WAYNE HAD A REPUTATION for not being an easy person to speak with.
Most people felt that he was interrogating them. With a weekly deadline always looming, there was no wasting time on trivial chit-chat. No boberías for Wayne.
And yet, he maintained decades-long relationships, both with colleagues like me and with sources. People spoke to him, confessed to him, revealed secrets. He had some of the best sources in New York and put them to use against the abusive and corrupt powerful in politics, government, and business.
What those sources received in response was accurate reporting. That style of precise language and explanations of his pursuit gained the respect from those that would often start out either petrified of an inquiry by Wayne or suspicious of his motives. They may have had problems with his interrogative style, but the serious and factual reporting eventually overcame those fears.
I spoke to Wayne on an almost daily basis. Whether talking about sports, politics, or the latest scoundrel on his radar, there was always passion and purpose.
Whenever Wayne had questions about a Puerto Rican elected official or Latino políticos or community leaders or activists, he would ask for a complete background, specific connections to others in my community and the broader political structure. Our brotherhood was far from perfect. We had many political disagreements, but none severe enough to cause a permanent rift.
Well, there was the one exception. It was about baseball. He never understood or forgave me for being a Yankee fan. It went beyond his devotion for the despised Boston Red Sox. He was just brutal in his beat downs about my love for the Bronx Bombers. “How could you as a Puerto Rican who believes in independence of your island be a fan of the Yankees?!” That didn’t shut me up; I retorted that “Fidel [Castro] is a Yankee fan.” I got tired of being beat up and opted for not talking baseball with him. Yup, I punked out.
I wasn’t the only one who wilted under Wayne’s oratorical assault. The current governor of New York also punked out at least once, Wayne told me. “He wasn’t responding to me. He just stayed quiet.” It was like Wayne was a reminder to the younger Cuomo that he couldn’t BS him, and that Wayne was probably on the right side of the argument.
Wayne was often harsh, but he believed in redemption. I learned this when he said to me one day, “I went to visit Hevesi yesterday.” The former New York state comptroller had served prison time, in part because of Wayne’s reporting. I couldn’t believe it, and we spent a long time in a back-and-forth on his reasoning. I confess that I never fully understood why he would visit Hevesi at his home. But like the flip side of sources trusting Wayne to be accurate, Wayne never wrote anyone off.
After a lifetime of covering NYC politics, Wayne and I had no shortage of topics to discuss. But there was the one time that I became so infuriated at Wayne that I screamed at him and told him to never again talk to me about this subject. No small talk, just facts, he reported it without drama: “I’m not going to live to write about the next Mayoral election.” And once again, my broder from another mother was right.
Gerson Borrero is a longtime amigo of Barrett’s, former editor in chief of El Diario NY, a political commentator at NY1, and a political editor and host at HITN.