Word: krauses
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When then-President Lyndon B. Johnson denigrated "pointy-headed intellectuals who can't park a bicycle straight," he wasn't counting on Richard A. Kraus. The former Harvard financial aid officer and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) dean has been defying stereotypes beneath the glided dome of the Massachusetts Statehouse since January as Senator from the state's Fourth Middle sex district...
...Kraus received his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1968, and has since built a reputation on campus as a precise, efficient Harvard bureaucrat. Although the demands of his new job are entirely different. Kraus has apparently brought his appetite for detail to his political life. When he announced his candidacy for the State Senate seat vacated by his predecessor in an unsuccessful bid for Lieutenant Governor, he faced a crowded seven man Democratic primary. But by analyzing voting patterns to past elections, his staff predicted election results to within a surprising 100 votes out of 35,000 cast...
...Kraus is above all an administrator, who sees efficiency as a crucial element of his "compact with the voters." "You are witnessing one of the failures of that compact," he says point to the open windows in his overheated fifth-floor office. Grinning, Kraus explains the state renovated the building a few years back and put the heating system on the roof, where it must fight the natural tendency of heat to rise and force water down five floors into the freezing basement. It is with that kind of administrative inefficiency that Kraus feels his experience at GSAS best equips...
...overheated offices are hardly the most serious problem Kraus has had to face as he attempts to operate within the loosely structured guidelines of Massachusetts politics. Coming from the decentralized administration of Harvard. Klaus said he had been warned that the Senate was a highly centralized organization, where arm twisting leadership would mandate voting patterns. However, he didn't find the legislative power-brokers he expected, he discovered instead "a building which runs entirely on rumor. It's the only place I've been where you can get rumor first-hand from the principal of the rumor...
...example of dark intrigue which Kraus recalls from what seems to be a generous supply is the day he arrived and found that all the furniture save his desk, chair, and bookcase had been stolen in the middle of the night by a covetous fellow Senator. Having tracked the furniture, after receiving "at least six" stories about where it was and when it would be back. Kraus found that he couldn't simply retrieve it but would have to wait for the Senate President to reassert his authority. "Ultimately, they did have the confrontation," and the furniture was recovered...