Steele Eyed
Some members of the Republican National Committee who chose not
to support Michael Steele for chairman are
encouraging reporters to monitor the RNC’s FEC and expense filings
after the second quarter. “You’ve got some Republi cans who just
don’t like Steele’s style, and you have people who supported others
in the race, mostly from Southern states, pushing the antiSteele
message,” says an RNC member who did not back Steele on the first
two ballots but then did flip to support him.
Steele took some criticism early on for failing to hire a
professional staff and for maintaining a high number of consultant
contracts, one of the main complaints from grassroots about the
previous leadership of Mike Duncan. In fact, it
appears that Steele has actually expanded the use of consulting
contracts.
But Steele has also shown his fundraising prowess, at least
initially outraising the DNC, and surpassing internal RNC
expectations for fundraising in the first quarter.
Bayou Buddy
Louisiana attorney general Buddy Caldwell, a
Democrat, is already attempting to position himself to challenge
Gov. Bobby Jindal. Caldwell maneuvered behind the
scenes to implement a monthly 15cent tax on Bayou State citizens’
Internet connections to raise about $2.5 million in new tax revenue
to cover investigations of Internet crime. This despite the fact
that Caldwell already has money in his budget for such
investigations, which often include child pornography.
Jindal had said he would veto the bill if it included new or
increased taxes.
But Caldwell, according to some state Republicans, was less
concerned about the pedophiles and more concerned about putting
Jindal in the politically unpopular position of vetoing a spending
bill that would have expanded Internetcrime prosecution.
“You’re seeing Democrats doing what they can to build a case
against Jindal,” says state GOP official. “Bobby is doing
everything right, focusing on the state, not spending too much time
elsewhere even though he could, but guys like Buddy want to dirty
him up a bit for the next goround.”
Linda and Larry
In a little-noticed move in early June, the Federal Reserve
hired Linda Robertson, the former head of Enron’s
Washington government affairs office at the time the company
collapsed under an accounting fraud scandal. Robertson ran the
office from 2000 through 2002, when it was closed.
Previously she served as a senior adviser in the Clinton
administration’s Treasury Depart ment. Now, she will advise Fed
chairman Ben Bernanke and the board on the best
ways to work and deal with Congress. According to Treasury
Department sources, however, Robertson is also expected to be a
conduit for her old friend and mentor, Larry
Summers, who currently serves as the key economic adviser
to President Barack Obama.
“She and Summers are tight,” says a Treasury source, “and
Robertson is also very tight with some very influential journalists
here in town, so she’s the total package for the Obama team’s needs
on the economic front.”
According to reporters who have covered Treasury, Robertson is a
close friend of Bloomberg’s Washington bureau chief Al
Hunt, who at the time of Robertson’s stint in Treasury was
bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.
Robertson’s hire sidesteps the Obama administration’s ban on
hiring lobbyists, because the Fed is an independent agency. But
that doesn’t mean that the White House isn’t trying to influence
hiring in areas it wants to control.
For example, according to sources at the Security and Exchange
Commission, the person recently hired by SEC chairman Mary
Schapiro to be that agency’s top lobbyist was nixed by
Summers because he didn’t feel comfortable with the hire’s
background. “We haven’t seen this much input into hiring at the
independent agencies in a long time,” says a career staffer at the
Federal Trade Commission. “It makes you wonder what they are up
to.”
The Stimulus Election
The White House economic team is getting nervous about the 2010
elections and whether the state of the economy will allow Democrats
to build on the majorities they already have in Congress. So
nervous that, according to some White House sources, the
administration is attempting to come up with a new economic measure
for the media to start using to report on economic activity.
“It would be like other government indexes, but take into
account job creation by stimulus, spending of stimulus dollars for
new projects, that kind of thing. But really it’s about trying to
put some kind of good news in front of the American people starting
next January, when they will start thinking about 2010 and the
election cycles.”
This new economic index is just part of an overall public
relations campaign on the economy. For example, the White House
daily calendar often includes a meeting between President Obama and
Vice President Biden to discuss the implementation of the stimulus
and recovery. But White House sources say that if the meeting takes
place, the discussion rarely focuses on the stimulus plan’s
effectiveness or utility.
