Hired hand: meet the Democratic operative running the GOP convention: "Airline Insecurity": Seattle Times: July 11-13, 2004

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2004 by Greg Sargent

Not long ago, Kevin Sheekey opened up his copy of National Journal, an insider Beltway publication read mostly by lobbyists and Hill staffers, and spotted a little blurb about himself under the title 'A Look at Five Key GOP Operatives." Sheekey does have a rather high-profile role in the coming fall campaign--as president of the New York City Host Committee, he's coordinating Mayor Michael Bloomberg's efforts to raise money and build a complex for the GOP convention, as well as to make sure that some 50,000 arriving Republicans and members of the international media are comfortable in New York. But Sheekey's name rarely pops up in the Beltway press. And so he proudly emailed a copy of the article to his wife, Robin.

She was unimpressed. "I'm sending this to my lawyer," she told him.

"I think she's putting it in the 'if we get divorced' file," Sheekey muses. "It's definitely going to be an exhibit for the prosecution."

Sheekey's wife, you see, is a committed Democrat. But she isn't the only one who wonders why her husband is working so hard on behalf of the Republican Party--because Sheekey is a Democrat, too. A cheerful, fast-talking, 38-year-old, Sheekey made his political bones as chief of staff to the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But in 1997, he left the Hill to become a lobbyist for Bloomberg L.L.P, and soon became one of CEO Bloomberg's most trusted political advisers. When Bloomberg entered the New York mayor's race as a Republican and won, Sheekey became his liaison to the national GOP; when Bloomberg successfully lured the Republican convention to New York, he put Sheekey in charge. Now Sheekey--whose mother was for a decade the executive director for Common Cause, who had never worked (or voted) for a Republican in his life, who toiled in the Democratic trenches on the Hill for years, beginning in 1988 as a staffer for Queens congressman James Scheuer and going on to become a devotee of Moynihan--is devoting his days to making sure the GOP's quadrennial gathering is a smashing Success.

Small wonder, then, that not a few D.C. Republicans who knew a thing or two about Sheekey's resume and political leanings grumbled over Bloomberg's choice, including Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who called Bloomberg directly to complain. Time GOP leadership wanted a partisan Republican in the role, Gillespie told Bloomberg. The mayor stood firm. Sheekey was his choice.

Gillespie backed off, and it's a good thing for the GOP that he did. Sheekey may not be prepared to endorse Bush for reelection--"I'm voting for the candidate who's best for New York," is all he'll say on time matter--but he's going to great lengths to make sure the president's party gets a warm welcome. Sheekey has organized a whole series of events around the city for delegates--discount shopping at Madison Avenue boutiques, visits to Ellis Island, a barbecue with the New York Mets. But his masterstroke was to dream up the idea of housing the 15,000 journalists attending the convention inside the 1.3 million-square -foot James A. Farley Building. The 1914 structure in the classical style, which boasts 20 enormous Corinthian columns, used to house New York's central post office and sits just across Eighth Avenue from the Garden. Sheekey also came up with the scheme of connecting the two buildings by constructing an enclosed bridge over the avenue--a project some reporters have dubbed the "Sheekey Bridge."

In essence, Sheckey has created an enormous, self-contained village--complete with restaurants, roving food carts, espresso mach-ines, and even a spa--in the heart of midtown Manhattan. The bridge will allow Republicans and members of the press to pass back and forth between the media center and the convention hall in the Garden without tying up traffic on Eighth Avenue, dispensing with a potential logistical nightmare. What's more, visitors will he able to shuttle from one side to the other to eat, sip espresso, get a shave, even enjoy a pedicure, without ever setting foot in, or even catching a glimpse of, the city outside, much less the protesters sealed off blocks away.

The creation of this insulated universe--which all but guarantees a warm reception--was immensely important to the GOR As Bill Harris, the convention CEO and chief planner, once told a reporter, the Republicans might not have come to New York if Sheekey hadn't come up with the idea of connecting the media center to the Garden via an enclosed bridge.

On a recent morning, Sheekey took me on a tour of the complex. A slim, boyish, shaggy-haired operative, Sheekey tends to get very enthusiastic about his creation, and when he gets excited, it's a bit like listening to Alvin the Chipmunk on amphetamines. "Shoeshines. Hot shaves. Massage," he exulted, as we stood in an empty room in the Farley Building--a "loft-like lounge space" in Sheekey parlance--that Barney's is planning to turn into a spa for stressed and sweaty reporters. "We're gonna have bathroom attendants!" Sheekey practically yelled as he threw open the door to a restroom and swung an arm towards a row of urinals. Then we hurried through the unfinished bridge, across a floor of exposed plywood. "Look at this. You're walking across Eighth Avenue--and you don't even know it!" He briefly turns pensive. "What kind of carpeting should we put down? I'm leaning towards the blue. But I'm thinking grey or red, too!"