Latinos and the Obama Cabinet

What He Said

Bill Richardson was an also-ran in the Democratic primaries, but he could be a major player in Barack Obama's administration. (By Alex Brandon -- Associated Press)

We're hearing there was a momentary pause last week in the exchanges of drafts of a memorandum of understanding between the Bush administration and the Obama team. The memo established procedures for how the transition would work, how much access would be given to the new folks and so forth. The Obama team is said to have wanted some adjustments in wording to the administration draft.

But it was quickly resolved, we were told, when it became evident that the wording used by the Bush team was drawn from the wording of the outgoing Clinton administration proposal during transition negotiations with the incoming Bush team in 2000.

The Obama team was told that the author of the Clinton proposal was then-Chief of Staff John Podesta.

Oh, never mind.

Pick 'Em

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HUD II

On the transition front, word is that some of the key transition folks who have been focusing on housing matters include Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution, who was chief of staff to former housing and urban development secretary Henry Cisneros; Roberta Achtenberg, assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity during Cisneros's tenure; and Xavier Briggs, an associate professor of sociology and urban planning at MIT and former acting assistant secretary at HUD for policy development and research.

On the Move on the Hill

While everyone these days is focused on the presidential transition, there's going to be lots of movement on Capitol Hill as well, with lawmakers looking for bigger offices and better committee assignments, and staffers moving to new gigs.

One of the first moves of note involves veteran foreign policy analyst and longtime Senate aide Richard Kessler, most recently at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who moves to be staff director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.