By now it's consensus that New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg will be announced as President Obama's pick for Commerce Secretary sometime this week.
More attention should certainly be paid to what it means that Obama is appointing this man to his Cabinet. In 2005, Gregg won more than $850,000 at Powerball:
Gregg didn't let that good fortune keep him from putting in a full day's work yesterday. For instance, he found time to vote against a bill that would have helped poor families pay their home heating costs this winter. (Gregg was the only New England senator to vote against the proposal.)
A day earlier, Gregg voted against raising the minimum wage by $1.10, to $6.25 an hour. That wage hasn't increased since 1997.
At Blue Hampshire, Elwood looks at some of the other pros and cons of a Gregg appointment. But if that is, as it appears, more or less a done deal, the big question still open is who will replace him.
As we discussed on Saturday, the combination of Gregg only agreeing to leave the senate if replaced by a Republican and NH governor John Lynch's Republican-friendly proclivities makes that outcome likely, and conventional wisdom has caught up with what seasoned Lynch observers knew at the outset. Senate Republicans were out in force on the talk shows yesterday saying they were certain to keep their 41 seats -- something we would expect a seasoned roadblocker like Gregg to protect.
Politico's Ben Smith was alone or nearly alone in suggesting that:
The White House, I'm told, is still trying to get a gaurantee from Governor Lynch that he'll replace Senator Gregg with a Democrat.
Otherwise, speculation has shifted to center overwhelmingly around Republican possibilities. Yesterday and this morning, Bonnie Newman has been widely cited as the frontrunner. Newman
served as assistant secretary of Commerce for economic development in the Reagan administration. She was in charge of administrative operations for the George H.W. Bush White House.
She was chief of staff to Gregg when he was a congressman in the 1980s, and she was one of the first Republicans to publicly endorse Lynch in his 2004 challenge of then-Republican Governor Craig Benson, and co-chaired Republicans for Lynch.
She has held a number of high-profile positions in higher education, including several important posts at the University of New Hampshire (including interim president) and executive dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has also led the New Hampshire Business and Industry Association.
Lynch endorsement aside, there's little evidence she's a moderate Republican -- she seems to be more in Gregg's mold, and though he has recently voted with Democrats on a few high-profile bills, the New Hampshire senator who voted against heating assistance for the needy remains a procedural roadblocker and party-line Republican, as Kagro X shows at Congress Matters.
Considering the choices being mentioned, Blue Hampshire's Mike Caulfield asks "Will Lynch's legacy be killing universal health care?"
There will be many votes on health care this session. And if Lynch puts someone in there that blocks universal health care because he wants his legacy to be comity, well, it's on him.
--snip--
John -- whoever you elect, Democrat or Republican, every vote of theirs is on you. Every filibuster is yours. You will own it, not us.
Choose the person that reflects your values.
They will be your legacy.