Gillespie Might Replace Bartlett
RICHMOND, Va. – Former Republican national chairman Ed Gillespie has emerged as a potential replacement to Dan Bartlett as counselor to President Bush, friends say.
Questioned about the prospect Saturday night at a fundraising dinner for the Virginia GOP, which he now chairs, Gillespie said he was “flattered at the notion.”
“It’s not for me to rule it in or out,” he added, “You’ll have to ask the president.”
"We don't comment or speculate on personnel decisions," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.
Gillespie, a veteran GOP operative, now splits his time between a Washington lobbying practice and his role in Virginia as the leader of a party seeking to climb its way back after a succession of electoral losses.
After taking the reins of the national party in 2003, Gillespie was part of the Bush-Cheney inner circle in the 2004 campaign. He also served a key role for the White House in shepherding Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts through the Senate confirmation process after Bush’s re-election.
Despite his close ties to the administration, Gillespie has never shed his lucrative lobbying clients to go on the government payroll. As recounted in his memoir, “Winning Right,” Gillespie came closest to serving in the White House when Bush was first elected in 2000. He was set to run the president’s internal lobbying operation as chief legislative liaison, but decided at the last moment to remain in a less time-consuming private sector job.
But one Gillespie friend said he’s now leaning “60-40” in favor of taking on the difficult task of serving a lame duck president bogged down in the polls, grapping with an unpopular war and without many of his original aides. To add to his troubles, Bush now faces a party base in open revolt over his immigration policy.
The depth of Bush’s – and potentially Gillespie’s -- challenge in his final year-and-a-half in office was made plain Saturday night in the keynote address of one of his potential successors.
Speaking to about 450 Virginia Republicans at the state party’s annual gala, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson won thunderous and sustained applause from the audience when he insisted that “we’ve got to get control of the border first” before addressing other immigration issues.
“This is our house, and we get to decide who gets to come into our house,” Thompson added to a crowd, which responded with a standing ovation.
The implicit criticism of the president’s immigration plan was the most electric moment of the evening for a demoralized group of Republicans that have lost consecutive gubernatorial races and seen their own would-be presidential candidate, former Sen. George Allen, fall off the national stage courtesy of last year’s elections.
Gillespie would be trading one difficult job for another by moving to Pennsylvania Avenue. Though he’s already boosted the fundraising efforts of the Virginia GOP since taking over in December, the Virginia party remains ideologically fractured and faces difficult demographic challenges as the state’s electorate changes. Virginia Republicans will be defending their majorities in the state House and Senate this fall under what even the most loyal party members acknowledge are difficult circumstances. The party also may have to defend an open Senate seat should Sen. John Warner retire next year.
But for the ever-cheerful Gillespie, either uphill task would take be taken with relish. The role of counselor to the president would climax a political career that began in the parking lot of the U.S. Senate where he parked cars at night as an undergraduate student at Catholic University. &nbs;
But staying in his current post may hold even more promise – and also may finally bring the former congressional aide back to government work. A Fairfax county resident, Gillespie is thought to have aspirations to run for office in Virginia.