The New York Observer has a terrific piece on President Obama’s search for an HHS Secretary. Although Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D) has been mentioned as a top candidate, the NYO thinks not. The reason? She is so popular in her home state that she could well run for the Senate, thereby a) possibly giving the Dems a cloture-proof majority, and b) help expand the Dems further into the ‘Heartland’, thereby forcing the GOP to play defense on formerly-unassailable terrain. Sebelius leads both potential Republican candidates by double-digit margins.
Could Sebelius take the HHS job and then resign to run for the Senate? No. The HHS job has to be a long-term one; shepherding reform is going to take at least four years and likely many more; Obama can’t afford to have to replace an HHS Secretary two years into the job, especially as that will be just as things are really ramping up. This is a slot for someone who wants to be there over the long term; Sebelius is too much a rising star to take four plus years ‘off’ to take on what is going to be a very tough, highly visible job requiring decisions that will undoubtedly antagonize just about everyone.
Controlling the Senate is far too important to President Obama, and running for the Senate is likely a much better choice for Ms Sebelius than taking on what will likely be a thankless task that will alienate just about every constituency and could well end any hopes she might have of future elected office.
Feb
10
This one has been all over the liberal blogosphere for days: “Oh noooo, we can’t let Sebelius take HHS because we NEED her for the Senate.”
In reality, at this moment there are SEVEN Republican-held Senate seats that fivethirtyeight.com is rating as better chances for a Democratic pickup — NH, MO, OH, KY, FL, PA & NC — than Kansas in 2010.
While it’s true that making the GOP fight for a seat in a very red state would be immensely useful, and Sebelius’ politics are in the right place, we have to look at her skill set as it applies to either HHS or a Senate seat.
Senators are negotiators. Sebelius’ relevant experience has been as an executive. In spite of her enormous talents, she would face a learning curve in the clubby Senate as a junior Senator from a red state.
But before she was governor, she was a state insurance commissioner. And not just any insurance commissioner. She was the one who stood down Anthem when it tried to convert BC/BS of Kansas to a for-profit so it could be absorbed into Anthem (and later WellPoint). Fought it all the way to state supreme court, sent Anthem home empty handed, and extracted millions in seed money for a state healthcare foundation from BCBS of KS. It was an act of enormous courage and foresight, for which she was awarded the governorship by an appreciative electorate.
Maybe I’m seeing what I want to see, but I see Sebelius as someone who understands the role of nonprofits in healthcare, and who sees too much power in the hands of for-profit, publicly traded firms as a net negative. That’s the person I want in charge of HHS, shepherding healthcare reform for the next few years. To make her a just another low-seniority Senator in a Democratic caucus that already has some fine healthcare luminaries (Wyden, Baucus, Kennedy, etc.) would be a waste.
I forgot to point out: since Sebelius stopped Anthem in Kansas, there has not been another successful Blues for-profit conversion, though many — Premera, North Carolina, Maryland — have tried.
Oops. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090301/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/sebelius_hhs