Spitzer Assembles a Top-Ten Team of Key Advisers

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The New York Sun

With the election only four weeks away, the Democratic candidate for governor, Eliot Spitzer, has already begun to assemble his administration and map out his first year in office. Though Mr. Spitzer must face his Republican opponent, John Faso, in another debate and in the general election, speculation is already growing about to whom Mr. Spitzer will turn for help in charting his course.

Below is a list of Mr. Spitzer’s 10 most important advisers, assembled by The New York Sun based on a series of interviews with members of the Spitzer camp and those close to it. Like Mr. Spitzer himself, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School who is now the attorney general, many have law degrees and Ivy League educations. Most are strangers to the world of Albany politics. They are unfamiliar to most New Yorkers but will likely be the newest members of the state’s governing elite.

Richard Baum: A former legislator from Orange County and graduate of Cornell University, Mr. Baum, 37, is the “fireman” on the Spitzer team, insiders say. When Mr. Spitzer’s choice of lieutenant governor, Senate minority leader David Paterson, angered Harlem’s political elders, it was Mr. Baum who quickly smoothed ruffled egos. As chief of staff in the attorney general’s office, and now as campaign manager, he has built a reputation as a fiercely loyal, intense, behind-the-scenes lieutenant. After losing a county executive bid, his polling firm, Global Strategies Group, put him in touch with Mr. Spitzer, who hired him as campaign chief in 1998. He will likely resume his chief-of-staff job in a Spitzer administration.

Jon Cohen: A rare newcomer to crack Mr. Spitzer’s inner circle, Dr. Cohen in August stepped down as the chief medical officer at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, raising speculation that his next job will be health commissioner. Dr. Cohen, whose wife, Karen Kostroff, is a top breast cancer surgeon in the state, joined the campaign as an unpaid adviser after dropping his bid for lieutenant governor. His ideas on fixing health care in the state — he says the state should ramp up its bulk purchases of generic drugs and decrease reliance on nursing home care — are planks in Mr. Spitzer’s platform.

Lloyd Constantine: Described as Mr. Spitzer’s “kindred soul,” Mr. Constantine, a powerful antitrust lawyer, is perhaps the attorney general’s closest friend, most articulate promoter of his political career, and his morning tennis partner. They met in 1982 when Mr. Spitzer was an ambitious intern in the New York attorney general’s office, where Mr. Constantine was in charge of antitrust enforcement. While it’s unlikely that Mr. Constantine will leave the private sector to join a Spitzer administration, he may be tapped again to lead his transition team, as he did in 1998, when Mr. Spitzer was elected attorney general.

Paul Francis: A couple of years ago, Mr. Francis, who lent advice and donated money to Andrew Cuomo, introduced himself to Mr. Spitzer and asked if he could be helpful. He’s now the campaign’s top policy adviser, crafting the attorney general’s middle-of-the road budget platform — such as a $2.5 billion property tax-cutting plan that excludes the wealthiest New Yorkers — that is packed with enough specifics to resemble an actual governing plan but vague enough to slip between the teeth of critics like Mr. Faso. A graduate of Yale and New York University Law School, Mr. Francis was a managing director of Merrill Lynch Capital Partners, the CFO of Ann Taylor Stores Corp., and the founding CFO of Priceline.com. In 2001, he founded Cedar Street Group, a venture capital firm.

Michele Hirshman: When the attorney general is out of town, Ms. Hirshman is the one who runs the shop. A graduate of Yale Law School and former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, she has served as the attorney general’s second in command, advising him through the dramatic twists and turns of all the major Wall Street cases. It was a job she almost turned down. A run-in with Mr. Spitzer while he worked for the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, left her with “such bitter memories” that she refused to interview with the attorney general’s office until Mr. Spitzer apologized, according to an account in “Spoiling for a Fight,” a biography of the candidate. Mr. Spitzer has since reportedly described her as “the one and only indispensable person is this office.”

Martin Mack: A former mayor of the upstate city of Cortland and co-chairman of the state Democratic Party, Mr. Mack has been described as Mr. Spitzer’s ambassador to upstate and a “calming” influence on the campaign. He oversees the attorney general’s 11 regional offices, calling the shots when, for instance, someone sues a local state agency. He was put in charge of staffing the regional offices, a job that some said meant doling out patronage to local Democrats. Mr. Spitzer has said Mr. Mack’s job was to tell would-be patrons that their services weren’t needed.

William Mulrow: The Bronxville Democrat ran unsuccessfully for comptroller against Alan Hevesi in 2002 and is another close adviser to Mr. Spitzer with ties to the Global Strategy Group, the campaign’s polling firm. The company did polling for Mr. Mulrow and for the 2005 Democratic nominee for mayor, Fernando Ferrer, and is affiliated with the Mir-Ram Group, the consulting firm started by Bronx figures Roberto Ramirez and Luis Miranda. A graduate of Yale, Mr. Mulrow is a Democratic fundraiser and investment banker who has managed pension money for unions. He’s particularly close with Dennis Rivera, the president of the health care workers union 1199. He’s also an investor in Excelsior Racing Associates, one of the four groups bidding to take over thoroughbred racing in the state.

David Nocenti: A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, David Nocenti is Mr. Spitzer’s in-house lawyer. When the governor’s office or the Legislature needs the attorney general’s office to represent them in a case — such as the controversial Campaign for Fiscal Equity schools financing lawsuit — Mr. Nocenti is the point person in the office. His colleagues say he’s a wickedly smart, straight-shooting policy guy who shuns politics and the press. In the Cuomo administration, he helped develop ethics laws.

Silda Wall: Twelve years ago, Silda Wall, a Protestant from Concord, N.C., reluctantly accepted the role of political wife. The would-be first lady of New York State has evolved into Mr. Spitzer’s most passionate booster, crisscrossing the state to promote her husband’s campaign. One story has it that when Mr. Spitzer lacked the enthusiasm for dialing up donors in the 1998 race, his wife picked up the slack. She left corporate law at the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to found a nonprofit group called Children for Children, which encourages volunteerism at an early age. Magnetic and down-to-earth, Mrs.Wall has been likened to Laura Bush, only with a Harvard Law degree.

Mark Weprin: Elected to the state Assembly in 1994 in a Queens seat vacated by the death of his father, speaker Saul Weprin, Mr. Weprin has quietly emerged as Mr. Spitzer’s most trusted legislative adviser. People close to the campaign expect him to be a bridge between the Assembly and Mr. Spitzer, whose frosty relationship with Speaker Sheldon Silver would be tested in Mr. Spitzer’s first months in office. Mr. Weprin and Mr. Spitzer met in 1998 when Mr. Spitzer, as a lawyer for Lloyd Constantine’s boutique law firm, represented Liberty Cable, where Mr. Weprin’s wife worked as an attorney. Mr. Spitzer, who was taking a second stab at attorney general, sought advice from Mr. Weprin, one of only a handful of elected officials who endorsed him in the race.


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