When newly elected mayors come to Ed Rendell for advice, he tells them worrying about re-election will inhibit them from creating change.

"No one wants to take the smallest risk in government, and that needs to change," he said to a group of Penn State faculty members and students during a question-and-answer session yesterday afternoon.

Rendell fielded a variety of questions on topics such as education, economic growth and health care in Pennsylvania.

He said that when making political decisions, he does not discriminate.

"I've always, in my decisions in public life, tried to make them based on fairness, not on who has the most clout or contributions," he said.

Rendell described his decision to run for governor with a sense of purpose.

"The thing I've found I enjoy in my life is using my intelligence to improve the quality of people's lives," he said.

Thirty-three years after law school, having made little money, Rendell refuses to take up a profession more profitable than politics, he said.

"I think I would be laying in bed one night and find that I'm wasting my time, that I'd be in a carnival and not getting off the rides," he said.

The negative television ads airing in Central and Western Pennsylvania against the former Philadelphia mayor are part of a strategy to divide rural and urban voters, Rendell said.

"If we keep adding politicians that divide us, we aren't going to get anywhere," he said.

"If I lose, I'm going to lose because I'm from Philadelphia."