The Man Who's Taking Over Drpa Paul Drayton Has Thrived In Heavy Political Waters Before.

This is a story about how Paul Drayton, 34, became the $135,000-a-year chief executive of the Delaware River Port Authority, an extremely powerful economic-development and transportation agency.

It is also a story that shows, as the saying goes, how such a political decision is like making sausage - to enjoy the end result one should not watch while it's being made.

It can get ugly.

The story begins in late November, when George Warrington, 41, a highly regarded transportation executive from North Jersey, quit the executive director's post, which he had held for 18 months and could have kept until July 1995.

Drayton, who is developing a reputation as a skilled consensus builder who gets things done in Trenton and Washington, became interested in the job almost immediately. The DRPA job is, in many ways, a choice opportunity. The agency runs four vital toll bridges between Philadelphia and New Jersey, and it runs the PATCO High-Speed Line between Philadelphia and Lindenwold.

It has exciting new powers, granted in 1992, that enable it to purchase and operate transportation-related systems, unify local port operations and engage in a wide variety of economic-development activity throughout all of South Jersey and five counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

The DRPA also is, by all accounts, a management nightmare.

Its policies are set by a 16-member board of commissioners, eight from Pennsylvania and eight from New Jersey. But the board doesn't get to hire the top executive. New Jersey's governor does that. Pennsylvania's governor gets to name the board's chairman.

And the executive director can't hire and fire people. There are key exceptions, of course, but many job applicants and employees are sponsored by, or are close relatives of, powerful Democrats and Republicans.

So Drayton must be some whiz kid to take on this challenge, to take on this politically charged agency with its annual revenue of $116 million and more than 1,000 employees.

Not really. Indeed, the day after Warrington announced he was leaving, a reporter asked New Jersey Gov. Florio if he wanted Drayton to run the DRPA. He said no.

A short time later Florio would have an aide call back and say the question ''had been asked too early in the process," and that Drayton was now his choice. He has since thrown his full support behind Drayton and promised to remain just a phone call away if he wants advice or help in his new role.