The Capital, the Power & the Gossip

This city is not only in the District of Columbia but now exists in the state of anticipation.

In six months, everything will change--but everything really will remain the same.

Gossip, the capital’s only trademarked product, this week centered not on what was happening pre-summit, but what’s going to happen post-election. How do people stay at the center of whatever power vortex is created?

And, first, where do the new Washington power people go and where do the old Washington power people wind up?

Rose Narva, manager of the Jefferson Hotel, had top Reaganites galore in her hotel during the transition in 1981.

“We housed five cabinet members--Atty. Gen. William French Smith, CIA Director William Casey, Labor Secretary Ray Donovan, Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger,” she said.

Hope They’ll Be Back

“The morning after the election, or even that night as the results are coming in, you hope for a transition team that will know how to move people around,” Narva explained. “You hope that you took good enough care of them during the campaign that top people will be back with you.”

Many of Vice President George Bush’s people have been staying at the Jefferson, as was Democratic hopeful Jesse Jackson until he found a permanent residence, and the former contender, Pat Robertson, was there last week, she said.

When people from other parts of the country look for a permanent place to stay, unlike Californians used to skyrocketing real estate prices, they are shaken by the cost of living in a place like Georgetown or Alexandria’s Old Towne. Pardoe Realty’s Judy Lewis said, “People come here from Boise and we show them a house and they

say, ‘This just can’t cost this much.’ ”

There is always a real estate crunch at a time of changing administrations, Lewis said, because of “Potomac fever. No one ever leaves or goes home. They just become lobbyists.”

The godfather of them all is Robert Keith Gray, the Secretary to the Cabinet under Eisenhower, who founded Gray and Co., recently sold for megabucks to Hill and Knowlton.

One Illustrious Career

Frank Mankiewicz has had an ideal Washington career, leaving his L.A. law practice to come here and work for Sargent Shriver in the Peace Corps, then as press secretary in Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

He then became a columnist, ran Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, came back to D.C. to run National Public Radio, became a vice president of Gray & Co., and is now a veep at Hill & Knowlton.

Stuart Eisenstadt, the domestic policy adviser to Jimmy Carter, is in a D.C. law firm. Anne Wexler, a Carter White House staffer, joined up with longtime Reagan familiar Nancy Reynolds and set up a lobbying firm.

And who, people are still trying to figure out, would be in power in various new administrations?

One Republican said that “Bush brings in traditional Republicans, like Elliot Richardson, former New Jersey Sen. Nicholas Brady, and Drew Lewis, now back heading the Union Pacific Co.” Another believed that the crowd would be preppy--”His people went to Yale or Harvard or, if they are from the West Coast, they went to Stanford.”

As for the Cambridge Bunch ...

One Democratic wag said that the election of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis “would probably create a depression in the Cambridge (Mass.) real estate market. Values would drop because there would be a lot of properties put on sale--and there would be a lot of positions suddenly opened on the Harvard faculty.”

That same Democrat said, “Seriously, you can’t tell who he will hire from who is in the campaign because Dukakis has never rewarded people from any campaign by giving them government jobs.”

Some institutions will remain the same, like lunch at the Jockey Club. There on Monday, Abigail McCarthy, the author and estranged wife of former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, sat with columnist Imelda Dixon and Virginia Daly (daughter of the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren). At a nearby table, in-from-L.A. Bunny Wrather lunched with decorator Laura Mayco, and attorney Steve Martindale waited to hear the news of the bidding war over his novel-in-progress, “Follow the Money.”

Somewhere across town, author Kitty Kelley was digging through the new mountains of material amassed for for her Simon & Schuster book on Nancy Reagan.

And that is certainly what Washington will be talking about a couple of years hence.

HOW QUICKLY THEY FORGET--Retired Marine Col. Oliver North, according to a press release from the Washington Speakers Bureau Inc., “has begun to accept selected speaking engagements throughout the United States.”

No mention is given of his involvement in Iran-Contra, but rather North is identified as “a decorated combat veteran.” He has already delivered the commencement address at Liberty University--and coming up are really hot engagements, when he addresses the Bankers Club of Cincinnati and the Southeastern Egg and Poultry Assn.

SOLO APPEARANCE--Of the candidates for the 33 Senate seats up for grabs, only one Democratic hopeful is a woman--that in a primary in the Florida race. She’s state Sen. Patricia Frank, the primary is in September, and she’ll be raising money at the Beverly Hills home of Lynne Wasserman on June 14, in an event co-sponsored by producer Peg Yorkin.