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Remembering Ray Donovan: Embattled Labor Secretary Got Back His Good Name

Remembering Ray Donovan: Embattled Labor Secretary Got Back His Good Name
Labor Secretary Ray Donovan, right, talks with the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Robert Dole, R-Kan., Sept. 16, 198. (AP Photo/Scott Stewart)

John Gizzi By Sunday, 06 June 2021 07:52 AM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

To reporters who covered or even watched the eight-month ordeal of Ray Donovan (who died Saturday at age 90), its cinema-like ending in a courtroom on May 25, 1987 is edged forever in their memories —and to many, in their hearts.

As the first sitting Cabinet member to be indicted, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of labor was forced to resign in 1985 and face charges of larceny and fraud initiated by the Bronx district attorney.

Donovan’s former employer, the New Jersey-based Schiavone Construction Company, had acquired a contract with the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) to extend the city subway line. With the contract stipulating part of the work be subcontracted to a minority business, the minority-owned firm Jopel Contracting and Trucking leased equipment from Schiavone — proof, prosecutors charged, that the company wasn’t independent of Schiavone.

When the jury began its deliberations after eight months of often-tedious testimony about the construction business and set-aside contracts for minorities, it returned after a brief discussion and one ballot with the verdict: Donovan was not guilty on all counts.

Donovan, who had studied at a Roman Catholic seminary and once seriously considered the priesthood, then made the sign of the cross that all Catholics do before prayer.

Soon, he was surrounded by jurors who showed how they felt about the trial by cheering and hugging the acquitted defendant.

With wife Catherine audibly sobbing, Donovan appeared before a scrum of reporters and denounced Bronx District Attorney Mario Merola for “a cruel thing” he had done to him.

Then he uttered words that would become famous and always linked to him: “Will someone tell me which office I go to get my reputation back?”

Perhaps sadly, Donovan is best known for his vindication and notable post-mortem than he is as a courageous secretary of labor under President Reagan. Having raised money for conservative Sen. James Buckley’s, R-N.Y., re-election campaign in 1976 and New Jersey GOP gubernatorial nominee Ray Bateman the following year, Donovan later met Ronald Reagan.

Asked to raise $10,000 for Reagan’s presidential candidacy in 1980, the New Jerseyan raised ten times that amount. With the encouragement of campaign manager Bill Casey, Donovan became the Reagan chairman in the Garden State.

Although Reagan and Donovan did not know each other well, the president-elect had taken a liking to his fellow Irishman and especially liked his rise from poverty to success in the private sector.

Most memoirs of Reagan associates say that when the president-elect began discussing possible Cabinet members, three choices he insisted be made were those of longtime California friend Casper Weinberger as secretary of defense, personal attorney William French Smith as attorney general, and Donovan for secretary of labor.

Backed by a conservative team at the Labor Department, Donovan eagerly pressed the new president’s agenda of deregulation and the free market. He also worked closely with conservative Rep. John Ashbrook, R.-Ohio, ranking Member of the House Education and Labor Committee.

It goes without saying that this kind approach to policy did not sit well with the kingpins of organized labor. AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland broke a decades-old tradition and refused to sit down for lunch with the secretary of labor.

Even those who opposed Donovan agreed his early life could have provided material for an inspirational novel. One of 12 children of a blue-collar family in Bayonne, N.J., both of Ray’s parents were dead by the time he was 18.

After graduating from St. Peter’s Preparatory School in Jersey City, he studied for the priesthood at the Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana. Upon finishing, however, he returned to Bayonne to help raise his younger siblings.

Donovan loved to tell how the older children would take turns presiding over their large family and alternating the roles of parents.

After working at unloading Ballantine Beer trucks, Donovan joined the American Insurance Company and became a highly successful salesman. In 1959, he joined Schiavone as its vice president for labor relations and in 1971, he became the company’s executive vice president.

Following his acquittal, Donovan went back to work for Schiavone and the company thrived. He owned 50 percent of Schiavone by the time it was sold to a Spanish conglomerate in 2007, and was thus freed to spend the rest of his life in philanthropy.

Donating and raising big dollars for education and for his beloved Catholic Church, Donovan became a much-liked figure in his hometown of New Vernon, N.J. Very appropriately, he also launched a group to assist in the rehabilitation of people wrongfully accused of a crime.

To many, Ray Donovan — without help from any government office — achieved his goal and got back his good name.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
 

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John-Gizzi
To reporters who covered or even watched the eight-month ordeal of Ray Donovan, its cinema-like ending in a courtroom on May 25, 1987 is edged forever in their memories -and to many, in their hearts.
donovan, labor, reagan, goodname, schiavone, catholic
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2021-52-06
Sunday, 06 June 2021 07:52 AM
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