By Samuel Rubenfeld
The University's alumni involved in national politics continued to have a presence in the past week.
Phil Schiliro, class of 1979, a former adviser to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) who was an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama's campaign, was announced as the administration's head of congressional relations. Schiliro was also working on congressional relations for the Obama transition team.
Schiliro will be the pointman for the administration in its negotiations with Congress on message and policy.
In Minnesota, the automatic recount for the U.S. Senate race began on Wednesday. Incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, class of 1971, held an unofficial 215 vote lead over Democrat Al Franken in a contest with more than 2.9 million votes cast. The lead shrunk to 174 after the first day of ballot recounts, according to an analysis by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, based on a swing of 23 votes in heavily-Democratic St. Louis County that were too faint to be read on Election Day.
The recount totals don't include ballots challenged by either of the candidates that won't be counted until mid-December. During the first day of recounts, the campaigns challenged a total of 269 ballots, with Coleman's campaign challenging 146 and Franken's challenging 123.
"Each candidate is allowed to have two representatives at each table," said Cindy Reichert, a Minneapolis chief election official, on a video posted on the Star-Tribune's Web site. "What they're doing is watching as the ballots are put into the separate piles, and they'll also be watching as the votes are counted."