The rise of Rachel
Chirlane top aide also gives Blaz boost in recent battles
THE FIRST TIME Rachel Noerdlinger met et Chirlane McCray, the city’s future First Lady had just been outed as a former lesbian.
A 30- year- old Essence article in which McCray spoke proudly of her attraction to women had resurfaced, and Noerdlinger — a PR pro and top aide to the Rev. Al Sharpton — reached out to offer support.
Noerdlinger was struck by how calm m McCray was. “She did not have one regret et in terms of the Essence piece, and I thought t that was fantastic,” Noerdlinger said.
The meeting also made an impression n on McCray — 15 months later, she hired d Noerdlinger to be her chief of staff, with a $ 170,000 salary that raised eyebrows, after Mayor de Blasio called Sharpton and asked for his approval.
In her new role, Noerdlinger, 43, doesn’t t just have McCray’s ear.
“She’s a very influential figure in City y Hall,” according to Peter Ragone, de Bla- sio’s senior adviser and longtime confi- dant. “She has a unique skill set that’s rare- ly seen in the political world.”
It’s a skill set that comes not just t from her years with Sharpton but also from m a family background as diverse as the e de Blasios, and a sense of empathy born n out of personal tragedies — a mother’s suicide and a half sister’s murder.
Noerdlinger doesn’t know much about her birth parents, but believes she is mixed race. She was adopted by a white couple in New Mexico after spending the first year of her life in foster care.
Her astrophysicist father switched jobs every couple of years, and she and her four siblings — an adopted black brother, her parents’ two biological children and a half sister from her dad’s first marriage — spent their childhood bouncing from state to state.
“I was this child of color in a family who didn’t look like me, so I used my personality to get by,” she said.
The constant moving took its toll on her “wonderful mom,” who suffered from depression. “We saw her start to fade,” said Noerdlinger.
When she was a sophomore in high school, she returned home from a European soccer tour to find that Janau Noerdlinger had killed herself.
“I’ve never experienced that much pain in my life,” she said.
Tragedy struck again just a few years later, when her older half sister Lucy Noerdlinger, 33, was stabbed to death in her home outside Detroit in a still- unsolved break- in.
Noerdlinger says those devastating experiences have made her who she is.
“I’ve suffered tremendous loss, and as a result, it’s made me able to identify with people who are suffering,” she said.
It was Noerdlinger whom the mayor leaned on when two kids were stabbed — one fatally — at a Brooklyn housing project June 1. She advised de Blasio to embrace the community and worked the phones herself, sources said.
“There was a lot of talking community leaders off the ledge, and Rachel was a big part of that,” said Kirsten John Foy, a National Action Network director.
Noerdlinger also helped organize — at black churches — de Blasio’s push for universal prekindergarten, and McCray called the fight “the defining civil rights issue of our day,” a judgment that Gov. Cuomo publicly questioned.
She is encouraging McCray — who long has been her husband’s closest adviser behind the scenes — to ramp up her public role as head of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City. The First Lady often makes several speeches a week and weighs in on issues like gun violence on her blog, # FLONYC.
“I trust her judgment and I value her friendship,” said McCray.
“She works hard and helps this administration with her sensitivity and that most valuable asset in public life — diplomacy.”
For Noerdlinger — a high- energy personality famous for flipping cartwheels in the office when she was a young PR intern — working at City Hall has meant a lifestyle change.
In her typically droll style, she sums up the transformation as going from “working at home in my bra and underwear to showing up at 8: 30 a. m. for a senior staff meeting.”
A single mother, she lives in New Jersey with her son Khari, 17.
Although most senior city employees are required to live in New York City,
she’s been giv- en extra time to move because ause her son has medical issues following a 2012 car crash.
Noerdlinger got her start with Terrie Williams, one of the city’s most connected flacks of the 1990s, whose client list included Eddie Murphy and Janet Jackson.
It was there that Noerdlinger met Sharpton.
Her father — who knew Sharpton only as the agitator in the infamous 1987 Tawana Brawley case — was initially horrified, but Noerdlinger immediately liked the charismatic minister.
She took him on to soften his image — she said he was “past the sweat suit” but still in need of messaging advice.
“She said, ‘ Others have gone from activist to national posi- tions of power and you can do the same thing,’ ” Sharpton said.
She encouraged him to take on more systemic issues, like education reform and the portrayal of blacks in advertising campaigns. And Noerdlinger helped Sharpton secure a deal with MSNBC, where he is now host of “Politics Nation.”
She sees McCray as having huge potential as a public figure.
The First Lady “is already a role model for women, for boys and girls, for a lot of people,” Noerdlinger said. “She is a voice for the voiceless.”
As for Noerdlinger herself, she makes it clear that she plans to stick around.
When asked how long she sees herself in City Hall, she didn’t hesitate.
“Eight years, baby,” she said.