As one of New York Gov. George E. Pataki's most trusted aides in the 1990s, Zenia B. Mucha's in-your-face style led Albany wags to tag her "The Warrior Princess," "Gov. Zenia" and even "Director of Revenge."
Now Walt Disney Co. and the media swarm around it are beginning to get the picture.
Razor-sharp and acid-tongued, Mucha, 47, was named Disney's chief communications officer less than two years ago, after starting with the company's troubled ABC unit. In short order, she has carved out a place as one of Chief Executive Michael Eisner's closest advisors in a brutal battle with those who would unseat him.
She has turned her communications department into a powerful internal force, while tapping old political connections to shore up her boss' image and position.
Under Mucha (pronounced MOO-ka), Disney scrapped a posture in which queries were often dismissed with a flat "no comment." Executives now are pushed to challenge all comers -- although few are a match for the frequently profane chief communicator, who is quick to unleash her inner pit bull on critics and the reporters who give them voice.
"If you're not getting heard and there's no chance in creation of getting heard, you have to do that," said New York public relations veteran Robert Dilenschneider. Still, he said, there's a risk that biting back will provoke more hostility: "It's better not to do it, if you don't have to."
Investors got a taste of Mucha's pushback before the company's March 3 annual meeting, which saw a stunning 43% no-confidence vote for Eisner. When proxy advisor Glass, Lewis & Co. counseled clients to withhold support from the Disney chief, Mucha publicly lashed it as "an upstart company that is trying to grab publicity."
Glass Lewis Chief Executive Gregory P. Taxin said the remark soured some investors.
"They've been ... lobbing bombs at anybody who disagreed with them," he said. "It left people with a bad taste in their mouths."
Shortly before, Mucha appeared to get her fingers burned by some negative campaigning. A Feb. 22 New York Times Magazine story by Deborah Solomon said Mucha e-mailed about 20 articles chronicling shortcomings by firms associated with former director Roy E. Disney, who has led the campaign against Eisner.
Mucha's associates said Solomon had requested research material on the former Disney board member and Norman Rockwell, about whom she is writing a book -- a contention that, in Disney's case, the author disputes.
