“When Mr. Mulgrew ran for chapter leader and won, the staff embraced him,” said Christopher Manos, a shop teacher at Grady High School who took over as chapter leader when Mulgrew became a vice president in 2005. “Everybody knew that he was very smart, he was articulate, and very personable.” While serving as chapter leader, Mulgrew established himself as one of the more vocal members of the delegate assembly. “He made himself noticed,” Dorso said, and he soon attracted the attention of Frank Carucci, then vice president for vocational and technical high schools. Mulgrew began working for Carucci after school, stuffing envelopes, answering phone calls, and running errands. Following the UFT tradition of naming a successor before the members vote, when Carucci decided to retire, he endorsed Mulgrew as interim vice president. Once again, Mulgrew wasn’t certain he wanted the job, but he ran after others egged him on, and he “won big,” Dorso said. As vice president, Mulgrew also quickly crashed meetings with men in suits. When Klein seemed uninterested in his passion for “career and technical education” — next-generation vocational schools that emphasize academic rigor — Mulgrew took his case directly to then-Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff. Soon, Mayor Bloomberg was announcing a new initiative to expand career and technical education. A question Mulgrew and those watching his ascent face is whether he’ll be able to hold his own against Weingarten. Supporters have characterized Mulgrew as having an independent mind and a forceful personality, but critics suggest that he rose through the ranks by being a loyal foot soldier to the party that supports Weingarten, the UNITY caucus. They say he will not stray from party line. “He’s demonstrated his total loyalty to her and that’s what you get when you’re loyal,” said Jeff Kaufman, a member of ICE’s steering committee. “He’s going to sit there and give a couple of sound bites and the heavy lifting is still going to be done by Randi.” Some of Mulgrew’s colleagues from his early days in the union saw him as an obvious choice for the UFT’s top job. “I was calling him Mr. President about a year ago,” Dorso said. “I teach social studies, I know how politics works, he’s the fair-haired boy even though he shaves his head.” Mulgrew declined to comment for this story. “I think he’s a great person. I think he has a lot of guts,” Weingarten said. “He’s a great teacher, came up through the ranks. … He’s willing to break a lot of glass.”
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