President Obama hosted a luncheon on Thursday for newly elected governors across the street from the White House at Blair House, where he promised to work closely with them to fix the economy and improve education over the next two years.
But while Ohio’s incoming Republican governor, John Kasich, was among the nearly two dozen state chief executives at the lunch, the Democrat he beat in November, Gov. Ted Strickland, was not left out in the cold. In fact, he got a personal visit with the president hours earlier in the Oval Office, the only governor singled out for such special attention.
Mr. Strickland has been an energetic ally for Mr. Obama in an important battleground state and the president campaigned for him repeatedly this fall, albeit in vain. An Oval Office visit may not be much of a consolation prize, but it was a public way for the president to show his appreciation and respect for a political friend who helped him out so much.
At the Blair House lunch, Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed to put aside partisanship and work with the governors through the many issues now confronting them. Many in the audience were, like Mr. Kasich, Republicans who unseated Democrats by running against Mr. Obama and his initiatives, and some have vowed to resist his expansion of federal programs like the new health care law.
“We have just had a very vigorously contested election, but the election is over,” Mr. Obama told them. “And now I think it’s time for all of us to make sure that we’re working together. I am a very proud Democrat, as some of you in the room are – although not as many as I had expected. Some of you are very proud Republicans. But we’re all prouder to be Americans.”
Mr. Obama encouraged them to make their states “laboratories for democracy” but said there still must be “basic national standards” that everyone will have to meet. He encouraged them to tell him what works and what does not. “Contrary to the mythology, believe it or not, it turns out that I would love to eliminate programs that don’t work,” he said. “And you guys are the ones oftentimes who are implementing them.”
Four new governors later told White House reporters that they welcomed his promises of cooperation and acknowledged that they do not expect much financial help from Washington in meeting their own budget problems. “None of the 50 governors are living under the illusion that there’s going to be hundreds of millions more dollars coming our way,” said Governor-elect Peter Shumlin, Democrat of Vermont.
But despite the heated rhetoric during the campaign, the governors said none of them challenged Mr. Obama directly during the closed-door portion of the meeting.
Governor-elect Dan Malloy, Democrat of Connecticut, who criticized the White House after his election last month for doing a “particularly weak job telling its side of the story,” told reporters Thursday that the Blair House session was cordial. “I don’t think anyone engaged the president,” he said. “None of us are members of the press.”
source: The Caucus
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