POLITICS: Newly-inducted governor promises to hit
the ground running.
the associated press
ALBANY — Gov. Eliot Spitzer made sure to start his first day in office with a running start.
Before dawn in a chilly rain, the freshly sworn-in governor ran a 2-mile circuit around Albany’s Washington Park as more than 100 supporters trailed him through the serpentine course.
The early morning shakedown made sense for a politician who promised to hit the ground running on “Day One.” New governors traditionally try to signal the tone of their administration on the first day — though they usually wait for dawn, and they usually don’t start in the rain.
Spitzer hit the trail before 6 a.m. with a New York Giants knit cap and an old attorney general’s sweat shirt to protect him from the cold spray. Windows of parkside apartments were almost all dark, hinting at people still warm in their beds on New Year’s Day.
“Whose idea was this?”
he asked supporters when
he showed up at the park’s
lakehouse.
Actually, it was his. The run made good on a campaign promise. Spitzer, officially sworn in Sunday night at the governor’s mansion, said he got about three hours sleep overnight and was getting by on adrenaline.
He finished in under
14 minutes.
After the run, he joked with Albany Mayor Gerry Jennings and held his first impromptu gubernatorial news conference in the rain, steam rising from his head.
“Rain is cleansing,” he said. “It will wash away the dirt and the grime. We’re going start fresh.”
Then he was whisked off back to the governor’s mansion several blocks away.
•••
Spitzer changed into a suit and bright blue tie before 9 a.m. to sign five executive orders at the mansion. The orders — which include tighter rules for state employees on accepting gifts and making political contributions — are the first shots in his long-promised campaign to reform ethics at the state Capitol. He said he hoped the state Legislature follows suit with its own ethics legislation, though that’s far from certain.
The rest of the morning was crammed with private meetings and public ceremonies. He met with congressional representatives from around New York. He escorted his wife Silda and three daughters to a church service featuring an ecumenical lineup of rabbis, reverends and an imam conferring blessings (a Unitarian-Universalist reverend read him advice from the Buddha). And he walked hand-in-hand with his wife up the state Capitol’s grand staircase, where George Pataki and his wife waited for him at the top.
Pataki noted that the sun was poking through the clouds for the first time that day — a good sign since the inauguration ceremony was scheduled outdoors two hours later. Then the two men met behind doors.
“The governor doesn’t need my advice,” Pataki told reporters as the two couples walked into the Capitol.
“Yes I do,” said Spitzer.
•••
Scheduling an inaugural ceremony outside in January in upstate New York is a risk. But not only did the rain clear by Spitzer’s 1 p.m. speech, it was warm enough for him to go without a coat.
Standing outside New York’s cathedral of a state Capitol, Spitzer again and again hit on themes of reform and vitality. He used the word “change” and its derivations seven times in his speech and he placed himself in the continuum of New York’s most successful governors. Not only did he evoke Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, he had the great grandson of Alfred E. Smith host the ceremony.
Since it was performed outdoors, the ceremony also seemed a bit like a presidential inauguration. Spitzer echoed President Kennedy’s famous “Ask not what your country can do for you ... “ line when he called for a politics that “asks not what is in it for me, but always what is in it for us.”
Spitzer broke tradition with the outdoor ceremony. Past governors often used the Assembly chamber. Mario Cuomo held his 1983 inauguration in the bigger, blander convention center across the street, and Pataki supersized his inauguration in 1995 by packing 13,000 supporters into Albany’s indoor arena.
Spitzer’s ceremony — cast as a people’s inauguration — was short on frills aside from a cannon salute. A youth orchestra played “Fanfare for the Common Man,” and Judy Collins sang “This Little Light of Mine.”
•••
“Thank you for visiting.”
“Good to see you.”
“Thank you so much for coming up.”
“I will do my best.”
Spitzer went back to the mansion after the speech to stand in the main hallway and shake hands with a line of New Yorkers snaking through the home. He had been up already for close to 12 hours but showed little sign of wear. He signed autographs, snuck in swigs of water from a bottle and mades a point addressing children who came by with their parents.
“Fourth grade!” he told one boy. “I wish I were in fourth grade again.”
After the welcome line, Spitzer was to cap off his first day in office at a concert in downtown Albany featuring James Taylor and Natalie Merchant.
In all, Day One included a two-mile run, a 2,200-word speech and hundreds of handshakes.
Still, one very important figure loomed for Spitzer: 1,460 days left in his term to keep up the pace.
