Job floated to entice Romanoff out of Senate bid pays $165,300

One of the jobs floated by a top White House official to Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff, in an attempt to get him out of a primary challenge to an incumbent Democrat, would have paid him $165,300.

The director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency is paid an annual salary at the Executive Level III, according to the Plum Book, the government publication that lists roughly 9,000 appointment positions every four years after a presidential election.

The Office of Personnel Management lists Executive Level III positions as receiving a salary in 2010 of $165,300. A spokesman for the USTDA confirmed this number as the director’s salary.

The USTDA’s director position is a post requiring Senate confirmation.

USTDA has an annual budget of $55 million and 78 employees. The director’s post was one of three government positions that were dangled in front of Romanoff by deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina, according to both Romanoff and the White House.

The other two positions were Deputy Assistant Administrator for Latin America and Caribbean at USAID and Director, Office of Democracy and Governance at USAID. Neither of those jobs appeared to be as high-paying as the USTDA position, based on searches of OPM’s website.

The White House has insisted that no job was technically offered to Romanoff, but that Messina followed up with Romanoff after the former state legislator had applied online for government jobs following President Obama’s election in November 2008.

But even the mention of a potential job with such high compensation, in exchange for political activity such as leaving a Senate race, is certain to raise new questions about whether the White House has broken the law.

Why would Sestak abandon Senate pursuit for "a trifle?"

Is there a political errand that requires skirting the law and resorting to lawyerly evasion should it come to light? William Jefferson Clinton, reporting for duty, sir!
With the addition of Bill Clinton to a mix that included a Friday news dump and an exquisitely crafted exculpatory document from the White House counsel's office, the Joe Sestak job-offer scandal acquired a retro feel. Who knew "hope and change" would feel so 1998?

The Sestak affair boiled over during the last week. The Democratic congressman said months ago that the White House had attempted to keep him out of the Senate primary in Pennsylvania against party-switcher Arlen Specter by dangling a job offer. No one paid much attention until Sestak won, and when pressed on the Sunday shows, refused to say anything more about the matter in a Tony-worthy impression of "A Man with Something to Hide."

The White House kept insisting "trust us, nothing untoward happened," until even Democrats began to say they should be more forthcoming. That produced Friday's revelation of Clinton's involvement as an emissary to Sestak, and a 11/4-page long White House counsel "report" that sought to put the matter to rest in a matter of a mere seven paragraphs.

The document suggests that, at the behest of the White House, Clinton offered Sestak an unpaid position on a presidential advisory board to get him to stand down.

He might have had better luck if he'd offered him a choice Capitol Hill parking space. For a sitting congressman and former three-star admiral like Sestak, a spot on an advisory commission would be a nuisance to be avoided rather than a plum to be coveted, let alone at the price of his senatorial ambitions.

It's almost inconceivable that practiced political hands like Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff behind the gambit, would have considered such a trifle sufficient enticement to sway Sestak. Besides, the advisory role doesn't jibe with Sestak's words or body language over the last three months, all of which suggested he'd been offered a real, honest-to-goodness job - you know, one with a salary and maybe even health benefits and an office.

Even his allies laughed when John McCain said in an ad, "Complete the danged fence"

It almost seems like a political tradition: the great John McCain campaign-staff shake-up. As the Arizona Republic's Dan Nowicki first reported Sunday, the top two staffers in McCain's Senate re-election effort — campaign manager Shiree Verdone and her deputy, Mike Hellon — have decamped. The two will work for the Arizona Republican Party, overseeing strategy for a "victory" fundraising effort for statewide candidates, including McCain.

The move comes on the heels of a recent TV ad meant to tout McCain's border security credentials, including a push for a stronger fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. "Complete the danged fence," McCain says in the ad. The only problem: Three years ago, McCain dismissed a fence as the "least effective" means of securing the border. The ad prompted much snickering — not just from his GOP primary rival, Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who attacked McCain as a flip-flopper, but even McCain pals like Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), who openly laughed at the ad last week on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."