Years ago, comedian Bill Murray [4]was talking with the press about great careers, longevity, and what really defines success. Murray had had several hits at the time, made good money, was considered for practically every big-budget comedy script in town, and by any Hollywood standard was the envy of his peers.

"But I want to last," Murray said with almost existential emphasis. "I want to be like the great old dogs of this business. Gary Cooper [5], Jimmy Stewart [6], and Kirk Douglas [7]. People who built these life-long careers and did it with good work, not just a cameo in High Noon: The Teen Years [8] for a check to remind people they were still breathing. But it's tricky. You've got to choose the right things. Dignity is essential to a great career and you can blow that pretty easy in this business."

Murray's boozy Swedish golf cart ride notwithstanding, his quote kept crossing my mind as I kicked around town talking to friends, colleagues, and sometimes adversaries of Sam and Sylvia Kaplan, the remarkably influential and durable couple often dubbed "political kingmakers" by the media and their peers. I don't know if Murray has had a political thought in his life, but he was clearly searching for the qualities that acquire and sustain credibility and influence.

In the case of the Kaplans, as Murray did with the long-time Hollywood players he referred to, you come to understand that their demeanor and choices have defined them. Their personal qualities, both sweet and sour, as expressed toward each other, friends, politicos, and foes, and played out in the rarified, often acidic spotlight of the political and moneyed elite of the Twin Cities, have contributed in no small part to their image-an image other influence traders might consider using as a model, if they can balance the same combination of ideological passion and emotional maturity.

I first sat down with Sam and Sylvia Kaplan on a brutally cold morning last February. By the crack of dawn they were seated at their table in a corner of the Minneapolis Club [11], where they are almost every weekday morning. There was a steady flow of people, including the likes of former councilman Dennis Schulstad, stopping by to greet them and trade news of the previous twenty-four hours, jump-starting the new day. The Kaplans make a good visual pair. Sam projects both the appearance and demeanor of a Hollywood patriarch. The full head of tousled-to-unruly silver hair and the athletic trim of a man twenty-five years younger than his seventy years complement an attentiveness, charm, and unflappability so composed it wavers between being reassuring and unnerving. Sylvia, sixty-nine, is attractive, though she is emphatically not a member of upper society's obsessively primped grande-dame school. Her intense commitment to social issues of truth and fairness, as she describes it, seems more credible because she eschews the more artificial cosmetic blandishments wealthy women her age so often seize upon. That, I guess, is another way of saying that she uses the informality of an unapologetic '60s radical to her advantage.

Of course, this couple didn't get to be political kingmakers on looks alone. Their way with people-and they know absolutely everybody-is unbeatable. Sam is unfailingly engaging and solicitous. It is Sylvia who peppers their interlocutors with questions. What came out of that Regents' meeting? Did they know So-and-So was considering a run for City Council? As the respect-payers depart, Sylvia makes blunt cracks about who this one supported in a recent race, or why that one is so dead wrong about some issue-never mind the strange guy with the pen sitting across the table from her.

At Sylvia's indiscretions, most of which are so spot-on you can only laugh, Sam exchanges glances with me, as though asking, "What can I do? She says what she wants."

Everyone, including Sylvia herself, describes her as the more "acerbic" or "sharp" of the two. Their worst adversaries-none of whom cared to speak on record-prefer the word "rude," although "blunt" actually seems the best compromise. She likes to get to the point. This fits with their friends' description of them as inveterate "busybodies," people with a compulsion, as Sylvia says, "to know what is really going on."

"I'm just always fascinated when people aren't curious about people," she tells me. "How can you not be curious and interested in what's going on? How do you live like that?"

Appetites for constantly up-to-date information require ceaseless interaction with literally hundreds of plugged-in people-something the two have managed to pull off for decades. Sylvia measures and assesses new people closely, in a way that seems simultaneously wary, skeptical, and almost shy. She is more ears than eyes, and often avoids direct visual contact until she's figured out your game. When she finally does meet your gaze it comes like punctuation to an assertion-that, for example, John Edwards [12]'s moment has come and gone. That Hillary Clinton [13]is all wrong for the changes that have to be made. And that Barack Obama [14], who is their guy for '08, is the rare politician to have heightened her understanding of key issues and not vice versa.

The Kaplans have been married thirty-three years. It's the second marriage for both. Neither comes from money. Sam's roots are in middle-class St. Paul, and Sylvia was a suburban homemaker and firebrand activist when she met him in the '70s. They first crossed paths when both were serving as chairs of local human rights commissions, Sylvia in Golden Valley and Sam in Edina. Sam's law firm at the time, Maslon Kaplan Edelman Joseph & Borman [15], also represented Sylvia in her divorce from restaurateur Ron Chessen.

Although some find Sylvia abrasive, there's a comical, borderline-endearing quality to the provocateur's pride she takes in her stories. There are the Tom Wolfe [16]-ish tales of dragging home f-bombing, Afro-sporting, radical brothers from the 'hood for strategy sessions, to the stunned disbelief of her then-husband. Others date back to her days as an ankle-biting reporter for (then editor of) the Golden Valley Sun- [17]yarns about annoying the local cops with accusations of racial profiling and such, which prove her bold and direct nature predates her reign as one-half of a prominent power couple. For years she also ran the legendary New French Café, a must-be-seen-at watering hole for the Twin Cities literary and artistic cognoscenti; her current ownership of Bar Abilene [18] in Uptown is just one among a sprawling list of activities, which includes so many board memberships and activist groups that recounting them takes up three minutes on the audio recorder.

Sam, meanwhile, has built one of the Twin Cities' preeminent law firms, Kaplan, Strangis and Kaplan [21], together with his college classmate and partner Ralph Strangis [22]. Strangis, it should be noted, is the Republican half of the pairing. The effect of this combination is pretty much unrivaled one-stop shopping for anyone looking to get political and legislative ducks in a row. Specializing in corporate law and transactions-the kind requiring cultivated relationships and diplomacy-Kaplan, Strangis and Kaplan has played key roles in countless major hot-button issues and public projects, despite being only one-thirtieth the size of a giant like Faegre & Benson. [23] The Hennepin County garbage burner was one of theirs. Calvin Griffith [24] looking to sell his team. The new Twins ballpark. A little Denny Hecker [25]. A little Bill McGuire [26]. And the list goes on and on.

Former Sen. Dave Durenberger [27]has known Sam Kaplan since their law school days at the University of Minnesota [28]. In his downtown St. Thomas office, Durenberger has a laugh recalling how Sam Kaplan and Ralph Strangis were practically anointed Big Men on Campus as first-year law students, and never thereafter took their feet off the accelerator. "You could see it right away," says Durenberger. "Sam in particular just had this glow. They were predictable successes in law school. It is no surprise at all that they enjoy the kind of influence they do." But we've all known the smartest guys in the room. More to the point, we also know that some of these smart guys, guys who have made big money and achieved high social standing, are good only for a few hits before they create more enemies than friends. What's the trick to sustaining influence as a player in every big game for decades on end? How do you offer advice and counsel to mover-shaker clients without pissing off other influential players and creating a scrum of powerful enemies?

"If you're both good and honest at what you do, you don't create those kinds of enemies," says Durenberger. "Sam and Ralph are always out front about what they think. Their biggest clients, and in Sam's case politicians, seek Sam and Ralph out for their judgment. In politics you quickly learn to rely on people whose judgment has been right, consistently.

"And also with those two, I have never felt an ounce-not one ounce-of self-serving in their advice and thinking. And God," Durenberger laughs, "have I been around a lot of self-serving people in the political realm."

The physical center of the Kaplans' influence is their ten-thousand-square-foot home just off the West River Parkway near Nicollet Island in Minneapolis. While liberals dreaming of public office first seek approval in Sam's office on the fifty-fifth floor of the Wells Fargo tower, high above downtown, it is not until both Kaplans consent to hosting a fund-raiser at their home that their blessing-with all its access to money, staff resources, and the chattering classes-is actually bestowed.

The Kaplan manse was specifically designed to accommodate hundreds of milling, mingling opinion-shapers. Along with two living rooms, two dining areas, two porches, a large well-lit hallway, a sprawling kitchen-where Sylvia personally prepares the food for every event-there are two sets of steps leading to different areas of the home. It is on the steps leading to a large atrium that politicians from Keith Ellison [29]and Paul Wellstone [30] to Jimmy Carter [31] and Barack Obama have spoken.

There have been a handful of watershed decisions in the Kaplans' blessing-and-bestowal process. The most legendary was their decision to commit to Wellstone, that wild-haired, fist-pumping, lectern-banging Carleton professor, back in 1990. There was also the moment in 2002 when they decided R. T. Rybak [32] wanted the mayor's office in Minneapolis more than Sharon Sayles Belton [33], who they had previously supported. And more recently, in 2006, there was Keith Ellison, laden with what, from a distance, looked and smelled like some seriously problematic anti-Jewish, if not anti-Semitic, baggage.

An event for Ellison at the Kaplans' last summer, on a blazingly hot afternoon that maxed out the air conditioning, drew pretty much every local Democrat with either a title or a checkbook-or both-and a lot of people who only knew someone with one of those. In the crowd were Walter Mondale [34], Mike Ciresi, [35] Al Franken [36], Bob Olson [37], Chris Coleman, [38] Amy Klobuchar [39], R.T. Rybak, Rebecca Yanisch [40], and Mark Ritchie [41], among those who didn't need nametags.

There is a protocol to these events. For the first hour or so, Sam circulates near the front door, personally welcoming every guest. As greeters go, he's the gold standard. He shakes your hand, makes a gracious personal inquiry into your work, your family, or something said the last time he spoke with you, offers a glass of wine: Red or white? He usually fetches it himself and then steers you to someone he thinks you need to meet.

Sylvia, meanwhile, is in constant motion, ferrying huge platters of food to buffet tables, brusquely telling everyone who greets her, and thus interrupts her, "Hi. Hi. Have some of this. Eat! Eat!"

Once everyone has arrived, schmoozed, and knocked back a glass or two, Sam ascends the steps to a raised dining area and asks for everyone's attention. The crowd knows to shut up, because this part is always good. By way of introduction, he spins a tale applying context and value to the event's star attraction or organization, managing also to draw on Jewish tradition, Mayan lore, Borscht Belt comics, McCarthy-Humphrey '68, and God knows what else, never failing to nail his landing within that delicate window-not too brief, not too long-that reminds the audience he is merely the presenter, the feature event is yet to come.

Watching him do this a few times, listening to him discuss the importance of getting something done for the common good (as opposed to engaging in poison-tipped politics for the sake of power), you start thinking, "Damn, that is smooth." When he waves you over to share some first-rate Scotch brought by Art Himmelman, you think, "This act should play in D.C."

It is Himmelman, the consultant and long-time liberal activist (and the man who hooked up Wellstone and the Kaplans), who distills the essence of the Kaplans' enduring influence: "It is a genuine intellectual maturity," he says-a form of high emotional intelligence that others seem to sense instinctively.

On this particular day, Ellison follows Sam up the steps and makes an impassioned call to action on a slate of liberal causes: immigration, cronyism in D.C., the war in Iraq, predatory lending. Toward the end, he strikes a modest note of fealty, thanking Sam and Sylvia "for holding an event for me, right here in this house at exactly the moment I needed it most." He is referring to his moment of bestowal a year earlier.

Over at his North Side office a few days later, I ask Ellison to describe how he made the sale to the Kaplans back in the spring of '06-back when the Republican opposition machine was shrieking "Louis Farrakhan-lovin' Muslim" at 150 decibels. Worse still, plenty of mainstream Democrats were thinking this time the Republican echo chamber might be onto something.

"There was really no selling," replies Ellison. "I'm no good at trying to sell stuff." Ellison has a fairly high cock-of-the-walk factor, so it's not surprising he won't cop to his need to tie up with the state's most prominent political brokers."Here's the deal," he says, tilting back in his chair. "The way I see it, Sam and Sylvia are people who have a strong sense of the common good and what has to be done to achieve it. Did I want their endorsement and support? Of course. Not only do they have resources, they have contacts to people who have resources. They are what I think of as practical idealists. Once we finally had a chance to talk, what I wanted to make clear was that I thought we shared the desire to see more inclusive government. If that's making a sale, well, OK. But we just had a very good conversation. We just sat at a table down at the convention in Rochester and kicked it for awhile."

In truth, that seemingly impromptu conversation in Rochester had been coordinated by attorney Andy Lugar and urged upon the Kaplans by prominent DFL activist and state representative, Frank Hornstein, who had already made his philosophic peace with Ellison."The Kaplans really are guided by a deep-seated sense of values which I had also seen in Keith," says Hornstein. "So in my mind they needed to get together." The affection between the Kaplans and Ellison seems real, even allowing for the usual swoony talk between politician and patron. Individually, all three echo the same issues and positions. Sam and Sylvia, together and separately, gush over Ellison's commitment, his Wellstone-like energy for both campaigning and working his district, and the discipline he's shown in his first year in D.C. (probably due in no small part to the Kaplans' having connected him with former Wellstone chief of staff Kari Moe).

"With Sylvia," says Ellison, "you can feel her decisions are motivated by her heart, while Sam is more nuanced. You can see him rolling all the factors around in his head. I think that's what makes them a good team, and they are very much a team-a big-time team. And they really respect each other."

I asked Ellison, as I did everyone for this story, if they could think of a conservative counterpart to the Kaplans. Is, for example, Bill Cooper, former Republican Party chair and chairman/CEO of TCF Financial, equally effective in terms of providing a reliable conduit to influence, in terms of getting pieces moved on the political chess board?

"Cooper's thing is fear-based," says Ellison. "With Sam and Sylvia you never get this feeling that ‘our good fortune depends on your demise.' I don't know what you've seen, but Sam seems like a pretty happy guy to me. He's not some cranky seventy-year-old, and he is certainly not an arrogant dude. "

Sam's office in the Wells Fargo Center is not at all the daunting, pin-striped, baronial sanctum sanctorum one might imagine. There is no sinister John Grisham quality to it. Instead of slabs of lacquered mahogany and oil portraits of jowly robber barons, the green-walled space is a tasteful riot of art, artifacts, and furniture that he and Sylvia have collected on their travels. Getting Sam to thoroughly deconstruct the specific qualities and techniques of his success is not easy. While he acknowledges the prominence of his firm and the picture of the law-school golden boy Durenberger paints, he isn't particularly comfortable with the term "kingmaker," I gather because of its insinuation of crass, ham-fisted power. He prefers instead to guide the conversation, with a seasoned attorney's skill, toward a more refined topic-such as the vital need for respectful interaction between business and political adversaries. Sam is proud that many of his biggest clients are Republicans. But he is quick to clarify: "I have no Republican friends or clients-none-who believe that the most important issue is being anti-gay marriage or anti-abortion. Republicans that I know, the people that I know and understand, want to reduce the amount of government regulation, reduce the amount of government taxation. They want to take government more out of your life. Those are the kinds of issues that I understand. I don't agree with them, but I can understand them. That's why we come together. They have a point of view I can respect."

Major Democrats who aren't in sync with the Kaplans, and who don't see an upside to going on record with disparaging comments, seem most irritated by the couple's big footprint of influence, and as a few mentioned, Sam's representation of people like UnitedHealth Group tycoon Bill McGuire and mega-car dealer Denny Hecker. In Sam's office, I bring up the Bill Cooper-as-counterpart example and Sam reminds me that he represented Cooper in TCF's $35 million negotiations for naming rights to the Gophers' football stadium, and that he sought Cooper's advice eight years ago when he considered selling Bank Windsor.

"Bill encouraged me to sell, and he was absolutely right. He is a banker par excellence, and he has tremendous understanding of the industry and timing."

But, I point out, the political style of the legendarily prickly Cooper bears little resemblance to the Kaplan touch. Sam smiles at the comparison. "I believe [Bill] has a tone that is much harsher than his real makeup. Bill," he adds diplomatically, "can be impatient at times."

The take-away point is that in business and politics, ambitious, successful people gravitate to good judgment. Moreover, the contacts sustained via good judgment are fragile, and those who exert influence engage in destructive, exclusionary activities at their reputation's peril.

"Because I believe in a negotiating process that is congenial and convivial, where people sit down and reason together," says Sam, "people don't believe that I might be a partisan political person. They should. The truth of the matter is that I believe passionately in partisan politics. The notion of candidates sort of smoothing over what their positions are is not attractive to me at all. We should be who we are. Once elected it's quite a different matter. People should come together and look for ways to find common ground. I just want to be sure we have our point of view at the table."

That said, he agrees these are times that call for his side, liberals and Democrats, to play a tougher game than they have. The stench from tactics like the Swift Boaters vs. John Kerry appalls the fair-minded. But there is no denying that it helped turn an election. The bare-knuckle style of Rahm Emanuel, the current head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, "is not my style," says Sam. "But it is effective. He won, didn't he? And yes, I think we need to be tougher."

While Sylvia and Sam, along with Mike and Ann Ciresi, Vance and Darin Opperman, and Walter and Joan Mondale, co-chaired the Minnesota committee for John Kerry in '04, their enthusiasm waned when it became clear Kerry wasn't tough enough. According to Sam, "he had a lot of people pushing him around. He was paying attention to people who had never won an election."

They're jazzed about Barack Obama because they believe they see someone who fully mirrors their values.

"We have gone to a lot of Barack Obama events," says Sam. "We have had dinner with him, quietly and privately. We've seen the people there." The Kaplans appear to have made an art of studying those whom the ambitious call their friends.

"First of all, they are so gracious. His is a Midwest campaign. But this is a tough guy. Sylvia will tell you this is the first candidate she's ever met whom she didn't want to tell what he should say." Sam smiles at that one.

Sylvia one-on-one is warmer, more open, and funnier than in her bustling hostess mode. One late summer morning, weeks after that recent Ellison event, the big house quiet, we sat out on the screened porch. Any seeming wariness quickly evaporated and she became a torrent of humorous stories, anecdotes, and opinions.

It isn't difficult to see how the Kaplan yin/yang works. The mention of hard-driving Rahm Emanuel prompts the story of Emanuel coming to Minneapolis and having the very bad manners (and judgment) to deliver ultimatums to Sam up in Sam's office.

From there Sylvia jumps to how much she and her husband enjoy Entourage, the HBO show featuring a character, the reptilian Hollywood agent Ari Gold, who is based on Rahm's brother, Ari.

Talking about how they bonded with Paul and Sheila Wellstone, and how they interacted with Wellstone once he was in office, she says, "I've told you that Sam and I are both busybodies and news junkies. We want to know what's going on. And just because you want to have influence, it isn't that you want to have perks and everything. I mean, it was pointless with Paul anyway. You never got any perks from him." She jokes, "He didn't even get us decent seats at the inaugural.

"But because we live in a different world, we feel we can tell [candidates and office holders] stuff that would be useful. The idea of having access of that kind"-she's referring to, say, picking up the phone and chatting with a U.S. senator you were instrumental in getting to D.C.-"is very seductive for us." It's like she's offering something of a concession when she says this, as though the buzz of proximity to power is still there so many years down the line.

"But Sam and I were talking about that just this morning; that candidates are like children. They'll ultimately break your heart. Not because they don't listen to you but because they end up making decisions that aren't good for themselves."

The Kaplans attend comparatively modest Shir Tikvah synagogue in south Minneapolis, which, as Rabbi Stacy Offner there proudly describes it, "is not a status synagogue, which I think is a reflection of them. What is important to them is the idea that belief and conviction come before status and influence-that and their belief that justice is dependent on equal access for everyone."

Of course, it's clear that the kind of "access" the Kaplans have is exceedingly rare. Most of us don't get our senator on the line when we call his office. If invited, political top dogs probably wouldn't jump at the chance to grace our homes with their presence. And we most likely don't view our candidates as childlike in any way. That said, it's doubtful that many have as much conviction about politics as the Kaplans do.

Asked to comment on the Kaplans' overwhelmingly positive reception, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie leaves me with this: "I think the lesson you draw from the Kaplans is that the old-fashioned values of etiquette and patient relationship-building-actually taking the time to have lunch or dinner with people you might not perfectly agree with, or have them over to your home-still work. Not only does it work, but the fact they continue to do it totally refutes those voices on the radio and other places saying it isn't possible.

"It takes a certain amount of social grace and understanding. But the Kaplans are proof it is possible. And ask yourself, how much do we need those qualities now?"