Originally posted by Snake
It's never explicitly stated by Hesch (or anyone else), but I'd always gotten the impression that Hesch wanted to give the appearance of just an associate of the Sopranos without the official title of consiglieri. But he definitely acts in the capacity as one. Maybe the one exception is where Junior taxes Hesch and Tony, Hesch, Junior, and Johnny Sacks (sp?) sit down together to reason it out. I figure if Hesch were Tony's true consiglieri, it wouldn't have gone down that way.

I always got the impression that Hesh was too loosely tied to Tony's crew and to the De Meo family, to be considered anything other than a very unofficial adviser to Tony. I was thinking in terms of Hesh having a more high profile role under Johnny Boy. But as we have established Johnny Boy was never head/boss of the family,he would never have had a formal consilgere, ruling Hesh out. Still, I would say he was Johnny Boy's
main advisor.

Under Tony's official acting leadership of the family I always understood Silvio Dante to be the consiglere. But, this is unfortunatly where many of the books/websites seem confused. Until mid way through series 2 Silvio outranks Paulie, until Paulie is bumped up to Capo. Worth emphasising at this point that from previous discussions that we seem to have agreed that Soprano's less formal chain of command, is fairly typical of a 'camorra' style family.

My feeling is that Hesh sticks around, because he feels he somehow owes it to Tony's dead father. Hesh possibly feels that Tony is less with it than Johnny was and is more likely to make blunders. I think Hesh is an important figure in his own right, (in the scene Snake speaks of) Johnny Sacks suggests that Hesh is as much a friend to the New York families as is he is to the Di Meo clan.