She reached former Mayor at home, and pressed for his advice on how to navigate the rough-and-tumble world of New York politics. (“Never walk away from a reporter,” he admonished her.)
She exchanged little more than polite pleasantries with the Manhattan borough president, , during what he called a “record-setting conversation — it was timed at less than a minute.”
When she could not reach City Councilman Robert Jackson, she left a message, but no number for him to call back. “That showed that she didn’t really want to talk to me,” Mr. Jackson said.
Over the last few days, , Mayor ’s head-turning choice for schools chancellor, has been furiously dialing members of New York’s political class to simultaneously introduce herself and beat back mounting skepticism of her qualifications.
Those on the receiving end of the calls have variously described the conversations as charmingly informal and maddeningly vague.
Almost all of them said it was impossible, even after speaking with Ms. Black, to glean her educational philosophy or determine exactly how she intended to run the school system. When , the Brooklyn borough president, asked why she wanted a job so far afield from her media career, Ms. Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, replied “that she wanted to make a difference,” he recalled.
Ms. Black’s outreach is part of a growing public-relations offensive from City Hall, which is determined to regain control of the intensifying debate over her surprise selection last week. Those close to Mr. Bloomberg asked three of his predecessors — , and Mr. Koch — to sign a letter backing her.
Mayoral aides are also encouraging high-powered academic leaders from universities around the country to express their support for her. And they are pushing reliable allies in the business world to publicly embrace her nomination.
A powerful group of chief executives in the city has begun circulating copies of a letter that calls on the state education commissioner to grant Ms. Black a waiver from the state law requiring that those who run school districts have certain education credentials and experience. (Mr. Bloomberg officially requested that waiver late Wednesday, with a six-page memo outlining his arguments for selecting her.)
The letter from the business leaders, which has been signed by 75 executives, pointedly seeks to blunt questions about her lack of experience in schools. “Cathie will have the support of the many exceptional educational professionals at the Department of Education,” it reads. “We have no doubt that she is up for the job.”
Many of the corporate moguls and elected officials lining up behind Ms. Black cited their instinctive faith in Mr. Bloomberg’s judgment, and forcefully defended his right to pick whomever he pleases. “Why in the world would he pick somebody who he does not think can do the job?” asked , the former speaker of the City Council, who has written a letter endorsing Ms. Black.
City Hall, which seemed oddly quiet over the last week, as Ms. Black’s detractors dominated the airwaves, appeared to have settled on a strategy of characterizing her opponents as enemies of mayoral control of the city’s school system, which was wrested away from the Board of Education after Mr. Bloomberg was elected in 2001.
“There are those who have opposed reform who are opposing Cathie Black,” said , a deputy mayor. “And in that sense, she has become a proxy in the fight over the future of the schools, whether we go in the right direction or whether we go back.”
“The playing field,” he added, “is not going to be ceded to the opponents of reform.”
The pushback, however, is late, and has yet to quell discontent over Ms. Black’s nomination.
Even within the Bloomberg administration, some aides are continuing to express dismay over a highly secretive search and hurried vetting process that was conducted without advice from top aides to the mayor, many of whom met Ms. Black for the first time minutes before she was introduced as the next chancellor.
A former top aide to Mr. Bloomberg said the mayor’s decision to circumvent his own advisers on such a major decision left some of them wondering whether he valued their work and counsel.
In her phone chats with city officials, Ms. Black has sought to soothe hurt feelings and allay concern over her nomination.
But there have been lighter, even tender moments, as well. She accepted an invitation, from Councilman Domenic M. Recchia Jr., to attend a local P.T.A. breakfast in Brooklyn.
She told Mr. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, that she looked forward to “getting knocked off the front pages” of the city’s newspapers.
And she showed a razor-sharp memory by recalling a conversation that she had with Mr. Koch decades ago, at the offices of New York magazine. “I had totally forgotten that,” Mr. Koch said.
She has inquired about families, discovered mutual friends and issued a flurry of promises to attend lunches and brainstorming sessions.
And she has left no Rolodex page unturned.
During a telephone interview Wednesday, Mr. Dinkins, the former mayor, was talking about how he had not spoken with Ms. Black, but was looking forward to it, when suddenly an assistant informed him of another call.
“I understand she is on the line right now, actually,” Mr. Dinkins said. “ I’ve got to go.”
src: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/nyregion/18black.html?nl=nyregion&emc=ura1
