Tony Soprano? Try Robert Torricelli, or at least the picture of him painted by a man named David Chang over the years. Chang is a convicted felon serving time for obstruction of justice. Torricelli has not been indicted or shown to be mobbed up, and he insists he’s not a crook. But the Feds corroborated pieces of Chang’s account, which helped lead to Torricelli’s bombshell last week that he was dropping out of his race for reelection. Bada-boom.
The fictional Mafia boss and disgraced senator are, shall we say, “connected”–at least in the minds of thousands of voters and HBO viewers who happen to live in New Jersey. Tony and “The Torch” are poster boys for a Garden State that’s at once resigned to its pungent smell and ready for something cleaner. Even Carmela, the Mafia wife with ambitions of respectability, might have voted against Torricelli in November.
Think of it as " ‘The Sopranos’ Factor." There’s a fine line between lovable rogue and embarrassment to the Italian-American community and the state of New Jersey. While some residents decry ethnic stereotypes and refuse to let HBO film in their towns (even when the show’s characters are themselves decrying ethnic stereotypes), Tony has mostly managed to stay on the right side of that line; Torricelli has not. Despite the fact that Tony is a depressed killer with a dysfunctional family and Torricelli a brainy public servant who regularly dated Bianca Jagger, the comparison has not always been favorable to the senator. As Christopher Moltisanti might have said at the Bada Bing (in real life, the Satin Dolls strip club in Lodi, N.J.), “Lemme explain, Tone”:
On Sunday evening, Sept. 30, Torricelli told New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey that he was out. This followed a week when his campaign melted faster than Artie Bucco’s gelato. WNBC doused The Torch with a devastating 38-minute commercial-free report that made him out to be someone, at best, preposterous (“There simply were no gifts”), who used Chang as his personal ATM. This followed an appeals-court order releasing a Justice Department letter stating that Chang’s accusations had some merit and that Torricelli escaped indictment only because Chang would make a poor witness. (Think Ralphie on the stand.)
That letter, according to Torricelli aides, was the final blow. New Jersey voters, who usually have Uncle Junior-style amnesia about ethically challenged politicians, forgot to forget, perhaps because the gifts from Chang were easy to understand, not a complex financial scandal. Down double digits in the polls, Torricelli seemed likely to get whacked in November. Worse, his loss could have tipped control of the closely divided U.S. Senate back to the GOP. After using his ferocious fund-raising skills to help elect Democrats in the 1990s, Torricelli didn’t want that irony on what is left of his conscience.
But something else took place that Sunday night–something on TV that symbolized how Torricelli lost his way. On that evening’s episode of “The Sopranos,” a nose-hair-pulling pol, played by Peter Reigert, reappeared. He’s a state legislator, not a U.S. senator, but the resonance was clear: it could be Torricelli! How embarrassing! Just as Tony’s neighbors can tolerate living next to a mobster as long as no one gets rubbed out on their lawn, New Jersey voters could tolerate Torricelli until the stories of sleaze were rubbed in their faces. That’s when their often-beautiful state–now the richest in the nation–began looking like a dump once again, curdling the hard-won Springsteen-Soprano cool. When you rat out New Jersey, the voters treat you like Big Pussy.
Maybe the worst was the 7-Eleven security video (aired on WNBC) in which the senator is shown in the company of what Chang calls “a prominent New Jersey waste-disposal contractor” (Tony’s own “business”), as Chang flees out the back door. Chang claims Torricelli brought along muscle to intimidate him out of cooperating with the government, though Torricelli has consistently called Chang a liar and fantasist. True or not, Tony would never be dumb enough to conduct business in a convenience store.
And were he real, Mr. Soprano would have loathed the senator’s maudlin and deeply Nixonian farewell speech in Trenton last week (“Don’t feel badly for me. I changed people’s lives,” Torricelli croaked). It was exactly the kind of public display of emotion that Tony, a big Gary Cooper fan, cannot abide. Suck it up, he’d say. Take it like a man. Tell it to Dr. Melfi, not the whole world. Torricelli recalled for the crowd that he made out a will at the age of 5, with his worldly possessions left to the Marine Corps; Tony, by contrast, only reluctantly agrees to Carmela’s pleas that they consider any estate planning at all.
If Torricelli had his way, he would never have bequeathed Frank Lautenberg to the voters. But the governor got into a bind. McGreevey’s choice for the ticket, Rep. Frank Pallone, made the decision to run. But Pallone had forgotten to check with his wife. Any “Sopranos” viewer knows the rest of the story. Pallone unmade the decision to run.
So now the 78-year-old former senator is Torricelli’s replacement on the ticket. Lautenberg is clean (if a little mean) and can self-finance his campaign. But perhaps most famously, he has carried on a longstanding feud with Torricelli that climaxed in a screaming match outside a meeting of Senate Democrats in 1999, when Torricelli told Lautenberg: “I’m going to cut your balls off.” Lautenberg, a cross between Hesh and Paulie Walnuts, later told NEWSWEEK, “It’s fair to say my voice hasn’t changed.”
The GOP candidate, Doug Forrester, has been known until now as simply the Un-Torricelli. That is no longer a viable platform. With the state Supreme Court ruling unanimously that Lautenberg’s name could be placed on the ballot, Forrester’s final chance to win by default now rests with the U.S. Supreme Court. Whatever it decides, the long-running and often hugely entertaining Torricelli show is finally wrapping up. Guess that means more old “Sopranos” episodes on DVD. Salute.
