The Star-Ledger obtained 123 e-mails that Corzine spent $127,000 of taxpayer funds to keep secret in a case that went to the N.J. Supreme Court
Clik here to view.
Corzine carried on a two-year legal battle to keep them private, going all the way to the state Supreme Court, where his refusal to release the correspondence was upheld on the grounds of executive privilege.
Last month, The Star-Ledger obtained copies of 123 e-mails between the two and verified their authenticity independently. The newspaper can now reveal at least part of what the governor spent $127,000 of taxpayer funds to keep secret.
From Jan. 25, 2007, through March 26, 2007, while both were involved in heated negotiations over a new state workers contract, Corzine and Katz exchanged scores of e-mails. Of those the newspaper obtained, she sent 100, he sent 23.
They are by turns salacious, playful, plaintive, even angry. And they include clear discussions of state business.
The e-mails appear to support Corzine’s contention that no direct negotiations took place between him and Katz. But they contradict Corzine’s claim at the time that his interaction with Katz was no different from the way he dealt with any other top labor leaders in the state.
Corzine’s lawyer issued a statement Friday saying some of the e-mails obtained by The Star-Ledger were personal, and he criticized the newspaper’s decision to publish them.
"Many of the e-mails obtained by The Star-Ledger were not the subject of the Wilson litigation," Marc Elias said in the statement, referring to a 2007 lawsuit filed by then-Republican state committee chairman Tom Wilson seeking the e-mails. "Those that were confirm what Jon Corzine has repeatedly said: He defended the case in order to vindicate the rights and privileges of future governors."
Katz, who led the Communications Workers of America’s large Local 1034 until two years ago, declined to comment.
Corzine is now 63 and running an international finance firm called MF Global, based in New York. Katz is 51 and an attorney representing, among others, a firefighters union.
The Katz e-mails were sent from her AOL.com account; Corzine’s from one maintained by his campaign. As is common with e-mails and other short forms of communication, the exchanges are replete with typos. The messages show Katz’s persistence and determination to be heard by the governor and to have their past — a serious relationship from 2002 to 2004 — not covered up.
Clik here to view.
Former Gov. Jon Corzine and ex-girlfriend Carla Katz fought to keep their e-mails from public view. The Star-Ledger has obtained 123 e-mails.For instance, at 2:43 p.m. on March 8, 2007, Katz seemed furious that Corzine, when pressed by reporters, had been publicly dismissive of their relationship even though she believed they were still close friends. He had been telling reporters at the time that Katz was "like any other person" he saw around the Statehouse.
"This is hard enough without you kicking me in the teeth," she wrote.
Corzine asked Katz to be calm — another steady theme in the messages — because both were facing questions about whether they were secretly talking away from the table about the contract affecting members of Katz’s union.
"Trying during bargaining to not prejudice, compromize or endanger either of us," he had written to her previously.
Katz’s e-mails mix the political, the personal, the intimate. That was the case on Jan. 31, when she asked Corzine about a television appearance he had made, and then said: "BTW, I had an over the top erotic dream about you last night. Bad boy!!"
There was no response from Corzine, which was often the case.
Clik here to view.
"I would have to describe our speed here as 'glacier,'" Katz wrote at 9:55 p.m. on Feb. 10, 2007, referring to the pace of the contract talks. "I think double expressos and red bull are in order."
"Keep the faith — whichever way that cuts," Corzine responded. "I’m in praywer mode."
Katz persisted, focusing on the financial side of the contract proposals and the need to move things along at the bargaining table. Corzine, who as governor was chief of the state’s negotiating team, did not respond to that message either.
While the e-mails in question were sent well after the Corzine-Katz romantic relationship ended, the timing of the communications between the two powerful figures is important. Corzine and his aides were negotiating a contract with the seven union locals that represent the bulk of New Jersey’s state government workers. Katz was president of a local, the CWA’s largest, representing 8,000 state employees. The negotiations not only set salaries but changed pension and benefit rules and led to financial obligations that future generations of taxpayers will carry.
The contract was settled Feb. 21, 2007. Wilson, the GOP chairman, immediately began questioning whether the bargaining process had somehow been poisoned by private back-channel discussions between Katz and Corzine. A month later, Wilson filed a request under the state Open Public Records Act to review any e-mails that Corzine or his aides exchanged with Katz "in the course of the governor’s or his staff’s official business."
The special two-person panel that counsels the governor on ethics reviewed the correspondence at Corzine’s request and concluded that "inadvisable … personal conversations" had taken place, but that the contract talks had not been compromised.
Unsatisfied, Wilson filed suit against Corzine, seeking access to the computer records. State Superior Court Judge Paul Innes ordered the messages released, saying: "The public has a right to know whether the relationship between the governor and Ms. Katz had any improper influence on the governor’s paramount obligation to serve the interest of the citizens of New Jersey first."
That ruling was overturned seven months later in the Appellate Division, where judges found Corzine had the right to claim executive privilege to keep the e-mails under wraps. The state Supreme Court, without offering a reason, handed Corzine a final victory March 18, 2009, by denying Wilson’s request to consider overturning the appellate ruling.
Corzine and the state attorney general at the time, Anne Milgram, argued that releasing the e-mails would violate the governor’s right to communicate confidentially in the course of his decision-making process. Katz joined in defense of the lawsuit on her own, arguing the records had to be kept secret because they were documents associated with collective bargaining and therefore exempt from public records law.
State lawyers spent $127,000 worth of staff time and expenses to defend Corzine in the case. That sum did not include the additional hours worked by Milgram and her top deputies, or the lawyers in the governor’s office, who took active roles in the matter.
Wilson said the e-mails obtained by The Star-Ledger confirm his suspicions about the secret communication between Katz and Corzine while the contract was being bargained.
"These e-mails clearly demonstrate that Jon Corzine deliberately and knowingly lied to the public about the nature and extent of his relationship and contact with Carla Katz before, during and after the 2007 contract negotiations," Wilson said.
Corzine’s attorney said the e-mails show the former governor upheld his public duty.
"The release of these e-mails proves that Jon Corzine met all applicable ethics standards expected of public officials and confirms again the findings of the governor’s ethics panel," Elias said. "It is unfortunate that The Star-Ledger has chosen to excerpt personal e-mails that were neither the subject of public business nor of any litigation."
The e-mails obtained by the newspaper had been retrieved from Corzine’s e-mail account by his attorneys in 2007 as they were reviewing his correspondence with Katz in preparation for defending him against the Wilson suit. Only e-mails his aides deemed non-personal were eventually sent to Innes, the Superior Court judge who analyzed them to determine which, if any, ought to be released.
Of the 123 e-mails obtained by The Star-Ledger, some were sent during normal business hours. Others came and went in the middle of the night. At 1:08 a.m. on Feb. 8, 2007, Katz told Corzine she had left him a voice message, explained her mother was ill and that she was exhausted, before segueing into the ongoing contract talks and then signing off with an endearment.
"I’ll try to find you tomorrow," she wrote. "We start bargaining early (our team). xxx"
‘SUDDEN SILENT TREATMENT’
During one five-day period, the e-mails show Katz on a roller coaster of emotions: affectionate, then exasperated when Corzine did not respond, then angry.
At 11:15 p.m. on Feb. 13, she sent the governor a note harking back to their romantic days, saying, "Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetie. You are both a good man and a hard man...and I like both. xxx"
A day later, Katz wanted to know what was happening with the contract talks. As the evening of Valentine’s Day progressed, she still hadn’t gotten the answers she sought, and that sharpened her edge.
At 12:04 p.m. on Feb. 15, she was growing insistent and said she was taking the governor’s silence "personally."
It didn’t stop there. At 8:56 a.m. on Feb. 17, Katz was annoyed and upped the ante, saying she wasn’t looking to discuss negotiations but she needed to speak with Corzine and had been leaving messages for him. "I rarely say it is important and wish you respected that by getting a hold of me quickly."
Corzine responded by having Tom Shea, his chief of staff, deal with Katz. But that did not suit the governor’s ex-girlfriend, who wrote him at 9:40 a.m. on Feb. 17 to say talking to Shea was not sufficient.
By day’s end, Katz was pleading with the governor. "Please, at least ... tell me why you are suddenly not speaking or in contact with me. I don’t understand."
That last note, just four days before negotiators would agree to final terms for the CWA contract, prompted an emphatic response from Corzine.
"I was asked by all to be disciplined and I am. After. The budget speech, we should catch up. I’ve tried to make tom available. I have told the public I would be their rep and I hope you can appreciate the perception of conflict. This ahurdle you and I must get through to have any hope of normal public commentary. Unfair perceptions hurt all of us an create distrust of my efforts to do what is hard and the right thing. Ibelkieve that is true for you and probably you constituency aswell. Again--i am sorry, but a quiet period is the right thing. I hope your mom is better. We shall overcome."
Katz responded, clearly hurt.
"Considering our long shared personal history, current press dilemma and my famuly crisis, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t have told me in advance of the sudden silent treatment," Katz wrote. "You don’t understand how important it is for you to be talking to me to achieve your goals."
While Corzine tried to convince Katz that they needed to avoid contact because of the negotiations, Katz had been sending e-mails pertaining to the talks for weeks.
On Feb. 7, Katz sent him a 22-point list of "non-economic issues" that were part of the union discussions. Ninety minutes later, she said she was disturbed that the Treasury Department had, in her view, leaked a story that would hurt the union’s bargaining position.
In the following days, she complained repeatedly about two of her key bargaining issues: Corzine’s efforts to eliminate both the Commerce Commission, whose employees were represented by her union, and one of the state’s flexible-scheduling programs, which was beloved by CWA members at the Department of Environmental Protection.
At 5:39 a.m. on Feb. 20, Katz sent a message with the subject "You used me" and she accused Corzine of taking her best ideas during contract talks but never giving her credit. The governor, she said, disappointed her when he "shoved every single thing I cared about right up my ass."
RELATIONSHIP’S WAKE
While the e-mails were going back and forth, Katz maintained an apartment in the same Hoboken building that Corzine called home. On Feb. 18, 2007, she reminded the governor of that, saying she was available to get together on his schedule. Then, Katz related a bizarre tale of what had happened the night before. A male visitor had mistaken Corzine’s apartment for hers and rang the governor’s doorbell. "It was my new beau who was apparently having a freudian moment and went to your door instead of mine," she wrote. "Would have been interesting if you’d opened the door though!"
E-mails exchanged at the peak of the public controversy over Corzine’s history with Katz show the pair engaged in heated back-and-forth about the language they should use when describing their relationship in public. After having broken off their romance in 2004, Corzine told Katz in 2007 that he was consciously trying to downplay their continuing friendship.
"I was ttrying tonot usse the word romantic. That should have been obvios," he wrote on March 8, 2007. Less than five minutes later, he added: "I undwerstand angst but I am trying noyt to make news! Let’s try to calm this thing down."
Katz was not calm. Media scrutiny of her relationship with Corzine was intensifying after The Star-Ledger revealed on March 4 that the multimillionaire governor had given Katz far more in financial gifts than he previously disclosed.
At 8:05 p.m. that day, Katz sounded livid, sending Corzine a three-paragraph message that accused him of violating the terms of the deal they struck after breaking up. She said Corzine was hurting her children and implored him to consider people other than himself.
"We had a clear confidentiality agreement that youve now breached. Please stop. No more," Katz wrote. "As hard as it might be...you must say ‘some things are private’ … You have got to stop hurting me like this."
Katz grew furious over the way she had been described by the hosts and callers on New Jersey 101.5 FM radio.
"An you don’t understand my angst," she wrote at 2:53 p.m. on March 8. "You were not referred to as a SLUT-WHORE for hours at a time over the past three days."
Corzine, at 3:19 p.m., said he understood how she felt, in terms far out of character for a governor who was usually loath to display emotion or launch personal attacks in public.
"Those guys are scumam ihate what they say about you. Youa3e my friend but we need tocalm that down," he wrote.
Katz was growing angrier by the e-mail.
At 3:53 p.m., she again threw Corzine’s comments back at him — only this time she seized on the words Corzine used in The Star-Ledger to acknowledge he had given her financial gifts as they were breaking up in 2004.
In an interview, Corzine had said "If you were — I’m hypothesizing; I’m not stating anything — if you were going to pay a tuition bill or something over a period of time … you pre-funded it … I could have done that."
Katz wrote that the raging controversy was purely Corzine’s fault.
"I know you’ve rationalized this but I don’t believe we’d be in this firestorm if you hadn’t given hypotheticals on Friday and I still don’t understand it," she wrote. "And now you want to distance from me by saying that you’re not my friend? I’m being hammered everywhere...I’m fending for myself. And it really sucks."
Within a few days, Katz had calmed down, and her e-mails again fluctuated between playful and serious. She kept asking to see Corzine — for a drink or just a brief chat — and even dispatched his-and-hers horoscopes in separate e-mails on March 12.
By 5:21 p.m. March 15, she sent a note announcing that she had relaxed and was back in Hoboken with the hope that Corzine would see her and that the quiet time could give way to being "temporarily noisy." Ninety-three minutes later, she wrote: "Anybody there???... 9 p.m. drinks? 9:30? 10?" Six minutes after that, she wrote: "Tomorrow? Sat? Sunday? 2008? 2009? 2020?"
Corzine said he was tied up, first with official appearances and then visiting his adult children. He was suspicious about a lull in the controversy, and he encouraged Katz to relax and go to bed.
START OF THE SCRUTINY
The Corzine-Katz relationship had been a popular political sideshow in New Jersey from just about the minute Corzine announced in December 2004 he would be seeking the Democratic nomination for governor. As a separated and then divorced U.S. senator, Corzine had dated Katz for two years, ending in June 2004, without news coverage or controversy — mainly because the union local she led rarely if ever crossed paths with Corzine, who was focused on his position on Capitol Hill.
That stood to change if he were elected governor, and he was quickly confronted with questions about whether he would have a conflict of interest in dealing with the thousands of state workers represented by the CWA.
As Corzine campaigned, it was revealed that he had paid off a $470,000 mortgage Katz had on her Hunterdon County home. In 2007, Corzine acknowledged for the first time he had actually given Katz millions of dollars. Scrutiny of the two took on a more serious tone as the contract talks arrived at center stage in Trenton.
With reporters probing the relationship and with political opponents suggesting the negotiations were rigged, press strategy and media became a frequent topic of discussion between the two. They talked about individual reporters, and Katz implored Corzine and Shea to try to manage the reporters’ coverage.
She complained a number of times about 101.5, and Corzine told her on March 5: "Scum -- dont listen ifpossible."
Katz and Corzine both expressed their disdain for Deborah Howlett, a Star-Ledger reporter at the time. It was Howlett who first reported Corzine’s additional gifts to Katz.
Katz called Howlett a "bitch" on March 7, 2007. At 9 a.m. on March 21, Corzine said that when they had spoken the night before, he was out of sorts because he was tired, had attended a funeral, had conducted a 105-minute town hall meeting and "loking at DH too much makes me grumpy."
(Even so, Corzine would hire Howlett in February 2008 to be his communications director. Howlett now runs a liberal think tank in Trenton.)
Katz was also insistent that Corzine use his influence both with New Jersey leaders and union officials in Washington to help with their public relations. On March 16, she sent an e-mail to Corzine with the subject "Fix it right now." The message came with the CWA contract newly settled and with Katz opposing it even as most other CWA officials in New Jersey endorsed it.
Katz was facing a new controversy over the fact that five of seven CWA local presidents endorsed the contract and were charging that Katz’s relationship with Corzine had undermined the process.
Katz wanted Corzine to contact CWA president Larry Cohen to get him to vouch for the integrity of the process that produced the union contract and to reinforce that Katz was well within her rights to oppose it.
At 9:15 p.m. on March 26, 2007, Katz sent an e-mail to Corzine asking, "You around tonight?" It is the final message in the set. Katz, in the e-mail, called her fellow CWA local presidents "pigs" and insisted that the governor call them to get them to stop criticizing her and dredging up the Katz-Corzine romance in the press.
"Ti’d assumed you’d actually followed through. There is no luxury to wait because you are having fun. i am NOT having fun," she wrote. "These pigs are going to do more and worse ltomorrow) and you will be just as screwed as me. I asked you to do this since Saturday and you’ve just completely ignored me. You didn’t even return my emails or call me since Friday. Some ‘team’ effort."
| Reviewing the Jon Corzine and Carla Katz emails |