Peter Schorsch
She’d outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
She is gentle! She is wild!
She’s a riddle! She’s a child!
She’s a headache! She’s an angel!
She’s a girl!
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
For whatever reason, that wonderful Rodgers and Hammerstein ditty, “How do you solve a problem like Maria” popped into my head after a lobbyist client wondered aloud how their firm should deal with Melissa Sellers, the hard-charging, 32-year-old, recently-installed Chief of Staff to Florida Governor Rick Scott. My advice to my client is the same I have been giving to all of my other clients, as well as political associates and even some friends who are state employees: Stay off of her radar screen.
And then think of the beautiful hills in “The Sound of Music,” while whistling, “She’s a darling! She’s a demon! She’s a lamb!”
Because, let’s face it, no solving a problem like Melissa.
She’s one week in and she’s got the entire apparatus of state government under her thumb. Actually, as we reported in late August, Sellers has been running Rick Scottworld for a while now. What’s changed — and the changes have been dramatic — is the roster of agency heads and high-level aides, all to bleach out any stain of (in retrospect, nice guy) former Chief of Staff Adam Hollingsworth’s tenure.
Never under the same governor has there been so much turnover (or turmoil) going into the second term. A well-placed source told me last week that there are more than 30 replacement hires that have already been made in the Governor’s Office. The single criterion that qualifies new hires for employment is that they are Friends of Melissa (FoM). The single criterion for selecting people for termination is that they had some sort of relationship, no matter how attenuated, with Hollingsworth.
Hollingsworth was shown the door with such little fanfare or respect, it reminds one of the infanticide that occurs in wild horse populations. The new alpha males will seek out and kill the progeny of the old alpha males to completely erase the presence of their DNA in the herd. In Hollingsworth’s case, all he received for his service is a two-sentence thank you buried in the press release announcing Sellers’ promotion.
And it wasn’t just Hollingsworth who has been purged. It’s also much of the old guard.
Just compare the organizational chart of the Governor’s Office in 2012:
with the current organizational chart:
The only major holdovers are general counsel Peter Antonacci, who is to Scott what Tom Hagen was to Michael Corleone, and Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! guy Gray Swoope. The rest have been subject to a Soviet-style purge. Some people are outright shot. Others are sent to the gulag (the Department of Children and Families) to live out their lives in a warren of cubicles. Geoff Becker is now out there, along with other pariahs like former cabinet affairs director Marc Slager.
By the way, has anyone seen or heard from former deputy chief of staff Rachel Cone since she was shown the door?
Remember, these were people who supported and advanced the agenda of Rick Scott! One has to wonder if some of these supporters would have been better off had Charlie Crist been elected.
… or if Sellers had not left Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s orbit to shore up what was then a fledgling Scott administration/campaign. Sellers’ appointment as COS “complete a rapid rise to prominence that began when Scott hired her to be his chief spokeswoman a little more than two years ago,” notes the Tampa Bay Times Steve Bousquet.
The chief of staff regulates access to the governor, oversees hiring and promotions and speaks with the Governor’s authority in dealing with the three elected Cabinet members, agency heads and the Legislature in what can become a grueling cycle of long days.
The Naples Daily News‘ Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster, rather courageously, put her head into the mouth of the lion on Sunday by writing the first profile of Sellers since she was named COS; courageously because Sellers is not exactly known for her embrace of the Fourth Estate.
In 2008, the Gambit, a New Orleans alternative paper, said Sellers had “become Public Enemy No. 1 to many reporters at media outlets big and small,” reports Buzzacco-Foerster. The paper also reported two news organizations — the Louisiana State University Daily Reveille student newspaper and the Republican leaning political website Bayou Buzz — called for her resignation because she was unresponsive. Of course, being unresponsive to the media pretty much makes you Employee of the Month in Rick Scott’s administration.
Now that Buzzacco-Foerster has published a profile of Sellers that was headlined “New chief of staff quick “with both her smile and middle finger,” I wonder which response the reporter will get the next time she sees Sellers or makes an ask of the administration.
Just as I wonder what response I will get after blogging about Buzzacco-Foerster’s reporting. Oh well, after the last election I doubt I was on Scott’s or Sellers’ Christmas card list.
Actually, I almost sympathize with Sellers. She’s in her early thirties and is fiercely loyal to her boss, the governor. That reminds me of someone I know very well: my wife, also in her early thirties and fiercely loyal to her former boss, the ex-governor. If thirty-one thousand votes had gone for Crist instead of Scott, maybe Buzzacco-Foerster would be profiling Michelle.
Ambitious, aggressive, up-and-coming women in the political process are often portrayed in a harsh light, while ambitious, aggressive, up-and-coming men in the political process are often encouraged to be more alpha-y.
However, Sellers, and by extension her boss, Gov. Scott, cannot govern through fear for very long. To get the most out of the Executive Office of the Governor, the guillotine has to be put into storage sooner rather later.
In other words, Sellers needs to show more smile and less middle finger.
