Being Mr. Big

People to the manner born once deemed Manhattan apartment-living déclassé. A century ago, only ostentatious mansions—of Astors and other aristocrats—occupied "Millionaires' Row," the most gilded stretch of that blue-blooded artery, Fifth Avenue. But that all changed in 1912 when a luxurious new 12-story Italian Renaissance building rose near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And it is here, in the marbled grandeur of a sprawling palazzo, that Wall Street veteran and onetime New York Times reporter Steve Rattner today hosts the beau monde of Manhattan.

The gatherings are like "a grand salon, a throwback to New York of old," says indie-film mogul Harvey Weinstein, who along with billionaire buyout king Henry Kravis, Internet mogul Barry Diller and assorted Democratic presidential hopefuls have gathered at Rattner's home for evenings of high living, highbrow discourse, high finance—and the high art of exercising influence.

From the wallets of donors wined and dined here, Rattner and his wife, Maureen White, have raised millions for the presidential runs of Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry (White was formerly national finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee). And it is also in this sumptuous abode that Rattner cultivated lucrative ties to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In January, Rattner's firm, Quadrangle Group, was tapped to manage the mayor's $16 billion-plus fortune, and in July, Quadrangle advised Bloomberg L.P., the financial-media empire he controls, on its repurchase of a $4.5 billion stake held by Merrill Lynch. "Steve Rattner has the ability to do almost anything," Bloomberg says.

So far anything, it seems, except achieving his loftiest ambition—to occupy one of the corner offices on Wall Street or in Washington. Though Rattner has cultivated the rich and powerful and become indispensable to them as a financier and fund-raiser, the brass ring still eludes this ambitious, 56-year-old former journalist. Among his many accomplishments in the financial world, running a top Wall Street firm is—glaringly—not one of them. (He came close at the prestigious Lazard Frères, making it as high as deputy CEO of the New York branch.) Nor has he managed to snare a cabinet post in D.C., something friends and associates say he has long coveted. In part, that's because Rattner keeps betting on the wrong horse—most recently Clinton, for whom he and his wife raised $2 million—though there is an outside chance his luck could change now that he is supporting Sen. Barack Obama.

Yet even if Hillary—or Gore, or Kerry—had won, many wonder whether Rattner could ever get a top Washington appointment without "CEO" on his résumé: after all, Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson and Robert Rubin both came from the corner office at Goldman Sachs. "It is a fair question," says Kravis. "Ask the average guy if he knows or has heard of Rubin, chances are he has. But not Rattner." He adds, however, that Rattner "has the brain power" for the job, and Bloomberg says he would be a "phenomenal" secretary of the Treasury.

The irony of all this is that Rattner's life already seems a charmed one. Ever since the first profile of him appeared 22 years ago in Washington Monthly magazine, Rattner's storybook life has unfolded in the press. Born in Great Neck, N.Y., the son of an aspiring playwright who owned a paint-making company, Rattner was a star reporter at The New York Times who left journalism in the early '80s for the world of high finance. Dubbed a Wall Street wunderkind, he built the media practice at investment bank Morgan Stanley, then landed a high-profile job at Lazard and, in 2000, launched Quadrangle, whose two private-equity funds now total $3 billion. Rattner has raked in an estimated $100 million plus at Quadrangle and has all the trappings of success: the Fifth Avenue palace, a showcase summer home under construction on Martha's Vineyard, and a plane he pilots himself.