Brooke Masters' fans are an eclectic bunch: they write book reviews for national publications, track corporate scandals, and listen to Albany's WROW-AM, a radio station that caters to political junkies.
With Governor-elect Spitzer weeks away from taking office, Masters' excellent biography on New York's next governor, Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer (2006, Times Books/Henry Holt & Co.), deserves a wider audience.
"The book is well-researched, even-handed and thoughtful," wrote Bryan Burrough, in a Washington Post review. "Masters will no doubt become cable television's leading Spitzerologist for years to come."
In fact, it was while covering Attorney General Spitzer as a New York-based business reporter for the Washington Post that Masters crossed paths with him and his senior aides, subsequently converting that access into a highly readable primer on Spitzer's life and times.
"Spitzer tapped into this sense among some voters that the economic system is rigged against them," Masters said, when talking of his electoral appeal to New Yorkers. "People thought it was all right for Jack Grubman to make a nice living but not at the expense of grandma," she continued, referring to the analyst who claimed to have touted a stock to help his kids get into a prestigious private school. Once they got into that school, Grubman went back to denigrating the stock he'd been praising. The disclosure came amid one of Spitzer's many Wall Street investigations.
"The prosecutor's persona isn't going to work as governor," Masters added. "In order to succeed, Spitzer is going to have to grow as a politician but I think he's capable of it."
Masters, who joined The Financial Times last month as a senior business reporter, said that four major issues are likely to emerge early in the Spitzer administration.
Two are playing out this month as the Legislature reacts to a bipartisan commission's recommendation to close certain hospitals and Albany County's district attorney considers filing charges against state comptroller Alan Hevesi for misuse of public funds.
Governor Spitzer's resolution of the state Court of Appeals decision in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit will also be watched closely, she said. New York City is owed from the state $1.9 billion more each year to fund its schools, the Court ruled, well below the $4.6 billion candidate Spitzer promised. She also envisions a concerted effort to reform the state's workers' compensation system.
Masters, a Harvard graduate who earned a master's of science in economic history from the London School of Economics, has a stake in this as a New Yorker, too. She and her husband, John, reside in Mamaroneck, NY with their two children, 7-year-old Andrew and 4-year-old Eleanor.
Yet as one of the nation's foremost Spitzer experts, the invitations keep pouring in. Indeed, Masters has already agreed to address the New York Association of Counties in Albany on Jan. 31, 2007. No word as yet on whether the proceedings will be carried live on WROW-AM.
For more on the book and the author, you can log on to www.brookeamasters.com.
Mike Barry, a corporate communications consultant, has worked in government and journalism.
