In 2002, dark horse Craig Benson did the extraordinary and vaulted straight from political unknown to governor of New Hampshire. The multimillionaire and former Cabletron CEO sailed into office with a decisive victory and the beguiling promise of running the state like a billion-dollar corporation.

Two years later, he became the first New Hampshire governor in 78 years to lose his bid for a second term. Several notable state Republican leaders endorsed John Lynch, his Democratic opposition, and not even the New Hampshire State Trooper Association nor the New Hampshire State Employees Association would endorse him.

To really understand the rise and fall of Gov. Craig Benson, you have to start in 1983 in a New England garage. That's where he and business partner Bob Levine started Cabletron, before moving it to Rochester in 1985. Back when the average computer was rapidly shrinking from the size of a meat locker to that of a breadbox, Cabletron created high-performance network management systems that harnessed the new desktop-to-desktop revolution. In 1988, Cabletron was ranked as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S. A year later, the company went public with the largest technology public offering for that time. By 1994, the company earned over $1.6 billion in annual sales and employed over 7,000 employees in 130 countries.

But, as was the case with many high tech companies of that era, the tide quickly turned. By 1998, competition had taken a heavy toll on Cabletron's profits and stock price. Wall street analysts and portfolio managers turned from sycophants to nightclub hecklers. Reflecting the company's volatile management style, Benson resigned as CEO in 1997, then reappointed himself as CEO in 1998, and resigned again in 1999. Finally, to salvage what was left of shareholder value, he and his board of directors broke up Cabletron into four bits (one of which, Enterasys, now a Massachusetts-based company, continues to limp along as a mere shadow of the once robust Cabletron).

With Cabletron dispersed, Benson, a relatively young, energetic and iconoclastic executive, considered other opportunities.

As a conservative Republican with a strong Libertarian streak, Craig Benson firmly believed that there should be less government in people's daily lives. Thus committed to reduce the role of state government, he decided to run for governor of New Hampshire in 2002.

What voters in 2002 failed to realize, and what the media failed to pursue at that time, was that, in the 1990s, it had been a well-known fact within the computer industry that Craig Benson and Robert Levine's management of Cabletron was highly controversial and not universally praised.

Though Benson and Levine won Inc. Magazine's Entrepreneurs of the Year award in 1991, inside industry journals took a tougher view. Network World, for example, described Benson as "brilliant but arrogant" and noted that Benson and Levine's management of Cabletron was derisively known as "the Mutt and Jeff show" within industry circles. Another industry journal, VAR Business, detailed stories and quotes from Cabletron employees who described the company workplace under Benson as, among other things, "a military environment." When Cabletron's stock price plunged in 1997, Inside Magazine wrote in June of Cabletron's co-founders: "Bob Levine and Craig Benson, the cofounders of Cabletron, have always been the 'bad boys' of the networking world. For years, the business press have reported on their antics, wondering how these guys could be running a billion-dollar company."

Though Shir Haberman of the Portsmouth Herald aptly reminded his readers of the Inside article in May 2003, the "industry view" of Benson's management skills had played no role in the media analysis of the 2002 campaign.

Benson often mentioned that one of his greatest accomplishments as a businessman was to create a billion-dollar, high tech company without using any venture capital investment. His reward for his superb business acumen was a personal fortune estimated at around a half-billion dollars. Getting elected governor, however, was a totally different row to hoe-especially given that Benson had never held any political office. In order to develop needed public recognition, he would personally fund a significant portion of the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in state history.

By late 2001, television commercials introducing Benson to the New Hampshire public began to appear. He traveled the state extensively, giving speeches and interviews. Outspending Republican challengers Bruce Keogh and Gordon Humphrey by four and a half and two and a half times, respectively, Benson's $9.6 million campaign delivered a commanding primary win in September 2002.

His selling point to New Hampshire voters was that, as governor, he would run the state as if he were running a billion-dollar business venture. The voters liked that pitch. A WUMR/UNH poll in the late summer of 2002 showed that the number-one reason Benson held a double-digit lead over his opponents was his business experience.

The fact that he had never run and served in public office became a nonissue. Benson's political sentiments leaned toward the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party, and he was known to be critical of those who worked in the public sector.

An interview published in the Dartmouth Review (Feb. 4, 2002) provided a glimmer of his mindset toward political experience. In speaking of his efforts as a private citizen to organize a program to install computers at local schools, he commented, "I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job."

Possible translation: working in state government is a piece of cake.

As Benson's successful campaign progressed through the summer months, a television ad appeared in July suggesting that Benson running the state as he ran Cabletron might not be such a good thing. Created by Republican rival Gordon Humphrey, the ad succinctly pointed out how Cabletron's short life came to an ignoble end in a volley of shareholder lawsuits, massive employee layoffs and titanic stock price depreciation. As a montage of headlines charging corporate mismanagement flashed across the screen, the narrator states: "New Hampshire just can't trust Craig Benson's record."

In fact, New Hampshire did trust Craig Benson's record. The response of Benson and the public to the ad was to accuse Humphrey of negative campaigning, and Benson sailed into the general election as the Republican candidate for governor. With an additional $2 million injected into his campaign, and running against a Democratic candidate, Mark Fernald, who pledged to institute a state income tax to help fund education, Benson overwhelmingly won the 2002 election.

"Actually, I think I come at things a whole different way from most people, and, you know, sometimes political answers are one way to solve the problem, and sometimes there are better ways to do it."- Craig Benson in a February 4, 2002 interview in The Dartmouth Review

"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. ... The leader works in the open, the boss in covert. The leader leads, the boss drives."-Theodore Roosevelt

In January 2003, Craig Benson began to make good on his campaign promise.

Right from the beginning, his unique management style, honed in the high tech industry, caught the attention of the state media. Headlines from state newspapers such as the Concord Monitor, the Nashua Telegraph and Foster's Daily Democrat proclaimed a new order of business. "Business as (Un)usual," "Balance Between Public and Private," "Benson Sets a New Tone," and "Governor's Use of Unpaid Staffers Unprecedented in Recent N.H. History" are a sample of the articles that zeroed in on Benson as the state's CEO leader.

For example, he worked at a stand-up desk. Reportedly a majority of his meetings with agency heads and legislators were held standing in a small conference room with the governor behind a chest-high bureau. While partly due to back problems, a standing meeting format enhanced the governor's ability to control the proceedings and keep actual face time with attendees (i.e. two-way conversations) to a minimum.

Though a seemingly unimportant fact to most, keen political observers found it very descriptive. The standing meetings caught the attention of former Republican governor Walter Peterson immediately.

"It seemed like a little detail when I first heard of it," he said. "But, when I thought about it, having a standing desk is all about giving orders.

It didn't encourage the development of relationships or the in-depth sharing of ideas necessary to build political bridges, Peterson explained.

"It is," Peterson said, "the most efficient way to reach the wrong answer in the shortest amount of time."

Benson chose some unique ways to speak to the legislative branch of government. This past January, he chose to present the annual state progress report not at the Capitol in Concord as was tradition, but at Plymouth State University in the northern part of the state. While Benson's explanation for the switch was that he wanted to bring the State of the State address "to the people" (and it was appreciated by those who attended the speech), only a third of the state Legislature was able to attend the event, and some interpreted the venue change as an attempt to circumvent his duty to inform the Legislature and to use the event as a campaign opportunity.

The governor also actively worked out of three offices--the official governor's office in Concord plus two additional private offices, one in Portsmouth and the other in Concord, minutes from his official office. Seeking both privacy to work on state policy and a more appropriate venue for purely political work, his peripatetic commuting between the three offices made access to Benson more difficult and added to his reputation as a loner.

In another tip of the hat to his high tech background, he created a "virtual staff." Though it sounded like his office was to be staffed by computer-generated holograms, it really meant that his newly appointed aides would not have the usual staff titles of "press officer" or "chief of staff." Instead, all would fill multiple roles. It was a method of management Benson used at Cabletron, and he thought it would create a more responsive and flexible management team. While it did keep his staff engaged and on their toes, it caused innumerable headaches for those who sought assistance or dialogue from the governor's office. Whom to go to on the virtual team for a specific problem was often an open-ended question.

Like the standing meetings and multiple offices, the virtual staff seemed to be structured to tightly control access to and interaction with the governor.

Not only was his staff virtual, many of its members were virtual "volunteers." Benson paid the salary of some of the staff members out of his own pocket, which immediately defined them as volunteers in terms of state employment. While the idea of paying the salary of some of his staff members was promoted as one wealthy man's generous gesture to a state government run on a shoestring, it was construed by others as a permissible way to avoid public scrutiny of the volunteers' professional backgrounds, including their past ties to Benson.

Despite the governor's legal explanations that public review of his volunteers was not warranted, the New Hampshire Democratic Party took the Benson administration to court under the state right-to-know law and won, on the trial court level, the right to have the names and duties of volunteers disclosed. The appeal for the disclosure of e-mails and documents between the volunteers and state officials was dropped after the 2004 election, said Democratic Party Chair Kathy Sullivan, "because we got what we wanted with the initial lawsuit, and it was time to move on."

The court case over the disclosure of the governor's virtual volunteers was an example, said Sullivan, that "Benson just didn't get it. He didn't 'get' the need for strong ethics in the governor's office."

Many approved of his singular way of governing and were impressed that he took no salary or housing stipends from the state. A favorable editorial in Foster's Daily Democrat in October 2003 noted that his approval ratings had gone up after nine months in office.

The editorial remarked: "Benson's popularity on Main Street is running three percentage points ahead of the margin by which he was elected in 2002. The caterwauling of the entrenched establishment notwithstanding, the people are getting what Benson promised and it sits well with them."

"I'm excited that you bring your brains to work in the morning. Because I bet you that not many people in this room have been asked to bring their brains with them to work in a long time." -quote from a speech Gov. Benson gave to several hundred state workers attending a pancake breakfast held on his inauguration day

Definition of "hubris": an arrogant pride towards the gods, leading to nemesis, or downfall. -Oxford American Dictionary

It is has been said that next to Texas, New Hampshire has the "weakest" governorship in the United States. In other words, the New Hampshire governor does not have a significant amount of unilateral executive authority to affect political change. To have any impact, a New Hampshire governor must develop a rich cache of political support and goodwill. Personal controversy and scandal can quickly drain this cache and leave a governor ineffective and redundant.

As was the case with other state administrations in recent years, the greatest challenge of the Benson administration was to craft a budget that would pay for education and other key services without raising taxes. In this regard, Benson used up a lot of political capital. The story of Benson vetoing the Republican-controlled Legislature budget only to accept another budget that was basically the same is well known. That, and the ongoing battle over state funding of education, should have been "the" story of Benson's first term.

But it wasn't. Other controversies came to dominate the public's view of the governor.

To create a definitive list is a challenge. What seemed a clueless action to some was a scandal to others. Though not complete, the following is an attempt to define the issues that tainted the Benson term (note to the curious-all of these controversies and more filled a near infinite amount of column space in state newspapers; for in-depth explanations, head to Google).

The Golf Club of New England bankruptcy--Benson placed himself in the rather conflicted position of being a founder, a member and the primary secured creditor of a high roller private golf club that went bankrupt in 2003. Because Benson was its primary creditor, his claims superseded all other creditors' claims. While all other creditors, mainly local businesses, were paid 25 cents on the dollar, Benson ended up owning land and buildings worth $12 million. Yes, Benson also lost 67 cents for every one of the $17 million dollars he lent the club. But as James O. Horrigan, University of New Hampshire Professor Emeritus of Finance and Accounting, noted in his detailed explanation of the issue for the New Hampshire Gazette (Oct. 22, 2004):

"...proportionately he lost nowhere as much as poor local businesses who trusted that the millionaire golfers would pay them for services and supplies rendered... The upshot is that Benson now owns a 450-acre tract that could have very valuable development potential in the future."

Volunteer Angela Blaisdell and her appointment as state homeland security liaison--While much has been written about Angela Blaisdell, little has actually been revealed as to her exact role within the Benson administration. It remains an unsolved riddle to this day. As part of a staff with no titles and never once on the state payroll, Blaisdell was often referred to as Benson's chief of staff.

Early in his administration, the governor had stated that one of the most crucial issues he faced was homeland security. He then proceeded to appoint Blaisdell as homeland security liaison. In this capacity, Blaisdell, who had no security or law enforcement background, gained access to sensitive homeland security documents and could act as the governor during disaster planning drills.

Blaisdell's professional relationship with Benson goes back many years, first as his director of operations at Cabletron and then as a campaign aide during his 18-month run for governor. But it was her appointment as state homeland security liaison, from January to May 2003, that brought her into the public eye.

The New Hampshire media-a year ahead of the McGreavey and Kerick homeland security headlines from New Jersey and D.C.-pushed for a full review of Blaisdell's credentials through the state right-to-know law. After five months of intense public scrutiny, the enigmatic Blaisdell resigned from the liaison post and went to work for one of Benson's private companies, the Collingsworth Corp., a private investment firm located in Portsmouth. Despite the unwanted publicity, she continued to play an active role in Benson's political affairs. She ran his political action committee and was treasurer of his 2004 re-election campaign.

Linda Pepin--Pepin, a former human resource administrator at Cabletron, was another Benson "volunteer" assigned to represent the state in managing the purchase of health and dental insurance for existing and retired state employees. NiBri Benefit Services of Candia paid Pepin, who was not a licensed broker, a commission of $187,000 to arrange the state purchase of the health services contracts. When news of the commission became public, Benson requested Pepin's resignation as a volunteer. Her supervisor, the state director of personnel, Joseph D'Alessandro, another Benson appointee and former employee of Cabletron, resigned as well.

Transfer of DES supervisor from Portsmouth bureau--The State Employees Association and Seacoast environmental groups, among others, protested the transfer of Dori Wiggins as supervisor of the Department of Environmental Services Wetlands Division in Portsmouth to the DES headquarters in Concord as an example of a "political payback" on the part of the Benson administration. The Seacoast DES, which was supervised by Wiggins at the time, leveled fines against Benson in 1998 and 2003 for excavating beach sand at his Rye beachfront home without a permit. Benson denied that he had anything to do with the transfer of Wiggins.

The investigation and resignation of Attorney General Peter W. Heed--This was not about sex. In June 2004 then-Attorney General Peter Heed was alleged to have acted inappropriately on the dance floor with a woman at a conference held the previous month. The governor appointed Sullivan County Attorney Marc Hathaway to investigate the allegations. Heed did resign, and was eventually cleared of wrongdoing. Hathaway, however, found "irregularities" in how Safety Commissioner Dick Flynn and the governor involved themselves in the investigation process. Hathaway reported that as Benson and Flynn worked to get Heed to resign, Flynn improperly disclosed confidential information to Benson and also ordered the cancellation of the state police investigation into the incident. Hathaway concluded in this report that the governor and commissioner inserted themselves into the investigation for political reasons and denied Heed a full and fair investigation. The governor felt he had done nothing wrong, especially since the outcome-the resignation of Heed-was the right course of action.

The Heed affair was also seen as another example of the high turnover of top state officials during Benson's term. During his two years in office, Benson not only lost Heed as attorney general, but went through three different press secretaries, three legal counsels, the state CIO and his personnel director.

On a broader level, his relationship with the State Employees Association deteriorated to the point that their unofficial motto for the 2004 election was "Anybody But Benson," according to Gary Smith, director of the State Employees Association. Benson's remarks to the group at an inauguration day pancake breakfast, remarks that referenced bringing their brains to work for the first time in a long time, started the relationship off on the wrong foot.

"With that statement, it was clear to us that he had absolute contempt for state employees," Smith said.

In the end, these controversies--ranging from innocuous misunderstandings to valid charges of conflict of interest--had one thing in common: Benson's actions reflected the mindset of a private-sector CEO--a person who expected to answer mostly to himself (and, usually, a complacent board). They showed he was someone who was either insensitive to or not cognizant of the legitimate demands of public accountability.

And while the governor continued on his quest to balance the state budget, reform the funding of education, and update and unify the state's diverse computer platforms and services, questions regarding his ethics began to stick and muddy Benson's state agenda. They also propped open a political door for the Democrats.

The 2004 campaign dovetailed a hotly contested presidential election, and Gov. Craig Benson was no longer the political maverick riding to the rescue from the land of high tech industry. He was now the incumbent running on his record. Saying that he had been occupied with running the state, Benson started his campaign late and spent only a quarter of the money he spent in 2002. This time around, the media and voters had open concerns about his ethics and leadership style, and the Democratic challenger, John Lynch, picked at these sore spots at every campaign stop. And, unlike Benson's previous Democratic challenger, Lynch willingly took a pledge not to raise taxes. Worse yet, support from traditional political allies could not be assumed. The race was neck and neck through Election Day.

Later explaining that he didn't think the final results would be in until the following morning, Benson went home on election night without addressing the crowd of supporters gathered at his campaign party. His wife Denise graciously addressed the crowd later in the evening. The next morning, Benson conceded, not through the traditional public press conference, but instead through a private interview with one AP reporter. It was a rather sheepish, subdued end to a term that had begun with such self-assurance.

Gov. Benson was offered an interview for this story, but said he could not accept because of his heavy schedule prior to his last day in office.

His supporters argue that his legacy will be one of accomplishment. Jayne Millerick, chair of the New Hampshire GOP, maintains that "the biggest thing people can point to as the governor ends his term is that, during his two years in office, which have been described as 'tough economic times,' the governor was a watchdog over state spending. He did not increase taxes to pay for state spending. It was a campaign promise he made and kept."

Millerick described how some of his most significant initiatives involved the partnership of the state and private industry. "One of the initiatives the governor was most proud of and one he will most likely continue to work on after he leaves office is the 'laptop' initiative." An initiative to give all seventh graders in selected schools a laptop, "it is," said Millerick, "an example of state government working with private business to increase the common good." As of December 2004, 600 laptops had been given to students and 40 to teachers in six schools.

Another initiative that reflected "the governor's unique ability to take the best of the state and partner that with private business" was his Military Mondays program. Not well known among non-military families, it offered New Hampshire military families discounts at participating businesses on Mondays. The program underscored, said Millerick, "the governor's recognition of the sacrifice New Hampshire military families are making during what are difficult times for them."

Other initiatives will have a lasting impact on the state. "Today, on January 3," she noted, "tougher drunk driving laws will go into effect."

Along with Millerick's assessment, there were other programs that received public recognition: the creation of an Efficiency in Government Commission and the creation of a Web site linking New Hampshire residents with cheaper online Canadian prescription drug sales.

But despite these endeavors, the Benson "political legacy is tarnished," says Dante Scala, professor of political science at Saint Anselm College and observer of the state political scene, by the fact that he was the first New Hampshire governor since the 1920s to lose re-election to a second term.

"There was not one single controversy or scandal that was major and led to his defeat," said Scala. "It was the cumulative 'drip-drip-drip' effect of the controversies mentioned on a daily basis" that got Benson into political trouble. (Nashua Telegraph political columnist Kevin Landrigan used the same "drip-drip-drip" analogy in his column of Nov. 4 column.)

Noting Benson's go-it-alone work style and his refusal or inability to make political alliances with the Legislature and key state organizations, Scala briefly summed up Benson's two-year term: "Benson ran as a maverick and died as a maverick."

Taking the long view, former Republican governor Walter Peterson, who endorsed John Lynch, noted that the controversary surrounding the Benson administration was not unique.

"People tend to forget that all administrations are controversial," reminded Peterson, "Mine was considered controversial. It is not necessarily a negative."

For Peterson, the lesson of Craig Benson is that it should not be assumed that just because a man or woman is highly successful in private business, he or she will be equally successful as a political leader.

"Government is not like business," said Peterson. Referring back to Benson's highly efficient standing desk, governing is more than giving orders and requires "a lot of give and take. The views of others have got to be considered. You must find a way to balance the competing concerns. It is important to remember that other elective officials have their own constituencies."

In other words, time must be taken to get to know various legislators and officials. And though it is not very efficient, by building cooperative relationships with these officials, "you create," said Peterson, "a win-win situation ,and that is ideal."

Kathy Sullivan, a vocal critic of Benson, challenges any candidate's promise that he will run the state like he ran his company.

"When I hear people talk about how they are going to run the state like a business," said Sullivan, "my response is that you have to run the state better than you run a business, because you have to do so much more with less resources."

"As governor, you have a duty to the people, all the people," she continued, "and your goals extend beyond the profit motive."

James O. Horrigan, who wrote the New Hampshire Gazette article about the Golf Club of New England and served as a state legislator for Durham in the 1970s, echoes Sullivan's argument and says that any CEO turned New Hampshire governor will face big challenges because he or she will not have the unilateral power or the resources he had as a CEO.

A CEO of a private company, explains Horrigan, has the ability to affect the revenue side of the business by raising prices or selling more units, and on the cost side, he can implement a stringent budget that may result in employee layoffs.

"But as New Hampshire governor," explains Horrigan, "a lot of these variables are taken outside of their control."

Specifically, "by taking the pledge that all governors have taken in recent memory to not raise taxes," a CEO-turned-governor "loses his ability to raise needed revenue." With no revenue to raise, the CEO-turned-governor would look to cut state expenditures. "But, noted Horrigan, "New Hampshire state government is already run on a shoestring. It has always been run on a tight budget."

Further budget cuts are more problematic, for it is difficult to substantially reduce the state civil service. A CEO can lay off an entire division, but a governor cannot fire the Legislature or an entire agency.

Therefore, says Horrigan, the CEO-turned-governor is forced to develop new skill sets in order to accomplish a political agenda with very limited resources. "That is why the voters need to judge the person," and his natural leadership skills, he said.

Benson set out to do what he promised-to run the state like he ran his business. But Benson had not made it his business to understand the workings of state government before becoming governor. Both he and the voting public may have thought that his past life as a CEO of a high tech company would provide sufficient background. But as his political story unfolded, he proved that even a "brilliant" business mind can make the most basic political missteps.