22. Patrick Foye

Foye’s last appearance on the Power List was as the downstate chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation under Eliot Spitzer. His current incarnation on the List is as a Deputy County Executive in the Mangano administration—proof that genius has no party affiliation. Even though Foye looks like he should come to work in a smoking jacket with elbow patches and sporting a pipe, his greatest gift is in his ability to relate to people on a human level and maintain relationships. It makes the pedantic-yet-colossal issues he’s tasked with fixing seem, well, fixable. Half of Long Island’s population sure hopes so.