Ring Around the Rumors

Readers of the New York Daily News may have been puzzled by an item that ran in a recent gossip column. But the city’s press corps was riveted:

There was a press riot at 7 a.m. yesterday when the wires moved an advisory that Mayor Giuliani would make a “personal announcement” at 11 a.m. One hour later, the correction came. It would be a “personnel” announcement . . . Never mind.

“It” is the hottest rumor in New York, the kind of political dish this town devours for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But the story only rarely surfaces because newspaper and TV journalists can’t verify it--despite their obsession.

For two years, there have been hints, tart jokes and tidbits in the press suggesting that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s marriage to Donna Hanover, a TV journalist and budding movie star, is about to rupture. There have also been rumors that the mayor enjoys what one magazine called “an extraprofessional relationship” with his communications director, Cristyne Lategano.

Giuliani and Lategano have denied any hanky-panky, and the first couple--who have two young children--insist there is nothing wrong with their marriage. Yet media fascination has spawned a circus of speculation and pursuit that is extraordinary, even by Big Apple standards:

On three occasions, twice with TV cameras rolling, reporters have bluntly asked Giuliani if he is having an affair with Lategano. Each time, he blasted them for daring to raise such a question. Meanwhile, the press has staked out Hanover, trying to determine whether she still spends nights at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, or at a private apartment.

Angered by the mayor’s refusal to release information about Hanover’s activities and her staff’s salaries, the Daily News has launched the Donna Watch. In it, reporters question the first lady’s need for city staff, given Hanover’s move to put her career ahead of official duties--as well as her decision to use only her maiden name.

Further clues: Hanover, who was once the mayor’s biggest booster, is rarely seen in public with him anymore. In the New York Yankees’ victory parade last fall, the first couple rode on separate floats. The mayor’s office won’t say how much of a role, if any, Hanover will play in his upcoming reelection bid. When she was feted at a dinner in December for her role as Ruth Carter Stapleton in “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” Giuliani was conspicuously absent.

Last weekend, Hanover failed to make a traditional appearance at the Inner Circle dinner in New York, where the press and the mayor’s office roast each other with elaborate musical productions. When journalists got word backstage that she would not appear, one cracked: “May divorce be with you.” During a skit lampooning Hanover and Jane Fonda, the character playing Fonda said: “I notice you’ve dropped the ‘Giuliani.’ ” Answered Hanover: “Wouldn’t you?”

The first lady subsequently said she couldn’t attend the dinner for medical reasons. On Monday, when a TV reporter asked Giuliani if his marriage was in trouble, he erupted with anger, denouncing the question and saying: “You should be ashamed that you asked it.”

All the while, Lategano, 32, continues to work long hours with the mayor, 52, and her clout is secure--even though she’s had limited experience in big-time politics. Her power has sparked an exodus of key advisors, including media guru David Garth, from the mayor’s 1997 campaign.

In New York, the personal--and the personnel--are political. When the mistaken Associated Press item about Giuliani’s announcement moved last month, journalists were convinced that he was finally going to confirm the Marital Breakup Rumor. Their tragicomic letdown only underscores that, while media interest in the first couple is keen, City Hall reporters keep dancing around the story.

“The press would be idiotic if they didn’t consider this a big deal,” said gossip columnist Liz Smith. “If the mayor of the biggest city in America and his wife have some unusual domestic arrangement, it certainly speaks to character, to family. But the problem is that you can’t prove any of this stuff.”

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In the late 20th century, American politicians are hardly immune from media speculation about their private lives and personal morals. But what makes this soap opera so intriguing is that Hanover--a warm and cheerful Californian who seems too nice for New York--has taken much of the heat that might normally be expected to singe her husband.

Unable to verify rumors about him, reporters have focused on her. And as the whispering gets louder, New Yorkers are learning more about this first lady than any other in recent memory.

Growing up in Sunnyvale, Calif., Hanover, now 47, showed an early flair for journalism and debate. She entered Stanford, majored in political science and began working in cable TV programming. After receiving a master’s in journalism from Columbia, Hanover held radio and TV jobs in several cities, including Miami, where she met Giuliani in 1982.

She was instantly attracted to the No. 3 man in the Reagan Justice Department, who later became U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York. Hanover got a reporting job at WPIX, and the two were married in 1984. She helped Giuliani build his career but at a cost to her own: Hanover gave up her news anchor job to avoid political conflict with her husband’s 1989 mayoral campaign against David Dinkins.

Giuliani lost that contest but beat Dinkins in a 1993 rematch. The first couple have two children, Andrew, 10, and Caroline, 7, yet little else is known of their private lives beyond politics--and rumors that never go away.

Hanover’s push to resume her career accelerated soon after the Lategano stories began. Today, Hanover is a reporter on Fox-TV’s “Good Day New York” and is an anchor on “Food News and Views” five nights a week on the Television Food Network. She made a January appearance on “Law and Order” and is reportedly under consideration for a role in the movie version of the hit musical “Chicago.”

During a recent appearance on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” Hanover never mentioned Giuliani’s name. The New York Observer mused: “New Yorkers do not need to stay up until 1:30 in the morning to wonder what is up with the first lady. . . . The subtext of the spate of stories about Ms. Hanover is that the Giuliani marriage has hit a rocky patch.”

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Looking back, City Hall observers agree that the Giuliani-Hanover stories were triggered by a 1995 New York magazine article titled “The Woman Behind the Mayor.” It laid bare the steamy allegations about Giuliani and Lategano but failed to prove anything conclusive.

The following week, Giuliani was asked by a TV correspondent on Long Island, a radio reporter at City Hall and finally by Sam Roberts--a New York Times deputy editor doing a TV interview--whether the story was true. Each time, Giuliani angrily dismissed the query.

Dominick Carter, the NY News1 TV reporter who pressed Giuliani about the rumored affair, said he felt like he was on the hot seat. Yet he insists he was right to raise the issue.

“I would never have asked the question if I hadn’t gotten [the story] from people high up in the mayor’s office who had no ax to grind,” he said. “And to some extent, I feel vindicated, given what’s happened in [Giuliani’s] relationship with Donna Hanover.”

There were other news stories: One spotted the mayor shopping with Lategano for a dress; another mentioned a private, late-night dinner. In December, Newsday reporter Leonard Levitt wrote a fantasy column, imagining a day when “Giuliani, who sought any excuse to flee Gracie Mansion, especially during the holidays when his wife wasn’t working, was in his office with his Communications Director Cristyne Lategano, supposedly watching the Cowboys-Vikings game.”

For all the titillation, however, little hard news has made it into print.

“This story is like glue, like tar,” said New York Post columnist Jack Newfield. “If you jump into it, you’ll get stuck in it. You can’t write it and you really shouldn’t write it, because public people have a right to personal lives. But that’s not what’s happening here.”

In a culture of celebrity gossip, the Giuliani rumors might seem like just more grist for the mill. Yet there is also an angry political undercurrent to the New York melodrama.

Few journalists in this town recall a mayor whose press relations are so chilly. Lategano and others have “grossly restricted media access” to city commissioners and information, said TV reporter Gabe Pressman, who has covered New York since 1955.

Adds Jerry Nachman, former news director at WNBC-TV and WCBS-TV and former editor of the New York Post: “The stories about Cristyne, while understandably seductive, are part of a much bigger picture. I’ve covered [New York] mayors going back to John Lindsay and there has been no commensurate era when reporters have either been provoked, ignored or manhandled as they have in this administration. That’s really how these rumors are fueled.”

It’s a stretch, however, from swapping rumors at lunch to staking out Hanover at 2 a.m. to see if she and Giuliani sleep under the same roof.

“You had reporters working very hard on that angle,” Smith said. “Yet nobody got anything.”

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Giuliani and Hanover declined to be interviewed for this story. But if the first couple thought official silence might dampen press interest, they were mistaken.

In January, the Daily News asked City Hall for Hanover’s schedule, as well as data about her staff. Rebuffed, the paper filed a Freedom of Information request and the Donna Watch was born. “Just what does Donna Hanover do as first lady of New York?” crowed one column.

In fact, this first lady makes speeches to civic groups and she appears at charity fund-raisers, schools, city celebrations and events like the Winter Antiques Show. She has a staff of four who collectively earn almost $200,000, according to a Daily News survey.

Is Hanover fair game for inquiry? Arthur Browne, managing editor of the Daily News, said, “She refused to answer our questions, so it’s a story. It’s basic newspaper journalism.” Yet others suggest that turning her into a political issue is wrong.

“She can say to people: ‘Look, I was a TV reporter for years before I married Rudy Giuliani. I’m a working woman, and I have a right to my own life,’ ” said Stuart Marques, metropolitan editor of the New York Post. “But she’s high profile, and a lot of people are still not comfortable writing about women who want their own lives.”

Gossip, of course, is another matter. No one holds you accountable for city room chitchat, and reporters never met a rumor they didn’t like. In New York, the competition for news may be more ferocious than in any other city. Yet for some, the Giuliani-Hanover case spells trouble, and it may be that the press corps’ private obsession will never become public fact.

“Normally you’d kill to be first on a hot story in New York,” Nachman said. “But this one is tricky, and there’s a danse macabre going on. A race to see who will be second.”