The man who saved Trump in '91

Daily Point

The LI adviser who saved Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s history of vexing troubles invariably leads to a discussion about the quality and nature of his small band of advisers. Critics complain that they’ve been either fixers like lawyers Michael Cohen and the late Roy Cohn, or simply not very good with advice at all.

It’s top of mind as Trump struggles to find top talent and a strategy to fight the 37-count federal indictment in the classified documents case.

But finding smart people to help him when he gets jammed hasn’t always been the problem – at least not in one notable example.

During another great crisis in Trump’s life – his battle to stave off personal bankruptcy in the early 1990s – the former president relied on a highly regarded financial whiz from East Hampton who managed to pull Trump out of a hole and save his business empire.

Stephen F. Bollenbach appeared by Trump’s side in 1991 before New Jersey gambling regulators whose votes were needed to renew his license to run the ailing (and now defunct) Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. Trump’s empire was then nearly insolvent and survival of the Taj was crucial to Trump’s fiscal health.

In a virtuoso performance, Bollenbach helped convince the New Jersey board to allow Trump to keep his casino open. On a drizzly overcast day in April 1991, Trump walked outside onto the famous boardwalk during a break from the hearing and gave an impromptu news conference to two reporters. The usually self-confident mogul appeared anxious but relieved. Bollenbach had put together a rescue plan with Trump’s bankers, with a schedule of deadlines for repayment on his outstanding loans, in order to avoid disaster.

"I feel great," Trump said after the vote, like a man who had evaded the guillotine. "We're confident that we will be able to meet all the deadlines."

Bollenbach, then chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, managed to mollify the casino review board by carefully outlining Trump’s money situation in a way they found convincing. "If none of these deals were ultimately completed, but the banks continued to act in the manner that they are, we would still be financially stable," Bollenbach assured.

Bollebach worked from 1990 to 1992 with the Trump Organization before moving on to become chief executive of Hilton Hotels Corp. and heading other well-known corporations. Despite his success with Trump, not everyone on Wall Street admired Bollenbach, however. According to one financial news profile later in the 1990s, a critic said: ”Bollenbach has had a string of jobs. He does a lot of sizzly, visible financial engineering, then when people start to take a look and get closer, he's gone.''

Bollenbach died in 2016 at age 74, after a long illness. It was the same year his former client, Trump, won the U.S. presidency.

— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Food for thought

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Final Point

Crimson Tide ebb meets NY’s red wave

At a moment when New York State’s dominant Democrats are suing to reverse their 2022 congressional mapping fiasco, the national party got a boost on the redistricting front. It came from an interesting place — a ruling by the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court on an Alabama voting-rights case.

The court last week ruled 5-4 that Alabama's map, with one majority Black district and six majority white districts, violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The high court thus upheld a lower court decision, which means Alabama now must draw a new map with two Black-majority or near-majority congressional districts.

Political observers found the court’s split on the issue especially interesting. Not only did Chief Justice John G. Roberts side with the court’s three Democrat-picked justices, but the swing vote on their side also came from Brett Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump appointee. And the Alabama ruling potentially helps Democrats in other states with voting rights challenges — including Georgia and Louisiana, among others — before next year’s federal elections.

New York has its own, separate ongoing drama involving its CDs. On Thursday, the same day as the SCOTUS ruling, attorneys argued in Albany before the Appellate Division about the congressional map drawn last year by a special master under court supervision after the state’s initial effort at drawing lines foundered. One key issue was whether the Court of Appeals intended for that map, under which Republicans picked up four New York House seats, to prevail past 2022.

As quoted by New York Law School Professor Jeffrey Wice, a redistricting specialist, Presiding Justice Elizabeth Garry of the Third Department said during Thursday’s hearing that the court was placed in “the awkward position of inferring” whether the special master’s lines were supposed to be used past 2022 or if they were a temporary measure to ensure last year’s election and primaries would be held on time. Republicans argue that the maps were drawn for the decade leading up to the next U.S. Census.

The matter is expected to reach the Court of Appeals again. If the Democrats win on this point, the Independent Redistricting Commission created under a 2014 constitutional amendment would return to work as it recently did with Assembly maps.

But the bipartisan panel could deadlock again and fail to agree to send the legislature a single congressional map as prescribed. If they do so twice, and it is rejected, the State Senate and Assembly majorities get to redraw the lines as they see fit, which of course the GOP does not want.

Even if Democrats gain a new edge in other states’ races, they’re still expected to go all out to redraw and turn seats in New York. That would begin with CD3 in Queens and Nassau County where the indicted George Santos is the incumbent — and where Democrats last year tried and failed to create a famously bizarre five-county gerrymander centered in LI Sound. Given the chance, would they try that one again?

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com