THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020 61
TOAD CIRCUS
The day after my toad circus the toads were all dead, crunchy
and silent in their window well. I wanted to draw a door-
way to walk through to get to the world of lilacs: purple,
contagious green leaves and no movement but the steady in-
visible breathing of flowers. I knew I had to tell someone
what I had done so I first walked to the park and stayed
there until dusk, sitting on the glider or in the middle of the
rusty and dangerous merry-go-round; I can’t remember which.
When it was nearly dark I walked home, certain that they
were worried and maybe even out looking for me. When I
got there I saw them busy in the kitchen through the win-
dow, so I hid in the back yard until it was good and dark, a
living thing on a swing set in the gloom, the attic in my head
cracking open for the first time and I went in.—Julia Storykin to some of the most influential busi-
nessmen in America. Angela Chao was
married to the investment banker Bruce
Wasserstein, who died in 2009, and she’s
now married to Jim Breyer, a billionaire
venture capitalist with huge financial
interests in China. In 2016, Breyer joined
the board of directors of Blackstone,
giving McConnell a brother-in-law at
a company that financially supports his
campaigns, and that manages more than
half a trillion dollars.
Chao family members were campaign
donors of McConnell’s even before his
marriage to Elaine. According to the
Times, over the years the family has given
more than a million dollars to McCon-
nell’s campaigns or PACs tied to him.
Furthermore, disclosure forms show that,
after Elaine Chao’s mother died, in 2007,
the family gave her and McConnell as
much as twenty-five million dollars,
making McConnell one of the Senate’s
wealthiest members.
It can be a danger for affluent Wash-
ington insiders to appear out of touch,
and Kentucky is one of America’s poor-
est states. McConnell and members of
his staff have berated the home-town
paper for running a photograph of him
in a tuxedo. McConnell owns a modest
house in Louisville, and at home he makes
a habit of doing everyday errands him-
self, such as shopping for groceries at a
nearby Kroger. He attends local college
sports events with a few old friends; they
wear headphones, to follow the plays on
the radio, and high-five one another when
their team scores. Chao has been less
vigilant about playing down her wealth.
When she directed the Peace Corps, she
stirred talk by arriving at work in a
chauffeured car. At the Labor Depart-
ment, the Times reported, she “employed
a ‘Veep’-like staff member who carried
around her bag.” A luxury beauty-and-fit-
ness purveyor in Washington told me
that she couldn’t get her staff to continue
providing services for Chao after Chao
knocked a makeup brush out of a beau-
tician’s hand during one appointment
and threw a brush on the floor during
another. Kentucky Democrats have tried
to make an issue of the couple’s wealth.
Outside of Berea, a billboard featuring
a giant photograph of McConnell and
Chao is accompanied by the words “We’re
rich. How y’all doin?”F
rom the earliest days of McConnell’s
political life, he has had questionable
relationships with moneyed backers. His
salary as county judge/executive was mea-
gre, and, in an arrangement that troubled
some in the community, a group of un-
disclosed Louisville business leaders qui-
etly threw in extra pay, ostensibly for his
giving speeches. David Ross Stevens, who
briefly served as McConnell’s special as-
sistant, told me, “It was like the big boys
got together and gave him a pool of
money.” Stevens said of McConnell, “He
was the most shallow person in politics
that I’d ever met. At our first staff meet-ing, McConnell said, ‘Does anyone have
a project for me? I haven’t been on TV
for eleven days.’ He was very clever, but
it was all about ‘What’s this going to do
for me?’” Stevens quit in disgust.
Two years into McConnell’s tenure
as county judge/executive, the Courier-
Journal ran a story chronicling other
turnover on his staff. Employees griped,
anonymously, that McConnell was “ex-
traordinarily selfish” and surrounded
himself only with “yes men.” They also
complained of being pressured to com-
mit to donating their kidneys, because
McConnell was chairing a National Kid-
ney Foundation fund-raising drive. Mc-
Connell denied that his office had poor
morale—and two staffers who defended
him in the article continued to work
with him for decades. In the Senate, he
is known for cultivating a smart and
loyal staff, and for maintaining a formi-
dable network of political allies, in Wash-
ington and in Kentucky. James Carroll,
the former Washington correspondent
for the Courier-Journal, told me, “It’s a
version of patronage—when you leave
his office, he helps you in your career.
Because of that loyalty, he has a vast net-
work of eyes and ears. There are Mitch
McConnell galaxies and solar systems.”
One former Senate colleague of his,
Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Con-
necticut, told me that McConnell is one
of the only senators who also runs party
politics back in his home state.
As McConnell gained power, Lou-
isville’s liberal élites, including the
wealthy Bingham family, which owned
the Courier-Journal, grew disenchanted.
The paper had endorsed him as county
judge/executive, and therefore felt some
responsibility for having launched him.
Runyon, the former editorial-page ed-
itor, said, “He managed to get our en-
dorsement by being what we thought
was a sincere reformer.” Runyon recalled
that in 2006, as Barry Bingham, Jr., the
paper’s publisher, lay dying, “he had a
frank talk with me—he said, ‘You know,
Keith, the worst mistake we ever made
was endorsing Mitch McConnell.’”
In 1984, McConnell ran for the Sen-
ate against the Democratic incumbent,
Walter (Dee) Huddleston. McConnell
later admitted that he’d begun planning
his campaign the moment he’d been sworn
in as county judge/executive. Nobody
expected an unprepossessing, little-known