Winning isn’t everything…

But it sure puts food on the table. Nice, clean win for the Gov. While I could never quite scrounge up actual doubt that we would win, there was the possibility that it would be much closer than expected. And, of course, Cuomo’s people never saw it coming in ’94. So it was nice to see the policies and the person vindicated, and to see that the people of the state wouldn’t vote for a candidate who seemed to view the job as his logical next step, or one who played the tired old song about running the state like a business. The state ain’t a business. It’s not supposed to be a business. Get off this….
So, now, some level of security for a while and a million more things to do. I’m very thrilled NYC got the Olympic bid for the USA, because I’d really really really like to be involved in that if we get the final bid. We’ve got to rebuild lower Manhattan. We’ve got to clean up construction diesel emissions. And so many other things. How fucking cool is it that I get to be involved in that? (When I start talking about public administration, I start to sound like Wil Wheaton. I can’t help it.)
The girls were actually a little nervous last night, and I was probably more dismissive than I should have been. When I was 6 or 7 my dad changed jobs, and it was a little stressful. I don’t remember if he was out of work when he switched, or going to be laid off, or if he just made a good move, but I remember it as scary for me that he was going to change jobs. When I left the Senate, Hannah wasn’t even 2, and it confused and worried her that I went to “new work”. She thought that the buildings at the plaza (“old work”) would actually disappear some day. We kept having to assure her that everything was fine, that the buildings would stay there (we drove through it every morning on the way to day care, so she may have had concern for its physical state), that other people still worked there but that I didn’t. Then when she was almost 4, and Bekah was a baby, I changed locations again, but then I was Boss of the Beach, which made me way cool. For a while. Then I went back to where I had been, and by the time we moved downtown last year, neither of them was too concerned. Then last week it finally connected that I worked for the Governor, and that if the Governor lost his job, I would lose mine. Then they got a little nervous. But, as I said, not to worry….
I often have people from outside the appointee realm comment on how they just couldn’t live with that uncertainty — many of them are civil servants, safe no matter what. But really, it’s a lot better than being a middle drone or a worker in a sizeable corporation these days, where your fate doesn’t depend on your performance, your boss’s performance, or much of anything else besides your stock price and whether some deal-making asshole has arranged to have your company sucked up into some other company’s over-leveraged maw. THAT’s what would suck. One thing I liked about small business was that you succeeded, or you didn’t, and it mostly depended on what you did. It was affected by the economy, sure, and if you were in a business there wasn’t much call for, or if, as in the case of typesetting, the handwriting was on the wall, then you’d do best to find another line of work. (Which I did.) But you weren’t subject to takeovers, you didn’t have to deliver to shareholders, and you made so little money that going out of business would almost HAVE to improve your fortunes.
So, four more years!