Stories related to: governor

Among Barack Obama's potential running mates, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius brings a history of standing up to the Bush White House and credibility for having won over a historically Republican state, Sam Stein writes in the Huffington Post. "Kansans of all political stripes loved" Sebelius' blasting of Bush's war policy when it left the state without military reserves needed to pick up after 2007 tornadoes. More »

For a state that boasts Sin City as its main attraction, Nevada is utterly transfixed with Gov. Jim Gibbon’s marital woes. Ever since he filed for divorce last month, Gibbons has been followed around like a starlet, with pictures of him with various alleged “other women” routinely cropping up. His wife’s siege of the governor’s mansion even made People magazine. More »

Texas officials are crying arson after a fire ripped through the Texas Governor's Mansion today, the Austin-American Statesman reports. Flames gutted parts of the building and damaged the roof, but destroyed no artifacts, as the building had been emptied for renovations. Gov. Rick Perry and President Bush expressed their grief while state officials vowed to obtain security video and catch the arsonist. More »

The woman accused of arranging the infamous liaison between "Kristen" and "Client No. 9" pleaded guilty today, the New York Times reports. Temeka Rachelle Lewis, 32, admitted to charges of promoting prostitution and money laundering in the bust that brought about Eliot Spitzer's downfall. She could face up to 25 years in prison. More »

It takes a lot of extra sweat for New York's legally blind governor to act like a person with 20/20, the New York Times reports. David Paterson spends hours each night listening to recorded staff briefings—and memorizing speeches, since he can't read a teleprompter. And though the veteran politician knows Albany well, he's still learning the layout of the governor's mansion. More »

An Elliot Spitzer-like sex saga is headed to the small screen, reports the New York Daily News. TV's Law & Order has begun casting for an episode that will feature a politician nabbed in a prostitution ring. Meanwhile, life is getting harder for Silda Spitzer, wife of the disgraced former New York governor, who is now coping with devastating health problems suffered by her sister's husband and father-in-law. More »

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who walked out of a Louisiana federal prison on an appeal bond yesterday, told the New York Times in his first interview that "abuse of power" put him behind bars—and accused Karl Rove of being behind it all. “It’s going to be my quest to encourage Congress to ensure that Karl Rove either testifies, or takes the Fifth,” Siegelman said. More »

Puerto Rican Gov.Anibal Acevedo Vila was indicted today on 19 counts, including election fraud and conspiracy to violate federal campaign-finance laws, the AP reports. Vila and 12 associates are accused of breaking rules in financing the 2000 campaign that saw Vila elected the territory's Washington rep. Vila says the charges, and the probe that spawned them, are politically motivated. More »

Jim McGreevey has backed up his aide's claim that the two were involved in three-way sex with his estranged wife, contradicting her earlier denial. "This happened, this happened in the past, and now we need to move on with our lives," the former New Jersey governor told the AP. The McGreeveys' bitter divorce case is before the courts, and the aide is expected to be called as a witness. More »

Eliot Spitzer didn't patronize a pricey call girl ring just for the sex, Chris Smith writes in a  provocative New York post-mortem. What really attracted him was the covert op. The silver-spoon-fed Ivy Leaguer was always rebelling against being squeaky clean; as a young prosecutor, he got "hooked on the clandestine" while running stings on the Gambino crime family. More »

Maria Shriver received hundreds of thousands of dollars from NBC after leaving her position as a "Dateline" anchor when her husband became the governor of California, the LA Times reports. Economic statements filed by Schwarzenegger reveal that NBC paid Shriver between $100,000 and $1 million annually from 2004 until she decided not to return to TV news in early 2007. More »

Silda Wall Spitzer, the Harvard-educated lawyer who stood grimly alongside her husband during his somewhat perplexing apology yesterday, joins the ranks of political wives who suffer publicly the sex scandals of their disgraced mates, ABC writes. She follows in the footsteps of Larry Craig's wife, Suzanne; Jim McGreevey's then-wife, Dana: and, of course, Hillary Clinton, an exception in that she didn't share the podium with Bill at his nadir. More »

Californians are complaining about a governor who rarely spends a night in the state capital and dirties the air with almost daily commuter flights on a private jet, reports the Los Angeles Times . Arnold Schwarzenegger spends most nights at the family home in Brentwood in southern California. Critics say spending all that time in the air—some three hours a day—undercuts his tough stance on pollution, and suspect it's hurting his focus on politics in Sacramento. More »

An FCC commissioner wants to know why an Alabama TV station went off the air just as a "60 Minutes" segment critical of Karl Rove started, Broadcasting & Cable reports. WHNT blamed a “technical difficulty," but Michael Copps said today he wants to find out whether Sunday's blackout of most of a segment about the imprisonment of ex-governor Don Siegelman was a political move. More »

Lawyers for Jim Siegelman want an outside investigator to look into charges that GOP operatives railroaded the ex-governor of Alabama on bribery charges, reports the AP. "60 Minutes" reported Sunday that prosecutors met over 70 times with the aide that helped put Siegelman behind bars, and had him write out his evidence over and over again. Any notes from the aide should legally have been turned over to the defense. More »

President Bush insisted yesterday to the Republican Governors Association that Americans will elect another Republican to fill his shoes in November, AP reports. "And I don't want the next Republican president to be lonely," Bush said. "And that's why we got to take the House, retake the Senate, and make sure our states are governed by Republican governors." More »

Meg Whitman, who is resigning as eBay’s CEO after 10 years, is considering running for governor of California as a Republican, the LA Times reports. Whitman became “fascinated” by politics while bundling donations for ex-colleague Mitt Romney, a source says, and some California Republicans like her executive chops and deep pockets. More »

Mike Huckabee surged to the top of the polls in the Republican presidential contest partly because of his squeaky clean image, but the persona emerging from years as governor of Arkansas is quite different, the New York Times reports. Supporters and critics alike remember him as a hard-charging iconoclast with little tolerance for opposition and an appetite for unpopular positions. More »

New Jersey officially abolished the death penalty today, becoming the first state to ban capital punishment in the 4 decades since the US Supreme Court allowed the practice to resume. "Today, New Jersey is truly evolving," Gov. Jon Corzine said as he signed the measure, which sped through the legislature amid contentious debate in the glare of national media attention, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. More »

Kentucky Dems are confident that they'll win the governor's office next week and grab a Senate seat in 2008, the Guardian reports. Polls put Steve Beshear up by 11 points in next week's gubernatorial contest, and Dems say Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is now beatable. "We are going to turn Kentucky blue," claims one Dem. "The biggest reason is that the Republicans had their chance to lead and they blew it." More »