her mind the B minus blot Professor Hoagland had placed on her record had been the decisive factor.
The newly minted Ph.D. did land a job with the Agency for International Development and spent three productive years helpingto get a housing project started in Ankara, Turkey, bulldozing bureaucrats and contractors as she went.
Returning from her foreign experience, Randilynn began her New York career as a civil servant in the State Housing Authority. She soon acquired a reputation for getting things done, and the governor at the time, a Republican, lifted her out of the civil service and gave her a political appointment as the deputy chairman of the Authority. He was intrigued by this small dynamo with a garbage mouth and, when he stood for reelection, asked her to run with him as lieutenant governor. (His first LG, a dim party hack from Buffalo, had been such an embarrassment that he was dropped after his first term.)
Randilynn was torn about accepting the offer. Her housing job was engrossing. The lieutenant governorship, by contrast, was generally thought (correctly) to be one of the most useless jobs in politics. Running as a Republican didn't bother herâthe SDS days were ancient history by then and she was not without political ambitionâso when the governor persisted, she agreed to accept the nomination, and they won in a landslide.
The press corps took to Randilynn, with her tough attitude and blue vocabulary. At her insistence, she was always called by her full given name, though the reporters uniformly called her "Randy Randy" behind her back. Receiving more attention than usual as the lieutenant governor (to the annoyance of the man who had brought her into politics), she was the logical candidate to run for her boss's job when he retired at the end of his second term. She did so, and by the narrowest of margins became the Empire State's first woman governor.
The election that Eldon won was deeply frustrating to her. Shewanted to see him beaten, but she simply could not bring herself to endorse his rabble-rousing opponent.
One day, while wandering around the second floor of City Hall prior to a hearing in the council chamber, she made an amazing discoveryâthe building contained an elaborate three-room suite that had originally been set aside for use of the governor when in New York City.
The very next morning she set her executive assistant, Pedro Raifeartaigh, to work finding out about the suite.
(Raifeartaigh was the governor's ever-patient sounding board as well as trusted adviser. Born Peter Rafferty, he had decided in midlife, at roughly the time he had given up drinking, to honor the heritage of his Hispanic mother and Irish father by changing his name. A political operative who had first worked for the governor when she was at the Housing Authority, he had moved with her as she successively became lieutenant governor and then governor, to the chagrin of copy editors at newspapers throughout the state.)
After a few hours of research and inquiries, he confirmed that the rooms had indeed been intended for the governor's use when City Hall was completed in 1811. The privilege had never been exercised and there did not appear to have been any agreement between the city and state concerning the space.
This did not deter Governor Foote, who hatched a plan that she told Raifeartaigh would drive Mayor Hoagland "apeshit." She would simply request that the suite now be put at her disposal for use as her personal city office.
How could Eldon refuse? she asked her assistant. The new mayor had promised economy in government, and what more visible example could there be than converting the Governor's Suite,now a museum that was seldom visited due to antiterrorist security precautions, to office use?
She asked Raifeartaigh to set up an appointment with Hoagland. She would come down to see him (the better to show him the hidden treasure upstairs from his own quarters).
Eldon was puzzled. Why was the
The newly minted Ph.D. did land a job with the Agency for International Development and spent three productive years helpingto get a housing project started in Ankara, Turkey, bulldozing bureaucrats and contractors as she went.
Returning from her foreign experience, Randilynn began her New York career as a civil servant in the State Housing Authority. She soon acquired a reputation for getting things done, and the governor at the time, a Republican, lifted her out of the civil service and gave her a political appointment as the deputy chairman of the Authority. He was intrigued by this small dynamo with a garbage mouth and, when he stood for reelection, asked her to run with him as lieutenant governor. (His first LG, a dim party hack from Buffalo, had been such an embarrassment that he was dropped after his first term.)
Randilynn was torn about accepting the offer. Her housing job was engrossing. The lieutenant governorship, by contrast, was generally thought (correctly) to be one of the most useless jobs in politics. Running as a Republican didn't bother herâthe SDS days were ancient history by then and she was not without political ambitionâso when the governor persisted, she agreed to accept the nomination, and they won in a landslide.
The press corps took to Randilynn, with her tough attitude and blue vocabulary. At her insistence, she was always called by her full given name, though the reporters uniformly called her "Randy Randy" behind her back. Receiving more attention than usual as the lieutenant governor (to the annoyance of the man who had brought her into politics), she was the logical candidate to run for her boss's job when he retired at the end of his second term. She did so, and by the narrowest of margins became the Empire State's first woman governor.
The election that Eldon won was deeply frustrating to her. Shewanted to see him beaten, but she simply could not bring herself to endorse his rabble-rousing opponent.
One day, while wandering around the second floor of City Hall prior to a hearing in the council chamber, she made an amazing discoveryâthe building contained an elaborate three-room suite that had originally been set aside for use of the governor when in New York City.
The very next morning she set her executive assistant, Pedro Raifeartaigh, to work finding out about the suite.
(Raifeartaigh was the governor's ever-patient sounding board as well as trusted adviser. Born Peter Rafferty, he had decided in midlife, at roughly the time he had given up drinking, to honor the heritage of his Hispanic mother and Irish father by changing his name. A political operative who had first worked for the governor when she was at the Housing Authority, he had moved with her as she successively became lieutenant governor and then governor, to the chagrin of copy editors at newspapers throughout the state.)
After a few hours of research and inquiries, he confirmed that the rooms had indeed been intended for the governor's use when City Hall was completed in 1811. The privilege had never been exercised and there did not appear to have been any agreement between the city and state concerning the space.
This did not deter Governor Foote, who hatched a plan that she told Raifeartaigh would drive Mayor Hoagland "apeshit." She would simply request that the suite now be put at her disposal for use as her personal city office.
How could Eldon refuse? she asked her assistant. The new mayor had promised economy in government, and what more visible example could there be than converting the Governor's Suite,now a museum that was seldom visited due to antiterrorist security precautions, to office use?
She asked Raifeartaigh to set up an appointment with Hoagland. She would come down to see him (the better to show him the hidden treasure upstairs from his own quarters).
Eldon was puzzled. Why was the
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