Polling shows that in America today, people are highly resistant to marrying someone from another political party.
Not that it can’t work.
Just ask Mary Matalin and James Carville, two high-powered partisans from different sides of the aisle.
She spent years working closely with the Bush family and was Chief of Staff to RNC Chairman Lee Atwater, while he is largely credited with getting Bill Clinton elected president in 1992.
One might think that if they can see past politics and make it work, anyone can, but increasingly, it’s not true.
There are already press reports bubbling up about couples divorcing over one’s love for, and the other’s disdain of, Donald Trump.
Now, for one briefly-employed White House staffer, it was his ambition to become a Washington power player that led his wife, despite being nine months pregnant, to file for divorce.
In the event that you’ve been living in a cave for the last few months, here’s a little primer on the spectacular rise and fall of hedgie and, for a few days at least, White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, known to his friends as The Mooch.
The first thing to know is that he’s a native Long Islander who started his career in finance with Goldman Sachs where, ironically, he was fired soon after beginning.
He ended up back with the company in another role, and left again in 1996 to launch Oscar Capital Management, which was ultimately swallowed up, along with Scaramucci himself, by Lehman Brothers.
A few years later, he left Lehman to found SkyBridge Capital, which he saw not only as an investment vehicle, but as a way to introduce some big-think events into the financial world.
Twice a year, the company presents the SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) conference, bringing together finance industry thought leaders with movers and shakers in the alternative finance community.
The event has seen keynotes from Tim Geithner, Tony Brown, Colin Powell, George W. Bush, and many others. He also became a contributor on CNBC’s “Fast Money” program and wrote “The Little Book of Hedge Funds.”
Scaramucci’s desire to be important extended well beyond his finance community ventures.
He’s been an active fundraiser and vocal proponent of politicians and causes over the years, initially backing Hillary Clinton’s 2008 primary run before becoming a bundler for Barack Obama in the general election.
He seems to have soured on the Democrat’s emphasis on Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis, and in 2010 he made headlines when he attended a CNBC town hall with Obama and asked the president when he was going to “stop whacking Wall Street like a pinata.”
Whatever his feelings were about the administration itself, his opinions on a range of topic were standard Democratic fare, including supporting stronger gun control legislation, abortion rights, opposing the death penalty, and backing legal marriage for same-sex couples.
The financial crisis and Obama’s response to it seems to have created a permanent rift between Scaramucci and Democratic politics, and in 2012 he joined Mitt Romney’s campaign as one of eight national finance co-chairs.
According to a Politico profile unflatteringly titled “Rise of the showboat donor,” Scaramucci created a headache for Karl Rove before the Republican National Convention, when he told a reporter where and when a closed door fundraiser for Rove’s PAC would happen.
The reporter got in and recorded Rove urging his fellow Republicans to sink the candidacy of a Republican who had recently been garnering negative headlines on the stump.
These not-for-the-press remarks were an embarrassment for everyone, and Scaramucci was forced to apologize to Rove – who was forced to apologize to the candidate.
By 2015, Scaramucci himself was attacking candidate Trump on Fox Business Network, calling him a “hack politician” with rhetoric that is “anti-American and very, very divisive.”
He initially backed Scott Walker for the Republican nomination, but after that short-lived candidacy, went over to team Jeb Bush.
When Bush dropped out of the race, Scaramucci began a process of reconciling himself to the Trump campaign, and in May took a formal role with its Finance Committee.
Then the election happened, and Scaramucci realized that he had, if circuitously, backed the right horse.
He joined Trump’s Transition Team and began angling for a job in the administration.
Knowing the level of financial disclosure that would be required, he started on the path of selling SkyBridge Capital.
There was a problem in the transfer though, and press reports revealed that SkyBridge had been bought by foreign investors closely tied to China’s communist party.
Instead of a January appointment, the Office of Government Ethics told the administration that his disclosures would require a much longer review than expected.
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who opposed him having a role in the White House, broke the news to Scaramucci in February: The administration needed the posts he wanted filled, and he was not being considered.
Scaramucci didn’t stop trying though.
On July 21, two stories broke in the press. First, Scaramucci had finally landed his long-sought White House gig, this time as White House Communications Director.
The second story was that press secretary Sean Spicer, announcing his vehement opposition to Scaramucci’s appointment, resigned in protest.
A few days later, apparently after drinks with the President, Scaramucci made a fateful and extremely profane phone call to New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, where he graphically attacked Priebus and White House employee Steve Bannon.
He threatened to kill all the leakers in the White House, turning his fire back to Priebus, who he accused of leaking the fact of his dinner earlier that night.
Then, on July 28, another pair of stories hit the press.
First, it was reported that Scaramucci’s wife, Deidre, had filed for divorce from him weeks earlier, citing his “naked political ambition.”
That she was nine months pregnant with their second child at the time only added to the absurdity.
When the baby was born, Scaramucci himself was traveling with the President and texted his congratulations to his estranged wife.
It was a week before he saw his newborn son.
The second story was that Reince Priebus had been unceremoniously dumped on a tarmac after exiting Air Force One and would be replaced as Chief of Staff by General John Kelly.
Scaramucci likely thought he had won his long-running feud with the former head of the RNC, but Kelly’s ascension seems to have sealed Scaramucci’s own fate.
On August 31, just ten days into his tenure as Communications Director, he was fired from the White House.
He’d lost his business, his family, and now the job he’d given it all up for.
When your marriage in Queens is ending, the attorneys at Zelenitz, Shapiro & D’Agostino can help. Call 718-523-1111 for a free consultation with an experienced Queens divorce lawyer.
