Fla. Senator Mel Martinez to Chair RNC

WASHINGTON -- Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, a prominent Hispanic who previously served in President Bush's Cabinet, will assume the high-profile post of Republican National Committee general chairman, GOP officials said Monday.

Martinez, 60, will remain in the Senate when he takes the reins of the RNC in January, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting a formal announcement. The first-term senator will be the face of the party, focusing on fundraising, outreach and travel to promote the GOP agenda.

At the same time, Mike Duncan, the RNC's current general counsel and a former party treasurer, will be named chairman and will be put in charge of running the everyday operations at the party's Capitol Hill headquarters, the officials said.

The current party chairman, Ken Mehlman, is leaving his post in January at the end of his two-year term.

As a team, Martinez and Duncan will be responsible for leading the RNC during Bush's final two years in office and throughout the 2008 presidential election cycle.

Splitting the chairmanship in two is not new.

President Reagan once chose Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada to be general chairman while Frank Fahrenkopf was chairman, and President Clinton initially had Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Don Fowler share the Democratic Party role in the same fashion.

Kerry Feehery, a Martinez spokeswoman, and her counterparts at the RNC declined to comment.

By tapping Martinez to be the party's public persona, the White House turned to a lawmaker who has been a staunch supporter of the president _ including on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform, including a guest-worker program _ and, in doing so, gave Democrats fodder for criticism.

The Democratic National Committee said the GOP "stayed the course by selecting a loyal Bush Republican to lead their party" even though voters seeking change tossed Republicans from power in the House and Senate last week.

Martinez, of Cuban descent, will fill the post as the GOP is seeking to make inroads with Hispanics, considered a swing voting group. He is one of three Hispanics in the Senate along with Democratic Sens. Ken Salazar of Colorado and Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

In last week's elections, exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the networks showed 69 percent of Hispanics voted for Democrats compared with 30 percent for Republicans, a decline for the GOP compared with 2004 when Bush got about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote.