McCaughey’s explosion onto the political scene was based on a lie (or extreme ignorance, if you want to be more generous). In 1994, she wrote a scathing, deep-dive takedown of Hillarycare for The New Republic. The piece turned out to be total bunk, and its central argument (that patients would be prohibited from independently paying for additional care not covered by the Clinton plan) thoroughly disproven—but not before McCaughey became the It Girl of the political right.

Brainy, attractive, and outspoken, McCaughey soon found herself tapped to run as New York Governor George Pataki’s lieutenant. To put it delicately, she did not play well with others. Pataki aides quickly pegged her as self-absorbed and self-promoting to the point of disloyalty. Before she was even sworn in, McCaughey used her own money to hire a personal publicist. Once in office, she issued reports and press releases and gave speeches that contradicted her boss’s positions. She was also notoriously rough on staff. One campaign story had her ordering an aide out of her van on the side of a highway. As lieutenant governor, she was accused of using the troopers assigned to her security detail to run her personal errands, prompting Pataki to pull her detail for a couple of weeks. Party leaders and Pataki staffers alike began publicly slamming McCaughey as “unstable,” “paranoid,” and “too bizarre to describe.” The governor cut her out of meetings. In 1996, Republican leaders refused to make her a delegate to the RNC’s presidential-nominating convention.

How did McCaughey handle the pressure? Not so well. She accused Pataki aides of “McCarthyism,” accused the governor of instructing her driver to make her late for official events, and publicly feuded with other members of the administration. When the party refused her credentials to the convention, she tried to go as a member of the media. Word on the street was that she was in talks to become a Democrat and run for Senator Al D’Amato’s seat.

When Pataki dropped her from the ticket in 1997, McCaughey did indeed jump to the Democrats and promptly launched a gubernatorial challenge to Pataki, funded by her second husband, Wall Street financier Wilbur Ross. He was, at the time, still her boss. This is when things got really weird. A couple of months in, McCaughey became convinced Pataki was bugging her phones. She hired a counter-surveillance guy to sweep her home and office; when he didn’t find anything, she allegedly stiffed him his $3,000 fee. She continued to hemorrhage staff, and departing aides continued to trash her in the media. As one ex-staffer told the New York Daily News, “A lot of politicians are out for the limelight, but Betsy’s constant need 24 hours a day was something I’d never seen.”

Sound like a certain presidential nominee?