and his partners would devote a Saturday in painting and remodeling (usually spending less than $10,000) and a Sunday to stocking shelves. On Monday, the store would be open for business." Rite Aid went public in a successful 1968 stock offering and continued expansion. At the time, with 32 percent of the company's stock, Lewis Lehrman was the company's president and largest stockholder. Alex Grass, Lehrman's brother-in-law brought into the business by Lehrman's father, was eventually named chief executive. Lehrman stepped down as Rite Aid president in 1977 and as chairman of the firm's executive committee in 1981, eventually severing all ties with the company. His role in what Lehrman called "help[ing] to build Rite Aid" became a political issue in Lehrman's 1982 New York State gubernatorial campaign when Grass, who was then the company's chairman and CEO, took issue with published articles that gave credit to Lehrman for the company's growth. New York Magazine's Michael Kramer interviewed Grass for a profile on Lehrman. Lehrman "wasn't the founder. I was," said Grass. After quoting Grass's version of the founding of Rite Aid, Kramer wrote: "Grass of course, is denigrating Lehrman, and as for the facts, they aren't facts at all, or at least they are disputed facts. They are disputed by a host of former and present Rite Aid officers and directors with whom I spoke." Kramer went on to quote other Rite Aid officers and directors. Lehrman "took a sleepy little company and breathed life into it," said one company director. Maxwell Rabb, a Rite Aid director and former ambassador to Italy, declared: "Lew's role was at least the equal of anyone else's." Lehrman was also a managing director of Morgan Stanley in the late 1980s. After Morgan Stanley, in 1991, he established an investment company, L.E. Lehrman & Co. He was also an investor in George W. Bush's Arbusto Energy. Gubernatorial campaign Lehrman was the president of Rite Aid until 1977 and resigned from all positions in 1981 to run for governor of New York the following year. He said that "elective office is the only way to get things done." He was well known for wearing red suspenders in his campaign commercials. On June 16, 1982, Lehrman was chosen as the official GOP designee for governorship, getting "68.88 percent of the weighted votes at a hectic meeting of the Republican State Committee in Manhattan." He would later