Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough

Weekly Washington Wrap

• Even when both Congress and the president leave town, Washington is still moving and shaking!  The excitement this week in our nation’s capital was caused by the non-political, non-partisan Mother Nature.  On Tuesday, an earthquake, measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter in central Virginia, shook folks from South Carolina as far north as Toronto.  It was said to be the strongest quake to hit the East Coast since World War II and at least five aftershocks have rattled the Washington D.C. area in its wake.  Workers in Washington and in New York City recollected the 9-11 terrorist attacks 10-years ago and were thankful it was “just an earthquake.”  
   
• This is a busy week for Mother Nature as millions of Americans along the East Coast are now bracing for Hurricane Irene.  The storm is expected to rock coastal areas outside of Washington where hundreds of congressional and White House politicos are resting on vacation. Perhaps surviving an earthquake and a hurricane will be good preparation for the craziness that will accompany Congress’s return to Washington after Labor Day.
   
• Also on Tuesday, President Obama’s regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, announced final plans by several government agencies to reduce bureaucratic red tape.  Sunstein touted reforms totaling $4 billion in regulatory cost reductions over the next five years.  Industry was critical of the Administration’s announcement, saying that pending environmental, health care, and financial regulations have already eclipsed any benefit that could be realized by Obama’s regulatory reform initiative.

Pickin' Perry

Well, it certainly wasn't as earth-shaking as Tuesday's earthquake, but an announcement by our own David Wilkins late last week that he is endorsing Texas Governor Rick Perry for the next President of the United States certainly sent minor ripples through the media establishment.

The former U.S. ambassador to Canada and Susan Wilkins met personally with the current Texas governor and his wife, Anita, last Friday and Wilkins was impressed with what Perry had to say about growing the U.S. economy, creating jobs, and his support of Canadian energy. 

Politico, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press as well as a number of other media all carried the story that Wilkins had jumped into the primary fray with a glowing endorsement of Perry. 

Here's how Philip Rucker with the Washington Post reported it on August 20: 

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Texas Gov. Rick Perry continued to barrel across the Palmetto State on Saturday, picking up a prized endorsement here in the heart of South Carolina’s most conservative and evangelical region.

More than 400 curious partisans packed Tommy’s Country Ham House to check out the latest Republican presidential hopeful — the largest crowd assembled at this iconic political eggs-bacon-and-grits joint since another Texas governor, George W. Bush, was running for president in 2000.

As Perry walked through the restaurant with his wife, Anita, he made clear that his hopes of winning the Republican nomination rest with South Carolina. “We’re going to campaign in South Carolina with fervor,” Perry said, calling the state “a conservative beacon on the eastern seaboard of this country. It is truly a bright light.”

Fortunately for Perry, one of the state’s most influential Republicans, former state House speaker David Wilkins, who served as Bush’s ambassador to Canada, embraced him here.

Wilkins ticked through the bullet points of Perry’s biography: married with two grown children, a Southerner, a conservative, started his political career at age 34, served in uniform, attended a land-grant university.

“I’m sure all of you have many things in common with Governor Perry, and that’s the point,” Wilkins said. “Governor Perry is one of us. He is someone that we can relate to, he is someone that we can connect with, he is someone that we can believe in. And Governor, South Carolina is a small state, but we have a big heart. We want our government to do a few things — a few things — and do them well, and then get out of the way.”

At that, shouts of “Amen!” rang out among the crowd.

And here's what the Wall Street Journal had to say two days later: 

The battle for the South between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry intensified Monday.

Mr. Romney is out with a list of endorsements from seven elected officials in Georgia. It’s undoubtedly a response to former South Carolina state House Speaker David Wilkins’s weekend endorsement of Mr. Perry, who campaigned in South Carolina on Friday and Saturday. Mr. Wilkins, who was former President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Canada, is considered a powerbroker in Palmetto State politics, the Washington Post reports…

Props for the Pipeline

Switching from politics to pipelines, Wilkins chatted with Financial Post reporter Claudia Cattaneo about the future of the KXL Pipeline as she explored the "what ifs" as the State Department continues to consider the pipeline permit (a decision by State is expected by the end of the year). 

Here are some excerpts from the August 16 story headlined, "Political Rancour Enemy of Pipeline."

Any day now, the U.S. State Department will release a final environmental impact statement on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas, a step in the approval process that proponent TransCanada Corp. and the large part of the Canadian economy dependent on oil sands growth hope will lead to a permit by the end of the year.

But as the gridlock in Washington over how to handle the country’s debt demonstrated, U.S. politics has gotten more complicated, and it’s a safe bet it will get even more unpredictable in the run up to the 2012 presidential election.

Indeed, some are beginning to worry that the much-delayed oil sands pipeline could be sacrificed by the embattled Obama administration to avoid eroding support from one of its strong constituencies, the environmental movement, which has been rabidly opposed to the $7-billion project…

Publicly, TransCanada and the oil industry continue to assume the project will be permitted. Among the optimists is former U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins, who also represents Canadian energy interests in Washington.

“It would be contrary to North American energy security to say ‘no’ to this pipeline,” he said. “It would be contrary to job creation, which is so important to the United States right now. This is a chance to have a state-of-the-art system that would be a model for others. There are a lot of positive things that indicate to me that the State Department will approve the permit.”

Godspeed Jack

We join with our Canadians friends in honoring the life and marking the passing of NDP leader Jack Layton. 

Our thoughts and prayers are with Olivia Chow and the Layton family.