easy way to get out an unfiltered message to the public. The diminished press corps is viewed these days as more of an annoyance, a diminished threat.

There is little understanding of the daily, talking dialogue in Golden-style — and other similar professionals like Winnie Comfort, now retired from the Judiciary, or Pete McDonough, another former Whitman press secretary who is retiring soon from Rutgers University. The new method is to reply to questions in a carefully sanitized statement. Or tweet or text. That’s not to say you can’t get some give-and-take with the governor or legislator – but it’s more of the exception. Public information has become corporatized, treated by recent governors and lawmakers as if it's proprietary information that should be kept under tight wraps.

It’s part of the arrogance that fuels the latest attempt to gut the Open Public Records Act, an invaluable tool for journalists. It’s driven by the attitude that the press simply doesn’t matter the way it used to. Reporters may not like the changes, but what are they going to do about it?

In recent years, Golden was a pundit for a variety of outlets. His columns were sharp and weighty and often steered the conversation away from the herd rush of conventional wisdom. He would often call me to sound out an idea or vent a little about some politician’s excess. We’d compare notes over someone’s tone-deaf remark or bone-headed power play. And, inevitably, we’d talk about the past when press row was vibrant, not a sterile cubicle now.

I am going to truly miss him. And I’ll feel it keenly somewhere close to the sternum.

Charlie Stile is a veteran New Jersey political columnist. For unlimited access to his unique insights into New Jersey’s political power structure and his powerful watchdog work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: stile@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Carl Golden respected transparency in New Jersey politics