(no link - EXCERPTS)
An Alaska connection
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (AK) - Friday, December 12, 2008
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski , R-Alaska, issued what might be considered a routine statement Thursday praising President Barack Obama’s choice of former Sen. Tom Daschle to serve as secretary of health and human services. Her words were timely, gracious and one small part of a longer story that may hold some significance for Alaska in coming years.
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Now the rest of the story, which has a fascinating tie to Alaska.
Daschle for many years employed a fellow named Pete Rouse as his chief of staff. After Daschle was defeated in the 2004 election, Rouse moved over to lead the office of the new Democratic senator from Illinois — Barack Obama. And today, Rouse is the chief of staff for Obama’s presidential transition team.
Rouse spent 19 years working for Daschle, first in the House and then in the Senate. Immediately prior to that job, though, he had worked for a guy who grew up in North Pole, Alaska: Republican Lt. Gov. Terry Miller. Rouse was Miller’s chief of staff from 1979 to 1983, when Miller served with Gov. Jay Hammond.
Rouse and Miller had met in the late 1970s at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, an institution attended by numerous Alaska government cognoscenti over the years.
While at Harvard, Rouse connected with Miller by more than just accident. Rouse ’s mother had grown up in Alaska.
His mother, Mary, was the daughter of Goerge and Mine’ Mikami, a Japanese couple who founded George’s Tailor Shop on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage about the time World War I ended and construction of the Alaska Railroad was picking up steam.
Mary Mikami graduated at the head of her high school class in Anchorage and came to the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, now the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she graduated, again at the head of her class, in 1934. Froelich Rainey, head of the UA Museum, encouraged her to attend Yale University in New Haven, Conn. There she met her husband, Irving Rouse , and went on to a career as an editor, lecturer and translator. The couple had two children: Peter and David.
Much of this was outlined in the Congressional Record in a statement by former Sen. Frank Murkowski , our current senator’s father, in 1999 when Mary Mikami Rouse died. Murkowski had served in the first administration of Gov. Walter Hickel with her brother-in-law, Roland Snodgrass, the state’s agriculture director at the time.
Frank Murkowski , in the congressional statement, observed that “the winds of political fortune” carried Pete Rouse away from Alaska in the early 1980s, “but Pete never forgot Alaska and his many friends there. His continuing efforts and interest in our state are greatly appreciated.”
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Thank you, maggief!
Oh good, I see that you pinged penelopesire and the others.
Interesting that a guy at the center of Alaska’s political corruptocrats, moves to Chicago to polish his “skills” and now moves on to the most corrupt White House in American history.
“Much of this was outlined in the Congressional Record in a statement by former Sen. Frank Murkowski , our current senator’s father, in 1999 when Mary Mikami Rouse died. Murkowski had served in the first administration of Gov. Walter Hickel with her brother-in-law, Roland Snodgrass, the state’s agriculture director at the time.” (See also Daschle’s statement.)
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—SENATE S11792
Page 35-36
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-1999-10-01/pdf/CREC-1999-10-01-senate.pdf