Ed Rendell: Power: The Governor, the Blonde and the Rumor Mill

She makes it easy: Kirstin Snow invites me to Harrisburg, with an e-mail joke about the Famous 4th Street coming-out party: At least I chose a nice suit :)

When I arrive at the Commonwealth offices the day after Memorial Day, she pops out of her office down a hall, six feet two inches tall in four-inch heels, wearing a tight black-and-white dress, 40 years old and still impossibly thin and shapely. She’s been both Miss and Mrs. Pennsylvania.

We slip into her office. She doesn’t bother closing the door. Kirstin tells me all about her son Zane, who is six and has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism. Zane is difficult and very intuitive and extremely energetic, and also very close to the Governor.

“There’s probably a picture of me with a big red circle and a line through it in half the pediatricians’ offices in central Pennsylvania,” Kirstin laughs, because maybe she was a tad aggressive figuring out her son’s problems. Kirstin’s been divorced for two years from her electrician husband, a second marriage. Her boyfriend Peter, a blond guy in the photo on her desk, lives 100 miles away, in Doylestown.

She grew up in Glen Rock, a one-stoplight town in York County, where she took up autocross racing with her father. She played violin in state orchestras, and field hockey as an undergrad at Ursinus; she has won beauty pageants, wrote her doctoral thesis on defined contributions in health care, and has taught at various colleges — all adding up to something of a Renaissance woman. Kirstin’s amused again: “You mean I’m sort of good at a lot of things but not great at one.”

She even humanizes the beauty queen stuff: Winning Miss PA gave her $30,000 for grad school, and going after the Mrs. crown was really about the challenge of getting back into the same swimsuit post-baby.

Snow worked in advertising in Baltimore and New York, then as a health-care administrator while she got her doctorate and taught. In 2004, she was hired by Rendell communications director Penny Lee to run Commonwealth Media. She didn’t meet the Governor until ’06, when he noticed her one day in a studio wearing a headset—staying, as she says she prefers, behind the scenes. “Who’s that?” Rendell rasped to press secretary Chuck Ardo.

Kirstin Snow took off her headset and introduced herself.

The Governor quickly made use of her expertise in health care and, especially, her feel for the media — and his moods. She carries baby wipes when they’re on a media blitz, to clean the Governor’s tie, and a roll of gaffer’s tape, because she once had to reconstruct the inside of his ripped suit coat before she’d let him off the bus on a budget tour. When he lost 60 pounds and looked “like he was walking around in a trash bag,” Snow leaned on the Governor to buy some new suits. Given that Rendell is constantly giving interviews or trying to get his budget passed or weighing in on issues nationally, Dr. Kirstin Snow is with him a lot.