(Note: This was originally written as an update to the ongoing Senate speculation liveblog, but I figured it really deserved its own post.)
David Akin is twittering the highlights of the much anticipated and then totally forgotten about PMO shuffle. The biggest news, as far as ITQ can tell, is that Jenni Byrne is leaving Langevin for party headquarters, where she’ll be director of political operations. Jasmine Igneski will take over as head of Issues Management, and Darrell Reid – previously director of research deputy chief of staff – will look after Regional Affairs, which used to be a subsidiary of Issues Management, so I guess they’re splitting it up.
Meanwhile, Andrew Wallace becomes Director of Stakeholder Management, replacing Mark Cameron, who leaves PMO for parts as yet unknown. Oh, and Dimitri Soudas becomes chief spokesperson, and John Williamson will play more of a “background role”. (Dare we say … ‘strategic communications’? In other words, he’ll be the CSO to Dimitri’s Kory?)
UPDATE: Alright, so it seems that ‘background’ may not have been the best choice of words to describe John Williamson’s new role at Langevin, since he’s actually going to be taking over two different offices, Communication, and Strategic Communication, each of which used to have its own director, and yes, ITQ hopes the first thing he does is restore at least one of the jettisoned Ses.
Basically, he’s going to be sort of a Teneycke/Stewart Olsen hybrid, with Dimitri becoming the official PMO spokesperson. ITQ suspects that he may also end up taking on some of the tasks previously handled by the outgoing Jenni Byrne — who becomes the new Doug Finley, y’all, which has to be a promotion, right?
Other than that, it’s still not clear what happened to the research office — I swear, it used to exist — or whether Reid will keep his deputy chief of staff title as well as taking the helm over at Regional Affairs. We’ll just have to wait for GEDS to update before we can really figure out what’s going on, I suspect.
