Governor Bob McDonnell made a last minute Cabinet switch to defuse the growing controversy over Bob Sledd’s interest in remaining on corporate boards while serving as a Cabinet Secretary.
McDonnell made Jim Cheng Secretary of Commerce and named Sledd Senior Advisor, a post he’ll serve in on an unpaid basis.
Democrats claimed that they had the votes to block Sledd’s confirmation and were preparing to make his continued service on corporate boards the centerpiece of their ethics reform initiative.
This is the kind of political grinder that I can’t imagine Sledd would have any interest in going through and it threatened to be the big story for the next two weeks.
It was politically smart for the McDonnell team to put an early end to the controversy, especially as it became clear that there were a number of folks in Republican circles who were uncomfortable with the precedent.
Bob Sledd is a fine man and will obviously still have a role in the McDonnell administration.
This may be the best solution for everyone.
Smart move by McDonnell. Cuts his losses, avoids what would have been a highly publicized loss in the Senate P&E Committee early in the session. So far, McD’s team strikes me as being more poltically savvy than either of the last two Republican administrations. Both Allen and Gilmore would have fought this down to the inevitable loss in the Senate, spreading acrimony as they went.
[...] H/T Virginia Tomorrow [...]