Just call her the RNC's juggler in chief

Fresh from a briefing from security officials, facing an afternoon (and evening) of meetings and phone calls, Maria Cino dashed into the Xcel Energy Center the other day to schmooze with a couple of dozen young acolytes over lunch.

"Hey, guys," she blurted to her interns, "How many days?"

"TWENTY!" they answered.

"You all happy? God knows, I am," said the woman facing the daunting task of pulling off the Republican National Convention two weeks from now.

Her official title is president and chief executive officer of the convention, but it's more accurate to say Cino (pronounced see-no) has combined the roles of cheerleader, bean counter, hand holder, networker and master of thousands of details that must be resolved in the waning days before the extravaganza is gaveled to order on Labor Day.

"When this show goes on, it doesn't stop," Cino told the interns. "I've been doing this for 26 years, and this is the best job I've ever had."

Cino, 51, who describes herself as "one of the most identifiable Republican operatives" in the nation, started toiling in the party's trenches while still a kid in her native Buffalo, N.Y. Among her trophies are directing President Bush's first White House run, helping orchestrate the GOP's historic takeover of the U.S. House in 1994 and running the federal Department of Transportation.

Now she's overseeing a $58 million show that will be watched by a worldwide audience, and she is juggling the logistical balls that fill the air like a balloon drop as 45,000 people descend on the Twin Cities for the Sept. 1-4 convention.

Mary Matalin, a GOP strategist and one of Cino's oldest friends, called her "a real piece of work. I love that girl. She's been behind the scenes of every single [Republican] victory in the past 30 years, and she's still the least self-aggrandizing person you'll ever meet."

Cino, who is the godmother of Matalin's two daughters, is known among friends as "Mother Maria," Matalin said.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, who has worked with Cino on convention planning and during her Transportation Department tenure, called her "a real pro and a lot of fun to work with. She gets things done and can cut through the bull pretty quickly."

The show must flow on

Since Cino was given the convention job nearly 18 months ago, much of her time has been spent, she said, "tweaking" everything from the goodies that will be disbursed to delegates to running through the minute-by-minute schedule for each night of the convention.

"You never forget you're putting on a production," Cino said. "This is not for the 25,000 people in the hall. It's for hundreds of millions of people who are watching it. It's just like the Olympics. Your show has to be flowing."

Most days, Cino shuttles between her office (which has a hard hat emblazoned with "Little General" on a bookshelf) to the Xcel Center, where she is overseeing the transformation of a hockey arena into a vast state-of-the-art TV studio.

"This is going to be a whole lot different than this place has seen before," she said, maintaining a fast trot along the arena's concourses. "This has turned out to be a great venue."

Wearing a Mall of America windbreaker over a polo shirt embroidered with the convention logo, Cino roamed the halls. "Hey, guys! Twenty days!" she shouted at some construction workers on their lunch break, flashing them a thumbs-up. "Hey guys, fun to see this place transformed, huh?" she said to another group.

At 4 feet 10 1/2 inches, Cino nonetheless dominates the space she occupies. "My late father told me it didn't matter I was short, but I'd always be heard," she said.

Bitten by the political bug

Growing up in an Italian Catholic Democratic union household in Buffalo, Cino said she "got the political bug as a young kid," thanks mostly to an elementary school teacher who also was a Republican precinct committeewoman who wasn't shy about enlisting her students as party volunteers. Cino stuck with politics, meeting future U.S. Rep. Bill Paxon while she was in high school and trying to help him win a state assembly seat in 1974 -- a brutally bad year for any Republican candidate.

An internship during college at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) evolved into a series of political roles, only rarely interrupted by stints in the private sector. After Paxon won his congressional seat in a campaign she managed, he made her his chief of staff and then elevated her to run the NRCC, where she helped engineer the party's takeover of the House.

Along the way, Cino played matchmaker for Paxon and then-Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y.; he proposed to her on the House floor and they married in 1994. "She's been a mother hen for so many folks," said Paxon, who served in the House from 1989 to 1999. "She's probably mentored hundreds of them."

After she helped engineer Bush's victories as his national political director and deputy chair of the Republican National Committee, Cino did turns at the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Transportation, where she became acting secretary upon the departure of Norman Mineta in 2006.

Often she wanted to jump to the private sector when she would be offered another political job. "I was never looking for any of them," she said.

This time, though, once the convention is over and she wraps up her work in St. Paul, she said, she is really going to make the leap. "I need a rest, make some money," she said.

Matalin, who will host Cino at her New Orleans home so she can decompress after the convention, said she hopes she will call it a career. "She's done, just like I'm done," she said. "There's no position she hasn't had in government, so I don't know what else she could do."

Paxon's not so sure. "There's no question she'll take a respite, but I don't think there's any question she'll get back in the political saddle," he said.

Told of Paxon's comment, Cino smiled. "He's probably right," she said.

Bob von Sternberg • 612-673-7184