| Bush Cabinet Speculation
Amid the speculation about a Cabinet shuffle in President Bush’s
second term, Orrin Hatch was mentioned in a Wall
Street Journal story
as a possible successor to Attorney General John Ashcroft.
It’s doubtful, however, that Hatch would be tempted to resign
from the Senate to take the post. He is looking forward to chairing
the Senate Finance Committee in a couple of years. If Hatch did
move to AG, it would set off a scramble in Utah. New Gov. Jon
Huntsman would likely select Hatch’s replacement.
Meanwhile, there hasn’t been a lot of gossip about Mike
Leavtt, whether he will stay at EPA or go elsewhere, although
some people think he has a shot at replacing Tom Ridge
at Homeland Security. Ridge apparently wants to gear up for the
presidential race in 2008.
Gay Rights Activists Helped Elect Bush
Every action in politics has a reaction, the consequences often
unintended. So when the very liberal mayor of San Francisco married
hundreds of gay couples, and the very liberal Massachusetts Supreme
Court ruled that gay marriage is legal, they probably didn’t
know they were ensuring the re-election of conservative George
Bush.
The states of California and Massachusetts supported John
Kerry and weren’t even in play in the election, of
course, but the firestorm set off by the activities in those two
states ended with ballot proposals in 11 other states (including
all-important Ohio) to ban gay marriage. The big election day turnout
by people opposed to gay marriage is credited by many analysts for
the Bush win. Bush supporters should be sending roses to the gay
rights activists in San Francisco and Massachusetts for their timely
assistance in re-electing the president.
Singing Cartoon
Here’s another silly animated singing
political cartoon sent along by Ron Fox. It’s
a little crass, and not as funny as the cartoons done by the guys
at JibJab
Vu Wins Praise in Ohio
When he left the Salt Lake County elections office for Cuyahoga,Ohio,
Michael Vu probably had no clue what he was getting
in to. But today he’s winning high praise for his performance
under severe pressure.
Here are some excerpts from a Friday, Nov. 5 story in the Cleveland
Plain Dealer:
Michael Vu's going on two hours of sleep. But his navy suit is
crisp, his white collar starched and he's responding to questions
as fast as reporters can ask them at a news conference to deal with
the aftermath of Tuesday's election.
"Are you the director?" he asks Vu in a demanding voice.
Vu nods.
"I worked for you yesterday from 5 o'clock in the morning
until midnight," the man says, "and I never had a better
time in my life."
For the next few minutes, the poll worker tells Vu how smoothly
it went in his precinct. No big problems, he says, just a couple
of little ones.
"I just want to thank you," the worker says before walking
off, shaking his head as if he can't believe it.
He, like many other folks, was impressed that the contentious election,
in a town known for its us-and-them politics, in a place the whole
world was watching, came off without embarrassing Cleveland again.
"It was like getting 15 minutes of martial arts training and
being thrown to the lions at the Colosseum - hungry lions - and
he handled it," said Vu's running buddy, Cuyahoga Common Pleas
Judge Timothy McGinty.
Even more surprising is the transformation Vu has made in the oh-so-political
agency he took over one year and three months ago today.
For years, the place had been a joke.
There was a time when staffers watched soap operas, slept at their
desks or spent the day working on local candidates' campaigns.
Vu's predecessor and his deputy director went a month without talking
to each other during a busy 2001 election season, according to internal
memos. And on Vu's third day of work, sheriff's detectives launched
a criminal investigation into the earlier disappearance of three
boxes of financial records.
So why did he resign as election manager in Salt Lake County, Utah,
to take the job?
Vu laughs.
"I didn't know what I was getting myself into," he says.
That he reorganized the staff, kept the agency out of new trouble,
booted politics out of the office and assigned jobs based on merit
is another surprise, political leaders on both sides of the aisle
say.
And he's only 28.
"When I first saw Michael Vu, I thought 'This has got to be
a mistake,'" said Roger Synenberg, a Cleveland
lawyer and Republican who was on the elections board when Vu was
hired. "I mean, he was my son's age."
But the board - two Democrats and two Republicans - was impressed
with Vu's election knowledge, his understanding of technology and
his quick assessment of what was wrong with the Cuyahoga County
office.
"It became quite clear to me, and I know to other members
of the board, that this was a person who could not be judged chronologically,"
Synenberg said.
Tom Hayes, director of the Ohio Department of
Job & Family Services and another of Vu's running buddies, calls
the director "an elections savant."
"He knows that stuff inside and out," said Hayes, a Democrat
who directed the elections board in the mid-1990s.
Vu knows it so well that months after he left the Salt Lake job,
staff there found themselves not knowing what to do one election
night. It was 2 a.m. in Cleveland, but still they knew Vu was the
guy to bail them out. So they called.
"He's been willing to do that on numerous occasions,"
said his former Utah boss, Sherrie Swensen.
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