Friday, January 12, 2007
Giving Up a Republican Future to Work for a Democrat
Ruby Washington/The New York TimesThis is the only job I wanted in government, and the only job I wish didn't exist." MICHAEL A.L. BALBONI
Great article about Balboni and why he made the decision to bolt the Senate........here are a few quotes...to read the rest ......click here.........andy
"MICHAEL A. L. BALBONI, the man who might have been New York’s next Republican governor, or maybe Republican attorney general, is instead the man who gave up his Senate seat and any dibs on being a Republican candidate for statewide office, to run the homeland security team for Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat he barely knows. They are strange bedfellows, but they both say the politics involved are nonpartisan.
It is, at least on the surface, a hazardous career maneuver by Mr. Balboni (his departure dropped his party’s slim Senate margin to 33 of 62 seats; a special election to replace him will be held next month). Sort of like wearing a bright orange tie in midwinter — decidedly not the G.O.P.-approved choice, but he’s trying to pull it off. Give him points for innovative decision-making." “It’s been like drinking water from a fire hose,” he says of his unanticipated segue from Senate vet to Spitzer official. “To be given control of an issue I absolutely am fascinated by, scared by, and compelled by, it was almost too good to be true.” Mr. Balboni’s transformation into an antiterrorism/emergency-management expert was his way of coping with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “This is the only job I wanted in government, and the only job I wish didn’t exist,” says this father of four."
It is, at least on the surface, a hazardous career maneuver by Mr. Balboni (his departure dropped his party’s slim Senate margin to 33 of 62 seats; a special election to replace him will be held next month). Sort of like wearing a bright orange tie in midwinter — decidedly not the G.O.P.-approved choice, but he’s trying to pull it off. Give him points for innovative decision-making." “It’s been like drinking water from a fire hose,” he says of his unanticipated segue from Senate vet to Spitzer official. “To be given control of an issue I absolutely am fascinated by, scared by, and compelled by, it was almost too good to be true.” Mr. Balboni’s transformation into an antiterrorism/emergency-management expert was his way of coping with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “This is the only job I wanted in government, and the only job I wish didn’t exist,” says this father of four."
