Out in Paperback / Mayor Erastus Corning

Mayor Erastus Corning -- Albany Icon, Albany Enigma by Paul Grondahl, SUNY Press '07, 508 pages, ISBN #0791472949. Index, sources and interviews, bibliography, no source notes, grouping of b&w images.

Writing the biography of a luminous, local figure is a selfless exercise. Projected book sales are usually limited to the subject's home territory, and often the publisher turns out to be a university press. But just as author William Kennedy's sales ranged far beyond his home town of Albany because of the transcendant quality of his "Albany cycle" of political novels, so too does Albany Times Union reporter Paul Grondahl  have an opportunity to reach beyond because of his remarkable subject and the able job he does in profiling Erastus Corning.

Born to an affluent family (not related to the Corning Glass Works, as Grondahl reminds us), Corning went to Groton with the columnist Joseph Alsop, graduated from Yale and started in politics when Albany boss Dan O'Connell tapped him to attend the Democratic state convention in place of his ailing father, New York Lt. Gov. Edwin Corning. Young Erastus would serve in the State Assembly and the State Senate before becoming mayor of Albany at age 32.

His career there -- 21 consecutive terms, or 42 years -- may be unprecedented in the nation, at least among major cities. Cordial, loyal and hard-working on the surface, Corning was famously secretive and basically fronted for Boss O'Connell, who like his contemporary Chicago's Richard Daley, made the trains run on time while apparently enriching his cronies and himself. Corning's animating force doesn't seem to have been self-enrichment -- he came from abundant money, after all -- but rather the acquisition and maintenance of political power. O'Connell, who Grondahl paints as a surrogate father to Corning, died in 1977 at 91, making Erastus Albany's political boss. But encroaching emphysema would sap his strength, leading to his death in 1983.

Fittingly, the book begins with an introduction by novelist William Kennedy, who may know the ins and outs of Albany's political machine better than anyone, alive or dead.