Stop freaking out that Pete Rouse once worked for a Republican

CreekDog

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Fri Oct-01-10 01:25 PM
Original message

Stop freaking out that Pete Rouse once worked for a Republican

Edited on Fri Oct-01-10 01:27 PM by CreekDog

It was in 1983...for a Republican who lost to a conservative in the primary...and has only worked for Democrats before and since.

BUT if you still want to freak out, at least learn something about the guy by reading the damned article first:

Anchorage Daily News

Senior Obama adviser has Alaska roots

http://www.adn.com/2009/02/21/698296/senior-obama-adviser-has-alaska.html

By TOM KIZZIA
tkizzia@adn.com

(02/21/09 20:32:31)

He once helped run state government in Juneau, played shortstop in a local softball league, and he still votes as an Alaska resident.

(snip)

For 25 years as the consummate Democratic insider in the U.S. Senate, Rouse played a quiet role as the backdoor connection for Alaska's all-Republican delegation to the other side of the aisle in Congress. He was the longtime chief of staff for Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the one-time Senate majority leader, and starting in 2004 Rouse took on the same job for a promising young freshman senator from Illinois.

(snip)

His Alaska roots run deeper than those of almost anyone reading these words. His mother, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, grew up in Anchorage starting in World War I, when it was a railroad construction town.

(snip)
But Rouse himself was born on the East Coast and had never been west of Denver when he flew to Alaska in late 1978 to visit a friend, Alaska's newly elected Republican lieutenant governor, Terry Miller.

Rouse ended up working as Miller's chief of staff for the final four years of Gov. Jay Hammond's administration. It was a great experience, Rouse said, a time when Juneau was filled with young idealists eager to grapple with the state's new oil money, infrastructure need and unformed social policies.

(snip)

The ambitious young staffer returned to Washington, D.C., in 1983 and worked for Democrats in the Senate ever since. For a while, he imagined returning to Alaska if Miller ever managed to win a race for governor. The dream faded; Miller died of bone cancer in 1989, at age 46. Rouse's last visit to Juneau was to attend his old friend's memorial.

ALASKA CONNECTION

(snip)

"He was a very intelligent guy and a progressive Republican," Rouse said of Miller, the only Republican he ever worked for. "On balance I felt he had the right vision for Alaska and the right philosophical approach."

(snip)

The Alaska years ended in disappointment, when Miller lost the 1982 Republican gubernatorial primary to conservative Anchorage Mayor Tom Fink. (Democrat Bill Sheffield went on to win the general election that year.) Rouse headed back to Washington.

(snip)

It was because of Rouse that Obama was the only presidential candidate to speak about Alaska's natural gas pipeline before the primaries began, said former Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, who got help from Rouse during his unsuccessful 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate.

"Pete's very smart, highly skilled, and has always been totally square in our dealings," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in January. "I expect we will agree on some issues and disagree on others, but having him at that level in the White House has to be good for our state."

One of Rouse's best friends in Alaska is state Sen. Kim Elton, D-Juneau. Rouse was the one who recruited Elton, a former journalist, into politics to work for Miller. Elton said Rouse is always eager for e-mailed photos of Romeo, the black wolf often photographed around Juneau.

(snip)