Man in the News | Richard Ravitch

Baseball War Was Practice for Senate’s

Richard Ravitch, Gov. David A. Paterson’s choice to be lieutenant governor, has a résumé thick with experience at some of the most unwieldy public institutions in New York. But some of his most instructive experience for navigating Albany’s disjointed politics may come not from his days at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or the Urban Development Corporation — but rather from his three years as chief labor negotiator for Major League Baseball.
In New York political circles, Mr. Ravitch, who turned 76 on Tuesday, is known as the whiz to whom governors have turned to help rescue some of the state’s most financially beleaguered entities: the Urban Development Corporation in the late 1970s and the transit agency twice — first in the early 1980s, then again last year.

But Mr. Ravitch was also one of the most integral — and divisive — figures in baseball at a time when team owners were mired in a messy dispute over how to share revenue among large and small franchises. As part of his revenue-sharing plan, Mr. Ravitch suggested a cap on players’ salaries, a move that ultimately helped precipitate the 1994-95 strike that crippled baseball.

In other words, Mr. Ravitch became familiar with an environment in which warring factions fight over choices they would rather not have to make. That, in a nutshell, is Albany these days.

“I think anyone who could deal with the egos of the baseball owners can certainly deal with the political problems we’re encountering,” said Irving R. Fischer, Mr. Ravitch’s longtime friend and business partner of more than 45 years, who has worked with him on various real estate development projects. Between his public jobs and Major League Baseball, Mr. Ravitch has had a lucrative career as a developer.

Mr. Fischer added: “Ravitch comes out of the construction and building business. If you’re faint of heart you don’t belong in that business. So he is a stand-up guy who will not take pushing around, but on the other hand, he also knows how to reach agreement with people.”

Of course, Mr. Ravitch was ultimately unsuccessful in brokering a deal between players and owners. His contract with Major League Baseball was not renewed, and he left at the end of 1994 at the height of the strike.

But friends and colleagues say his familiarity with the intricacies of New York politics leave him well suited to ride herd on a Senate that is locked in a dispute over who can rightfully claim the majority.

“He has that kind of personality, that kind of charm, that’s difficult for anyone to turn him down,” said Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the State Assembly, who has known Mr. Ravitch for more than 30 years.

The two worked together most recently earlier this year, when Mr. Ravitch had the task of selling the Legislature on a report he authored that recommended lawmakers take the undesirable step of raising subway fares and adding tolls to East River bridges.

(When it adopted its rescue plan for the authority in May, the Legislature disregarded some of Mr. Ravitch’s recommendations, including the tolls. But it did adopt a version of the payroll tax he proposed, which was a crucial element of his plan.)

“They may never agree with him,” Mr. Silver added, “but it’s very difficult not to sit with him and not hear his case.”

Mr. Silver said Mr. Ravitch was unassuming and lacked ego. “He does not have an iota of the arrogance that you’d think someone of his accomplishments would be entitled to,” Mr. Silver said.

Mr. Fischer said Mr. Ravitch asked him on Tuesday to meet him for lunch the following day. And when the two met in Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Fischer said the lieutenant-governor-designate kept the secret of his pending appointment so well guarded that he did not mention it until the two sat down to eat.

“I said, ‘Now the question is, what do you want to do?’ And he said, ‘I want to help the governor get this thing straightened out,’ ” Mr. Fischer said.

Mr. Ravitch has a history of being well regarded by both Republicans and Democrats, though he is a registered Democrat and was elected a delegate for President Obama in 2008 New York primary — a role that took a bit of gumption to seek in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s home state.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, picked Mr. Ravitch to lead the city’s school system in 1995. But Mr. Ravitch ultimately withdrew his name from consideration because he said he believed the school system needed major structural reform, not merely a new chancellor.

Mr. Ravitch is also steeped in Washington politics. His foray into politics came in 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the National Commission on Urban Problems. He now shares an office suite in Rockefeller Center with Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman.

He seems to thrive in situations of upheaval and financial disintegration. Gov. Hugh L. Carey enlisted him to rescue the Urban Development Corporation in 1975. By the time he left, four years later, he had restored the agency to solvency, enabling it to complete tens of thousands of houses and apartments.

He oversaw a similarly daunting task at the transportation authority, which Mr. Carey picked him to lead, from 1979 to 1983. The authority’s infrastructure was a shambles when he arrived, and he was able to secure financing to buy new buses, subway tracks, signals and cars. Much of that money came from Albany.

In a brief phone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Ravitch, a father of two grown sons, said of his latest task, “I just hope to help the state through a period of fiscal pressures and economic downturns, just as I have several times in the past.”