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Even his closest friends and advisers think Peter Vallone is too nice. "He's as pure as the driven snow," says Queens Congressman Thomas Manton, who is championing Vallone's run for governor. But do nice guys always finish last, as former Dodger baseball team manager Leo Durocher said?
Yesterday Vallone wore a dark blue suit to make the most important speech of the quarter century he has spent in elective politics. The speech, delivered in the City Council's chambers, was the all-but-formal announcement of his gubernatorial quest, and he sprinkled his talk with jibes at Gov. George Pataki and with humor, having Public Advocate Mark Green remain standing at the start of his talk. Two years ago Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey Ross stood throughout Pataki's speech, drawing criticism from Republicans who said she was trying to upstage her boss.
Vallone has been second banana at City Hall since 1985, when he was named Speaker of the City Council. For the decade before that he labored in political obscurity rewriting the city's arcane administrative code, an assignment that kept him out of the public eye but one he later said he cherished "because I know more about city government now than most other people."
Vallone has somehow managed to meld factions in one of the most diverse legislative bodies in the country without using a hammer....