Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America) (22 page)

In addition to underestimating contemporary ramifications of the pageant’s deeply conservative moral tradition, Renneisen made it known that he was willing to slaughter another sacred cow: unless Atlantic City stepped up its game, he hinted, he might move Miss America elsewhere. Again, his trademark confidence and local experience may have bolstered him in this decision; in order even to raise the question of whether the pageant should stay or go, one would want to have a few trump cards firmly in one’s pocket. In response to Renneisen’s threat, a task force was formed to discuss the additional $1 million he had insisted was necessary to keep Miss America from packing up her crown and scepter . . . most likely bound for the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. The fallout was problematic, and ultimately the pageant did not get the requested funding.

In the end, though, Bob Renneisen was handed his walking papers (the official statement was that he quit, but it was obvious that he did so under enormous pressure) by the same entity that had sounded the death knell for Rob Beck: the National Association of Miss America State Pageants.

In early February 2002, a letter from the parents of Katie Harman (2002) was leaked to the press. The question of how exactly this happened elicited plenty of conflicting answers. The
New York Times
reported that the state pageant organizations had circulated it. Later,
Salon
’s Jake Tapper reported that it had actually been Renneisen himself, presumably making a power play. In any case, the eight-page document was damning, with allegations that Harman was being mistreated by pageant officials.

“Katie is your Miss America and I can’t tell you how many times she is ‘in trouble’ for things that are not her fault,” read the letter from Darla Harman to the MAO board of directors. Apparently, Harman was repeatedly being charged for some significant job-related expenses . . . items that had historically been underwritten by the or
ganization. Some were small, like clothing alterations, but the MAO staff had also sent her an invoice for $2,248 for her own post-crowning party at the Trump Taj Mahal.

Renneisen believed that the letter was part of a plot to oust him from power. Frustrated by trying to reconcile the organization’s need to evolve and the will of its critical volunteer network, he had thrown down the gauntlet at NAMASP’s January meeting. When confronted by the concerns of state directors who felt that MAO was not running efficiently, he advised them to “
‘get the hell out’ of the Miss America Organization and then abruptly left the meeting.”

Renneisen’s strategy—take an aggressive stance, refuse to let the states run the show—was bold, but not unprecedented. However, he significantly underestimated the will and influence of the longtime volunteers. Again, without them, there
was
no Miss America Pageant in September; there simply wasn’t time (not to mention funding) to outsource the work of running hundreds of local pageants and fifty-one state pageants each year. Like many new leaders, Renneisen had been amiable at first, saying the right things about wanting input and collaboration. Ultimately, though, his leadership style turned out to be vertical. And while vertical leadership can be effective, it certainly doesn’t work if it’s masquerading as horizontal leadership. “In the history of Miss America, I can’t ever recall this level of anger. These people don’t normally do these things. They don’t go to the press. They normally suffer in silence,” Leonard Horn mused at the time.

Finally, there was one more thing that must have completely blindsided Renneisen. No matter what relationships he felt he had cultivated with both the pageant community and the Atlantic City decision makers, those connections paled in comparison with the years, even decades, that NAMASP members had spent with the board of directors. Although NAMASP and the pageant board were, of course, two separate organizations, they united ev
ery year in the service of a common cause. Because of the composition of the board (the head of security, the head of the Hostess Committee, etc.), there was a lot of shared territory. After all, NAMASP members did basically the same thing back home in their states that the MAO board did each September in Atlantic City. Renneisen might have survived the storm if he had had a board of directors made up of powerful businesspeople or heavy-hitting fund-raisers. But he didn’t. He had a group of people who had been doing all the work of putting on the pageant, some of them for decades, for free. The board members were far more likely to relate to the longtime volunteers than to some hotshot businessman who wanted to tell everybody what to do—even though, of course, they had selected and hired him for precisely that purpose. And, of course, it didn’t help Renneisen’s cause that the Miss America board has never been known for its commitment to confidentiality. Pageants are a gossipy business to begin with, and old habits are hard to break.

Four state pageant directors went to the swanky new Atlantic City offices on February 4, 2002, met with Bob Renneisen, and requested his resignation. Sometime after that, Glen and Darla Harman’s letter went public. A media circus ensued. MAO staff began to cancel Harman’s upcoming appearances, letting her cool her heels in a Des Moines hotel while they tried to figure out what to do. Ultimately, the decision was made to bring her back to Atlantic City for a dog-and-pony press conference.

Harman was told that according to the terms of her contract, she was obligated to defend the Miss America Organization. It was implied that she could be fired if she didn’t stand in front of the assembled media and essentially call her parents liars. From the outside, it seems preposterous that this would actually happen. But despite her maturity and poise, Harman was just twenty-one at the time. The brutal schedule that Miss Americas must maintain cuts
them off from their support systems: friends, parents, and certainly any lawyers in the family. Most of all, the majority of Miss America contestants are people-pleasers. The implication that Harman was ungrateful, lacked humility, or was otherwise behaving like a diva would have worked to push her down the path of least resistance. And the threat of being forced out as Miss America would have been devastating.

So, on February 15, a tearful Miss America went through with the press conference. At the time, rumors circulated that Renneisen was poised to accuse Darla Harman of having an undisclosed mental illness if her daughter didn’t comply with his marching orders. But although the press reported that fences had been mended, the internal tension only got worse. In the minds of many, the CEO had committed two inexcusable acts. First, he had piled the organization’s leadership problems onto a very well-liked Miss America, whose first appearances had included visiting the rescue workers at the still-smoldering World Trade Center. And second, he had done the unthinkable by openly exhibiting the extent of his contempt for NAMASP and its members, calling their list of grievances—many of which were legitimate—“the rebellion of the beauty queens.” At the time, he complained that “this organization is staffed throughout the country by people who are predominantly volunteers . . . some of whom, frankly, have no other life than this. They have collected 12 years of petty gripes and groans and are trying to put it all in Katie’s mouth.”

Two weeks later, Bob Renneisen was out as the CEO of the Miss America Organization.

After blowing through two CEOs in three years, it seems the board decided to devote some time to considering how to fill the position. By this point, it was clear that managing the Miss America Organization was trick
ier than most had expected. In many respects, it was still a mom-and-pop enterprise. But the often-conflicting demands of the media, the volunteer network, and the pageant’s financial situation resulted in something of a mess. Frank Deford, whose insights had typically been spot-on regarding the MAO, was blunt about the “turmoil” he observed within the pageant. “Miss America can’t decide who it is and what it wants to be. Until it does, these kind of problems are going to continue.” Atlantic City historian Vicki Gold Levi wondered if any CEO without significant pageant experience would be able to balance the competing interests of the “many masters” the executive was obligated to please.

Although most of the mainstream media had gradually tuned out the pageant over the preceding years, the abundance of controversy coaxed plenty of writers to take another look. Even the hometown paper was losing faith; an op-ed piece in the
Press of Atlantic City
presented more questions than answers:

Why is a relatively simple enterprise such as a non-profit beauty (OK, “scholarship”) pageant so often the subject of so much controversy?

Consider just recent events: There are secrets—financial books that no one will open, whispers about extravagant spending and unnecessary hires.

There are the state pageant officials who recently came to Atlantic City to complain about a climate of “fear and intimidation.”

There is that letter that the parents of Miss America 2002 Katie Harman wrote to complain that they and their daughter are mistreated by the pageant organization (and Miss America 1998 Kate Shindle piping up in support of Harman’s parents).

And then . . . almost like some POW making a forced statement . . . there is Harman herself, trotted out at
a press conference to say, more or less, golly gee it’s all a mistake and everything is just hunky-dory as far as she’s concerned.

Why is the Miss America Organization not a modern, transparent enterprise that is run openly, professionally, and peacefully?

One positive outcome of Renneisen’s hiring spree: although he had wreaked havoc on the pageant’s finances, he had unwittingly created a pool of candidates to succeed him in the position. As interim CEO, the board appointed vice president George Bauer, a fifty-eight-year-old former international businessman who had been Renneisen’s right-hand man. Bauer didn’t have the same easy charm as his predecessor, but he had a pronounced tan that never seemed to fade, extremely white teeth, and a reputation for being something of a ladies’ man. At the time, there were rumors that Renneisen and Bauer, who had at one point been very close friends, had had a falling-out during their time together at MAO. After his departure, Renneisen began studying to become a priest.

Like Renneisen before him, Bauer immediately expressed his intent to bridge the troubled waters separating the volunteers and the paid staff. “I don’t think we want to rule over 51 (state) people. We want to work with 51 people. There is a lot of experience out there, and I’m going to tap into it,” he said.

He also faced serious challenges regarding the pageant’s financial situation. At that point, things were beginning to look pretty dire; the state organizations wanted to know if the proposed move out of Atlantic City was a signal that he was having trouble securing new sponsorships. Somewhat lost in the shuffle over the preceding weeks was a story that provided a clue as to why old sponsors were departing and new ones weren’t exactly lining up in the hallway outside the corner office. The pageant had reportedly
shown little respect for—and even less ability to collaborate with—some of the vendors whose services they used each year. Most outspoken was Joseph J. Trefaller of Piccari Press, the longtime publisher of Miss America’s program book. His company had “offered $250,000 in corporate subsidies over a five-year period—on the condition of ‘a complete change of the executive/management staff of the Miss America Organization.’
” The company’s vice president, Harry Eaby, added, “Thank goodness there are 51 state organizations who woke up and realized there’s something really wrong in Atlantic City.” Eaby asserted that “the pageant has little knowledge of basic marketing practices and refused to return phone calls to both contractors and major sponsors.”

In fact, there was growing distrust of both the board and the staff, even among those in Atlantic City and surrounding environs who were involved with the pageant. Part of this is attributable to the fact that the Jersey Shore consists of a series of small towns. They bustle in the summer, but the community of people who live there year-round is relatively modest in size. And the full-time residents are much more likely to have skin in the Miss America game. The Hostess Committee, for example, actually established a geographical boundary beyond which no hostess could live. Being a hostess was a year-round commitment involving fund-raisers and other events, not just shuttling the contestants back and forth to rehearsals. If you weren’t local, you were out of luck. But once you made it into the club, it was likely that you developed strong relationships with your fellow volunteers—and probably plenty of opinions about how things were going. For a volunteer entrenched in the Miss America culture, the threat that Miss America might relocate would be devastating. And for those politicians, personalities, and merchants who were invested in the pageant, the exploration of other venues—
especially
other casino venues—came across as enormously disloyal. This led to what Bob Renneisen had called an “intolerable” attitude toward the organization, specifically noting that “members of the pageant’s board have received tremendous animosity from the public and had their motives questioned.”

In reality, what had seemed like a betrayal to Renneisen may have looked more like fiscal responsibility to his Atlantic City colleagues. The mayor at the time, James Whelan, who began his pageant affiliation as a lifeguard volunteering at the Miss America parade and became a reliable supporter, wondered publicly if the pageant was providing enough value for the dollars the city was spending to keep it. Around the same time, Freeholder James Carney was “questioning the Miss America Organization’s ability to manage the pageant’s finances,” adding in a letter to the board, “You may have lost your focus on the real goal of the Miss America Organization of providing scholarship money to young women. Possibly a better handle on expenses could help make up your deficit.” He went on to state that there were those who felt a shakedown was happening, as the pageant tried to secure more financial backing.