Bad vibes at a law firm; bad numbers for the state; a big flap in Labor
Jordan Hansell and his wife, Sylvia, are leaving town. That’s news, because it was news a few years ago when they came to town. Jordan Hansell is the whip-smart son of Ed Hansell, who as chairman of the 100-or-so-lawyer Nyemaster Law Firm saw to it that nepotism foes were outflanked so his son could come in and then inherit some of his clients — clients that some other lawyers thought would be theirs. Jordan Hansell, who went to Duke (summa cum laude) and Michigan Law School (magna cum laude) and then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, became the firm’s largest biller, Skinny is told, but never its most popular member. Or even runner-up. His departure — he has taken a corporate job in Ohio — is roiling the firm as much as his arrival did. “He was there long enough to both fuck up Ed’s book of business (hurting a lot of attorneys who toiled for years under him) and to now leave the firm in the lurch,” a firm lawyer wrote in a note passed along to Skinny.
And, in a snotty aside (Skinny loves snotty asides), he says: “I think your readers may want to know about this up-and-comer leaving. He worked for the highest court of the land on the most complex constitutional issues, but he didn’t know what a nepotism policy was.”
Heading off to Ohio with him is Sylvia Hansell, a partner in the Belin law firm and also Duke (cum laude) and Michigan Law (cum laude). She may have given the firm’s managers more notice, but one person says most lawyers there simply got an e-mail from her announcing she was leaving — the next day.
In Ohio, Jordan Hansell will be general counsel for NetJets, the company owned by Warren Buffett. Buffett recently named a new chairman and acting chief executive officer of NetJets — David Sokol, who is the chairman of MidAmerican Energy, the Des Moines-based utility that Buffett also owns through his Berkshire Hathaway company. There is some talk that the 52-year-old Sokol might be in line to succeed Buffett, which means that Jordan Hansell has lost none of his shrewdness. At any rate, one person at Nyemaster said Hansell’s departure is causing both glee and consternation. ...
Calling Skinny with neither glee nor consternation, another guy around town says matter-of-factly — but astonishingly — that former George W. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan has applied for the job as vice president for strategic communications (others apparently handle non-strategic communications) at the University of Iowa. McClellan, now 41 years old, worked for Bush from 2003 to 2006, then wrote a book that sort of pissed all over the president. So nobody in Washington is likely to want him. “The Republicans don’t like him, and the Democrats don’t trust him,” says our guy, who knows his way around politics. The Iowa job opened when Sally Mason shoved aside Steve Parrott — no one at the university ever gets fired, just moved over — who had been the $150,000-a-year “director of university relations.” He’s now on “special assignment” at $150,000 a year. At any rate, a 12-person search committee is looking for his strategically thinking successor. The process is “closed” (that means secret), and the last day for applying was Aug. 24. If it turns out McClellan is in fact in the running, you read it here first; it the item turns out to be made from whole cloth, forget where you read it. ...
Scott McClellan endorsed Barack Obama for president, but that doesn’t mean he’d find a lot of sympathizers if he came to Iowa. The latest SurveyUSA poll — taken in late August — puts Obama’s approval rating in the state at just 45 percent, with 51 percent disapproval. That’s the lowest he’s been. He was at 68 percent in January, just after taking office. The poll included 600 Iowans and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 points. The SurveyUSA poll — which Skinny reported last week has Chet Culver with only 35 percent approval and 51 percent disapproval — has Chuck Grassley with just 54 percent approval, the lowest number in the memory of Skinny. What’s more, the sample seems to be weighted slightly in favor of Republicans. But Grassley will win a sixth term next fall. Unless they pull the plug on grandpa.
Instant analysis: The big winner in that special election in Jefferson County was not Curt Hanson, the retired schoolteacher who won by 107 votes. It was the sometimes embattled Pat Murphy, who showed he’s still in charge of the House Democrats, as well as organized labor, which worked hard in the trenches. Murphy may well have lost his leadership post if he couldn’t have kept the House District 90 seat in the special election. Don’t expect Hanson to stray from the party/labor line next session. ...
If Labor didn’t have enough problems in this state — companies and institutions laying off people, a Democratic governor who torpedoes labor’s issues, a Democratic-controlled House that can’t find 51 votes for key labor measures — it’s now in an intramural pissing match. The Iowa Federation of Labor, which represents more than 520 locals affiliated with 30 international unions, recently sent out a legislative scorecard, grading legislators on the basis of four votes for Senate members and six votes for House members. One of the federation’s biggest unions — AFSCME, which represents government workers — wasn’t consulted, and it thinks some of labor’s real friends, including Jack Hatch and Kevin McCarthy of Des Moines, got screwed in the rankings. Danny Homan, the blunt and effective head of AFSCME, has written a blistering letter about this to Federation president Ken Sagar.
“It is obvious that this is a very flawed product in need of some revision,” says the three-page letter, which is making the rounds in labor and political circles and which someone slipped under Skinny’s doormat. “I demand that you do not send this misinformation to any AFSCME members. It is completely unacceptable for AFSCME to endorse this publication, and we are disappointed in your actions regarding how this was developed and the kind of impression it leaves someone who would read this.” The letter questions the bills used in the rankings, the way the Federation treated absences, and the lack of acknowledgement that some votes by some members were procedural — and helpful to labor. None of this would mean much except control of the House (but not the Senate) could be up for grabs in the 2010 elections, and labor’s support — or lack of it — for any particular candidate could tip the balance of control. Another lesson the federation will learn: all things being equal, it’s best not to piss off Danny Homan. ...
It now is clearer than ever that Culver will have to put in an across-the-board budget cut right after the Revenue Estimating Conference meets next month. New figures out last week — which received little publicity — show the Iowa economy is getting worse. For the first two months of this fiscal year — July and August — the state’s net revenue declined $41.5 million, or 4.1 percent, from a year earlier. And that wasn’t a great year. Here’s another way to look at it: When last it met in March, the Revenue Estimating Conference predicted revenue for fiscal 2010 (that’s the year we’re now in) would decline 0.5 percent from fiscal 2009, to about $5.7 billion. But in the first two months, actual net receipts are down 4.1 percent. If that trend continues, revenue for the year will come in around $200 million less than the most recent estimate. The only way to fill that gap is for an across-the-board cut — the governor can’t pick and choose cuts when the Legislature is not in session, and he isn’t about to call a special session and open up the gay-marriage issue. If he doesn’t announce a cut until late October — a quarter of the way through the fiscal year — he’d have to put in a 5.25 percent cut to even things out. That’s an election-year killer, especially for a guy with a 36 percent approval rate. So, once more, glee and consternation.
Glee for Terry Branstad and the Republicans.
Consternation for Chet Culver and the Democrats.
Skinny is thinking of moving to Ohio. CV
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