Spitzer Transition Taps Parsons, Revives Spirit of Teddy Roosevelt

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The New York Sun

Unveiling a transition team that includes a possible candidate for mayor of New York City, a former president of Cornell University, and a top aide to Governor Carey, Governor-elect Spitzer said he was looking for the “best and the brightest” to take over Albany’s giant bureaucracy.

After a breakfast meeting with Mayor Bloomberg yesterday, Mr. Spitzer introduced to reporters members of an eclectic transition team that will be put in charge of overseeing what the governor-elect described as a nationwide talent search.

Of the six co-chairmen Mr. Spitzer picked to lead the team, the chairman of the board and CEO of Time Warner, Richard Parsons, is perhaps the best known to New Yorkers, both as a business leader and for his civic involvement in the city. Mr. Parsons assisted the transition teams of Mr. Bloomberg and Mayor Giuliani and runs Mr. Bloomberg’s anti-poverty commission.

By selecting Mr. Parsons, the Democratic governor-elect brings into his fold a Republican who is talked about as a potential rival of the city’s Democratic comptroller, William Thompson, in the 2009 mayoral race. Both are thought to be considering a mayoral run.

A fund-raiser for Mr. Thompson and a lobbyist, Suri Kasirer, said Mr. Spitzer’s choice of Mr. Parsons was a wise one. She dismissed the notion that the governor-elect was sending a signal about his preferences in the contest to succeed Mr. Bloomberg.

“At this point, neither of them are declared candidates. I don’t think this benefits Parsons one way or another with respect to a possible mayoral run,”she said.

Mr. Spitzer reached back into the Carey administration in his choice of Peter Goldmark, who was the state’s budget director in the 1970s. Now the director of a research group, the Climate and Air Program at Environmental Defense, Mr. Goldmark also has been the chief executive officer of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which is owned by the New York Times Co.

The education point person on the Spitzer transition team is Hunter Rawlings, who was president of Cornell University between 1995 and 2003. Mr. Rawlings is a globe-trotting classics specialist who established a Cornell medical college in Qatar during his tenure.

Another member of Mr. Spitzer’s team is one of the next governor’s closest friends and most frequent tennis partners, Lloyd Constantine, a top antitrust lawyer who ran Mr. Spitzer’s attorney general transition team in 1998.

The other members are Elizabeth Moore, a partner at the law firm Nixon Peabody who advises corporations on sexual harassment and discrimination issues, and Rosanna Rosado, the publisher of El Diario, the Spanish-language daily newspaper.

Mr. Spitzer’s top political aide, Richard Baum, a former Orange County legislator who was Mr. Spitzer’s chief of staff in the attorney general’s office, will serve as the team’s executive director.

Mr. Spitzer made a point of excluding elected officials and lobbyists from his transition team.

Twelve years ago, then Governor-elect Pataki tapped the Republican chairman of Nassau County, Joseph Mondello, to oversee his transition team. An ally of Senator D’Amato, Mr. Mondello at the time was director of Nassau County’s Off-track Betting Corporation.

Mr. Spitzer’s transition team has begun to solicit resumes to fill hundreds of executive branch slots and jobs in the more than 50 state agencies comprising New York’s sprawling state government, from the Office of Aging to the Workers Compensation Board. The team will spend the next two months recruiting commissioners, directors, deputies, and assistants who will take the reins of Albany’s bureaucracy.

“We are obviously hoping to get a tidal wave of resumes,” Mr. Spitzer said. “We are looking for the best and brightest without regard to party affiliation.”

The transition team went live yesterday with a Web site, www.transitionny.org, which will serve as a repository for the thousands of resumes the Spitzer team expects to receive.

Mr. Spitzer’s photograph was notably absent from the site, which instead highlighted a quote from a former governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt, about raising standards.

Mr. Spitzer spoke to reporters after having a continental breakfast with Mr. Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion, where they exchanged political gossip and discussed the road ahead for what could be the signature capital projects of the governor-elect’s administration, including the Second Avenue subway line and the proposed Moynihan Station conversion of the Farley Post Office.

During the press conference, a reporter asked Mr. Spitzer how he intends to push through his governing agenda past a Legislature legendary for spoiling the executive’s priorities.

Mr. Spitzer responded by saying that “the governor has subpoena power,” a droll reference to his document-hunting days as attorney general.

“The most persuasive tool the governor has is the capacity to harness public opinion in support of policies that have broad and deep support,” he said. Mr. Spitzer, 47, drew a state record 69% of the vote in Tuesday’s election against Republican John Faso.

Mr. Spitzer is flying to Puerto Rico this weekend for a two-day trip he described as a combination of a getaway and a chance to have breakfast with the governor of the commonwealth, Anibal Acevedo Vila, who endorsed Mr. Spitzer, and to meet with black and Puerto Rican state legislators at the annual Somos El Futuro conference.

If Mr. Spitzer has any plans to try to depose the Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, the conference would provide him an opportunity to form an alliance with the Assembly’s Puerto Rican and Hispanic task force.


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