Perdue's staff chief reorders chaos

But Ambrose also has hurdles ahead

Then-Navy Lt. Zach Ambrose spent an intense day in November 1994 coordinating the evacuation of 800 cruise ship passengers who had fled their burning vessel and were stranded on the deck of an oil tanker in the Indian Ocean.

Ambrose was dispatched to the tanker from the guided-missile frigate USS Halyburton by his captain, then-Cmdr. Robert Reilly.

"You pick a mature and capable junior officer who's got the savvy and sense to go over there and make order out of chaos," Reilly, now an admiral, said last week.

Sounds like good training for Ambrose's new job as chief of staff for Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue.

Ambrose, 41, is an MIT-trained engineer with a reputation as a steady hand, a trait that could serve him well as he seeks to manage the chaos of a new administration.

The chief of staff is usually the gatekeeper through whom staff members, agency heads, legislators and political supporters must pass to reach the governor. He's also the chief operating officer, who ensures the governor's agenda keeps moving and that the executive branch of state government runs well.

"He watches my back," Perdue said. "My personality isn't such to make the trains run on time."

Ambrose is a linear thinker who colleagues say breaks down a problem to solve it rather than thinking about how to spin it in the best political light. But Ambrose has challenges. He will have to show that he can butt heads with powerful legislators for whom he used to work.

Some observers wonder, too, whether he's got better game than the campaign he ran for Perdue this year. The campaign was widely criticized among Democrats as careening from message to message. Former Gov. Jim Hunt, a Perdue mentor, tried to reassure supporters in mid-October.

"She will be a better governor," Hunt said, "than people have seen in this campaign."

Serendipitous arrival

Ambrose's new job is the result of an unplanned journey. Ambrose didn't hurry into politics, he wandered into it.

"I wasn't a teen Democrat," Ambrose said in a recent interview. "I wasn't in College Democrats."

Ambrose, born in Fairfax, Va., moved to the Raleigh area from upstate New York at age 7 after his father, an entomologist, joined N.C. State University.

Ambrose is the son and grandson of sailors, but says no one pushed him to sign up for ROTC. He liked the idea of the Navy paying for college.

The military training was not unusual in the wire-and-gear-heavy world of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Ambrose studied electrical engineering and Russian. He and a classmate would wire fraternity brothers' desks with a contact switch and firecrackers to explode when the desk was opened. Today, he still displays a quick wit and wry smile.

After college, a highlight of his five years in uniform was the cruise ship rescue while serving on the Halyburton.

Ambrose was a tactical action officer on the Halyburton, meaning he was empowered to direct the weapons during battle, to "fight the ship," Reilly said. As an officer of the deck, Ambrose also had the captain's driver's license when needed, maneuvering the vessel at sea.

"He was, in many ways, a little more mature than many of his contemporaries," Reilly said.

Transition to politics

Ambrose finished his tour in 1996. He moved to Durham and became a stay-at-home dad while his wife, Jill, finished her residency in pediatrics. He had the time to focus on local politics and was at a stage in his life, as a new parent, where those things started to mean more to him.

He started voicing his opinion through letters to the editor of The News & Observer in 1996. One criticized a story and defended President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton against the congressional inquiry into their finances. The other, perhaps a foreshadowing of the Perdue's election as the state's first female governor, essentially said girls can do anything boys can do.