Rumor has it that Chelsea Clinton will marry her boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, in late August at the Vineyard home of Bill's buddy and confidante Vernon Jordan, Jr. The Clintons have denied the rumor, but Marc, 31, and Chelsea, 29, both Stanford graduates, are, reportedly, still a couple, so who knows.
The rumored nuptials were brought to my mind by a quote from Marc's mother, former congresswoman Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, in Monday's Wall Street Journal. It appeared well into an article about resistance among some Democrats, many freshmen -- they tend to represent affluent districts -- to the "tax the rich" aspect of President Obama's health care bill. (WSJ reporter Jonathan Weisman describes the proposed tax increase as "...a one-percentage point-surtax on couples earning between $350,000 and $500,000 -- gradually increasing to 5.4 percentage points on earnings more than $1 million...")
In 1993, Margolies-Mezvinsky, who represented the wealthy Philadelphia suburbs and had promised her Republican-leaning voters that she would never vote to raise their taxes, was strong-armed by President Bill Clinton to vote yes on his bill to bring down the deficit, via a tax increase on the wealthy. The rookie President desperately needed her vote to break a deadlock
"I never should have been asked to take that vote, ever," she now says.
So she served her one term and lost in 1994.
Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky will likely one day become Chelsea's mother-in-law and count Bill and Hillary as her Machetunim (Yiddish) or Mechutan (Hebrew) [i.e. relative by marriage].
Marc is an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and a former intern at Bill Clinton's White House. He has done well, reportedly buying a $3.8 million Manhattan apartment. Chelsea made big bucks after college and graduate school in jobs at McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, and then at Avenue Capital, a hedge fund run by her parents' supporters. She is now a graduate student at Columbia University, studying public health.
Marc's father is also a former Democratic congressman (from Iowa). He was recently released from prison where he did time for financial fraud.
As I wrote in my book about Bill Clinton's post presidency, Clinton in Exile: A President out of the White House, Edward Mezvinsky was convicted of, "according to the New York Times, `swindling dozens of investors out of $10 million.' The Mezvinskys were frequent guests at state dinners during the Clinton years and ABC News reported that prosecutors claim that `Mezvinsky used his connections to the Clintons and his son's social relationship with Chelsea to persuade people to give him money to participate in the scams.'"
There should be some interesting toasts at that wedding.