Life of the party: McAuliffe and the Democrats

For more than 25 years, Terry McAuliffe has been at the epicenter of American politics. He is the most successful fundraiser in political history, and has established himself as a heavyweight Democratic strategist and leader. “What a Party!” is a look at his life, from wrestling an alligator to running the Democratic National Committee to his friendship with President Clinton. Here's an excerpt:

Chapter One
I remember walking home from Bellevue Country Club in Syracuse late one afternoon when I was fourteen years old, and with each step I was more depressed. I had just spent five hours caddying, lugging two heavy golf bags up and down hills for a grand total of eight bucks. I didn’t mind the work. I’ve never minded the work. No, what had me distraught was the math. No matter how I turned it around in my head, it was clear I had already thrown my life away. I was going to have to face the cold, hard truth that I was a failure. What else could I call myself? There I was wasting my time, working for a measly two bucks an hour. I was never going to put any capital together at that rate!

“I’ve got to start my own business,” I announced to myself as I walked the mile home from the golf course.

I was aware there were certain obstacles to starting a business at age fourteen. I could not open my own legal practice just yet, most likely, and I probably couldn’t sell insurance either. I kept asking myself: What would people hire a young kid to do? One answer was house painting, but that just wasn’t me. I’d leave that to other guys my age. Then, as I turned onto Dundee Road toward home, I saw an older guy in front of his house sealing his driveway. He was all sweaty and irritated-looking, but he was stuck out there. The winters in Syracuse are so brutal that everyone has to seal their driveways often by putting down a layer of hot tar emulsion liquid, which is dirty, nasty work.

“You know what?” I said out loud, walking faster now. “They’ll hire a kid to do that. Nobody wants to do it himself and get that hot black tar all over you.”

I didn’t waste any time acting on my idea. I hurried home and typed up a letter announcing my new McAuliffe Driveway Maintenance business to all our neighbors. The next morning I handed those out all over the neighborhood, and by the end of that first day I had six jobs.

“Mom, can we go to Kmart?” I shouted across the house. “I’ve got to buy five-gallon buckets of tar!”

If you’ve never sealed a driveway, let me tell you, there’s not much to it. You take a broom and sweep away any dust or debris, then dump the hot tar onto the driveway and smooth it out with a squeegee. I had a little red wagon to wheel the bucket of tar from job to job. I hired friends to help me and mulled over my biggest problem — tar. It didn’t make sense to keep buying five-gallon containers at Kmart. The next step was Agway, a huge agricultural collective where I could buy fifty-gallon drums of concentrated tar. You had to dilute it, four gallons of water for every gallon of tar, so it went four times as far and you could increase your profit fourfold. The trouble was, those fifty-gallon drums were huge — and heavy. I was going to have to come up with a way to transport them.

“Hi, Uncle Billy,” I said over the phone. “Listen, I need help.”

Billy Byrne, my uncle, ran Byrne Dairy.

“I’ve got to start buying wholesale,” I told him. “This retail is killing me. I need to move a lot more tar around. Do you have any old dairy trucks? Can I buy one?”

Uncle Billy was having a hard time keeping up with all this.

“Well, we’ve got that truck graveyard out there in Cicero,” he said. “We’ll talk about it and see what you want.”

Billy said to call him back later, but I couldn’t wait. My buddy Joey Hartnett drove me up old Highway 11 to Cicero, just north of Syracuse, and we found Uncle Billy’s fleet of more than fifty old Byrne Dairy milk trucks all lined up and rusting with the keys in them. I had come prepared: I had a battery, a can of gas, spark plugs, and quarts of oil. We found a truck we liked and I put in a battery, replaced the spark plugs, added oil, and emptied some gas into its old tank.

“Keep your fingers crossed, Joey,” I said.

I turned the key and the old dairy truck actually started. To this day I can still hear the rumbling of that big old engine and feel the hum of that big steering wheel vibrating in my hands. Man, the excitement was unbelievable. I was in business! This was the start of everything for me. The next morning, when my parents woke up, they saw that old Byrne Dairy milk truck sitting out front in the driveway. They were almost as surprised as my uncle was when I called him later that morning.

“I found a truck I liked,” I said.

“We’ll talk about it, Terry,” he said. “Why don’t you come down next week?”

“Uncle Billy, you don’t understand,” I told him. “I have the truck here at the house.”

He was speechless. It had never dawned on him that I would head out to the lot on my own. There were liability issues, title issues — all kinds of things to think about. I just blew through all that. Uncle Billy was taken aback, but I think he respected that I was a young hustler. I got the title and license plates and we found some old brown house paint to slap on the truck. We put lettering on there, too, so anyone who saw us coming would know we were mcauliffe driveway maintenance.

Eventually I decided driveways were not enough.

“Excuse me, I’m here to see Mr. Higgins,” I told the secretary at the Syracuse Savings Bank.

Tom Higgins was the president of the bank, and his parking lots were in bad shape.

“I’m sorry, Mr. ... ?” the secretary asked me, trying not to laugh. “Do you have an appointment?”

I was sixteen years old, a skinny kid wearing one of my older brother’s hand-me-down dress shirts with a big, ridiculous tie.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I need to see him. This is very important. This is life or death for his business.”

I was so serious, the secretary finally did laugh — and then she ushered me in to see the bank president.

“Mr. Higgins, let me tell you something,” I said, not wasting any time. “You’re a prominent businessman in this city. I want to show you what your business looks like.”

He was ready to shoo me out of there in nothing flat, but I’d brought one of those cheesy photo albums with me and I think I’d piqued his curiosity. I’d prepared a nice portfolio of the potholes, cracks, and ruts in his parking lots.

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