Disgraced GOP consultant John Haggerty Jr. is an irritable oddball so secretive that he even denied getting married shortly after tying the knot, according to political insiders.
“He’s just the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to ask to go out and have a drink with,” said one Republican operative.
Describing Haggerty as “moody, unfriendly, untalkative,” the GOPer recalled one incident when Haggerty attended the black-tie Inner Circle dinner, the annual soiree sponsored by the City Hall press room, and stood by himself without talking to anyone.
“He just sat around, off to the side, away from everybody,” the source said. “He’s very weird.”
Another GOP insider tried to congratulate Haggerty, 41, on his marriage last year to State Liquor Authority Commissioner Noreen Healey but was rebuffed.
Instead of acknowledging the June 2009 wedding, Haggerty insisted he hadn’t made a trip down the aisle — even though the source knew two people who had attended the event.
Before Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance indicted him, Haggerty was best known for a bitter, long-standing feud with the Queens Republican Party.
He and his younger brother, Bart, engaged in a constant — and futile — battle to wrest control of the Queens GOP from Phil Ragusa, the party’s chair.
“He tried to stick it to us all the time,” said Ragusa.
Ragusa said he tried, to no avail, to warn Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign to steer clear of Haggerty.
“We warned the Bloomberg people not to go with this guy. We said we should’ve been running the Bloomberg campaign in Queens, not him,” he said.
On the surface, however, Haggerty’s résumé seemed a perfect fit.
As the son of the late John Haggerty Sr., an Albany powerbroker who once worked for Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson, he’d been raised in the rough-and-tumble world of politics. Many of the state’s most powerful players were close family friends.
Haggerty worked on Ron Lauder’s campaign for mayor, as well as for former Assemblyman Clarence Rappleyea, and served as the head of former Gov. George Pataki’s legislative-affairs office.
Recently, he started working for upstate Republican Carl Paladino’s campaign for governor.
Haggerty and his brother each played a role in Bloomberg’s 2005 mayoral campaign and again in the 2009 one.
Bizarrely, Haggerty refused to take a salary for his work on the billionaire mayor’s re-election bid and described himself as a volunteer.
Through the years, Haggery developed a reputation as a go-to person for dealing with the Board of Elections and helping candidates get enough signatures to land spots on the ballot.
Additional reporting by David Seifman