Obama picks a white for HUD, a hispanic for Urban Policy. Both from NYC

[Lunar]

Napoleon Dynamite?

Anyway...

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1208/Model_city.html

Barack Obama's choice of two New York City officials for his administration's top two urban policy offices marks a remarkable coup for the city and its mayor, Mike Bloomberg.

Obama today announced the choice of Shaun Donovan, Bloomberg's commissioner of housing preservation and development, to run his Department of Housing and Urban Development; and sources confirmed that Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion -- who made the most of his office's limited powers by allying himself with Bloomberg -- would run the new White House Office of Urban Policy.

The two men are in the Bloomberg, and Obama, models: They're relatively young, modernizing, pro-development, committed liberals. Donovan made his name as a relatively low-key wonk, working at a senior staff job at Bill Clinton's HUD, and developing a complex program under Bloomberg that focused on mixed-income housing, creative financing and land-use choices, and a conviction that the market alone wouldn't make housing affordable. Carrion brought a firmly pro-corporate ethic to the very liberal Bronx, stepping deepest into controversy when he supported the expansion of big box stores and the subsidization of a new Yankee Stadium.

Bloomberg has his critics, who argue, in essence, that his success is a product of expanded revenues from the finance and real estate bubbles, allowing him to vastly expand the city's resources and spend freely. But Obama's choices affirm what is -- at the moment -- the conventional wisdom that, beyond serving as a caretaker for Rudy Giuliani's New York, he represents the face of a technocratic, hard-headed new liberalism that other big cities are still striving to imitate. Chicago is still known for corruption and family rule. Los Angeles and San Francisco have seen turbulent administrations and personal scandals. Philadelphia and other older cities have been unable to control rising crime.

New York, then, is the model, if a model that will be sorely tested as its revenues drop with the contraction of the key finance industry, and its police and social services are tested by a combination of budget cuts and rising economic hardship. The philosophy is both big government and technocratic, reform-minded and pro-business. Carrion has been a member of the Democratic Leadership Council, which captures some of philosophy, though he and Bloomberg are situated to its left on taxes and spending. Donovan is well-liked by affordable housing advocates because he shares their goals and has worked with them, including the recently controversial Acorn, and he sounded early cautions about the subprime lending bubble; but he also prefers to work through the private housing market, not around it, and has argued that low-income home-ownership isn't a panacea.

Obama's choice affirms Bloomberg as a model mayor and New York as the font of an expansive urban policy, as Giuliani's -- far more conservative -- New York was in the Clinton administration. It also establishes Carrion as the standard-bearer for Bloomberg's philosophy, and a frontrunner to be elected the city's mayor at some point in the next decade.

[paul718]

Kind of cool/different.  I'm warming to Obama more and more with each appointment he makes.

[Ronnie]

WHO?

[Lunar]

How many HUD contenders could you name?  He's pretty high profile since he's worked HUD in NYC (it's tough to bring low and moderate income housing to NYC).

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Well, it's a switch from how HUD is usually the token "give it to a black guy" position.

Regardless, I thought Shirley Franklin, the mayor of Atlanta, was going to be the pick. She's pretty much hit the political ceiling for a black woman in Georgia, short of running for Congress.

[Flying Dog]

Cool. My mom said someone from inside the system would be best. (She's the HUD Property manager for my county/city.)

[Robespierre's Jaw]

I wasn't expecting somebody as pale as him being selected.

[Flying Dog]

This was a surprise pick. I don't even remember him on any of the shortlists. I thought it would come down to Franking, Clyburn or Jarret.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Thank God Clyburn didn't get anything.

[Lunar]

Updated top post with detailz

[BM]

I remember seeing him speculated in various articles. He was my official prediction just from looking at things on the surface.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not happy about this. Not that I was actually expecting a sane housing policy or anything, but it was nice to dream. Still, I guess it could have been worse...