HOUSE DEMS NEW CHIEF OF STAFF?

A Captain Renault post: It looks like the House Democrats have selected a new Chief of Staff for the Caucus. (more below)

There has been a lull for us and many others over the first part of this week as most of the world watched the historic events in Washington D.C. Now the Inauguration and the parties are over, we have a new President, we have hope and we have to get back to work.

As always, there is much to cover in PA politics and we are looking forward to an interesting 2009. We like to specialize on reporting and commenting on the hypocrisy in PA politics and PA politicians so there is always an abundance of material. The state's biggest hypocrite of course is Space Cadet and Attorney General Tom Corbett so he always provides enough material to keep a dozen blogs busy on a daily basis. We will continue to focus on Corbett's partisan use of the justice system and his willingness to apply a healthy does of double standards as he marches on to his campaign for Governor using the Bonusgate investigation as his campaign platform.

But today we have a HEARD ON THE HILL AND IN THE STREET item. Sources within the Capitol have indicated that the House Democrats are going to name lobbyist Laura Kuller as the new Chief of Staff to the House Democrat Caucus. The House Democrat Caucus leadership had stated they were conducting a nationwide search for a chief of staff and lo and behold they found one right down the street and the Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney lobbying firm.

In an earlier post, we reported that the new Democrat Triumvirate of Eachus, McCall and Evans had met with and asked Rendell's Secretary of Legislative Affairs Steve Crawford to take the job and he turned them down.

We are doing some more research on Kuller and will report on what we find out soon. We do know that she worked for years on the staff of then Minority Leader Bill DeWeese so that does not give us great comfort. One would think that the new Democrat leadership would try very hard to remove any vestiges of the DeWeese era but it looks like they are doing the opposite by elevating a former DeWeese staff person to a top post.

The House Dems also must not have received the memo from President Obama on his new ethics in government rules which really crack down on the revolving door for lobbyists and officials in his new administration. Making a lobbyist your chief of staff raises some interesting and troubling questions. We will have more on those questions in a future post.