Washington insider picked as Bush advisor

President Bush on Wednesday named a Washington insider to one of the most important jobs among his senior aides, choosing Ed Gillespie, a lobbyist and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, as his new White House counselor.

Under Bush, that job was held by Karen Hughes and then Dan Bartlett -- two Texans who had no White House experience but had ties to Bush dating to his first gubernatorial race.

In picking Gillespie, the president abandoned that model, selecting a political veteran who has strong relationships with congressional Republicans. Bush met Gillespie, a New Jersey native, in 1999.

In announcing his decision in the Oval Office, Bush praised his incoming senior advisor as “a good strategic thinker” and said: “He is a seasoned hand who has got excellent judgment.”

Gillespie, 45, is known as a fierce political fighter who is never “off message” in public. During Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, the then-RNC chairman served as Bush’s surrogate in delivering sharply partisan messages so the president could stick to more high-minded political rhetoric.

The choice of Gillespie continues Bush’s second-term trend of filling senior jobs with a broader mix of candidates.

A West Wing that was once dominated by Texans now includes White House Counsel Fred F. Fielding, who worked for Presidents Nixon and Reagan, and Press Secretary Tony Snow, an Ohioan who worked for the president’s father and later was a Fox News commentator who was sometimes critical of the current president.

The change suggests shifting needs in the White House as Bush struggles to push a few major policy initiatives, including an overhaul of immigration laws, through a Democratic-led Congress. Bush is also fending off efforts to scale back the U.S. role in Iraq and working to repair ties with conservatives.

Bartlett, 36, announced June 1 that, after working for Bush for nearly 14 years, he was leaving the White House to spend more time with his wife and three young children.

Gillespie is to start his new job June 27.

Snow said that Gillespie “is obviously not going to have the same kind of tight, personal relationship with the president, although he’s going to have full access and they are friendly, but that kind of a personal relationship is not something you can duplicate.”

The counselor job is that of a close advisor, political expert and, perhaps more than anything else, crafter and conveyor of the presidential message.

In the early Bush years, Gillespie met almost weekly with the president as RNC chairman, becoming part of his inner circle, said Kenneth M. Duberstein, Reagan’s final White House chief of staff.

“This is not a change in the tectonic plates,” Duberstein said.

What Gillespie offers, instead, is familiarity.

“Ed has been around enough to be thoroughly familiar with the president and his positions, and how he likes to do things,” said Charles Black, a Republican political consultant with ties to the White House.

Gillespie grew up in an Irish Catholic family, working in the family bar and grocery store. His father was an immigrant, and neither parent graduated from high school. Gillespie was in the first generation to attend college, choosing Catholic University of America here in the capital.

He worked three jobs, including one parking cars on Capitol Hill for Senate staffers. That led to his first job in politics, an internship for Democratic Rep. Andy Ireland of Florida. In 1984, Ireland became a Republican; Gillespie switched with him.

“As an Irish Catholic born in New Jersey the year John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the first Catholic president of the United States, I all but had ‘Democrat’ stamped on my birth certificate,” Gillespie wrote in his 2006 book, “Winning Right.” He described his switch as emblematic of the Reagan era, when Southerners and blue-collar workers defected from the Democratic Party.

Gillespie rose through the ranks of Republican staffers and helped write the 1994 Republican “Contract With America.” He joined a lobbying firm in 1997 and formed his own firm in 2000 with Jack Quinn, a counsel in the Clinton White House.

Gillespie’s return to the public payroll, said Mary Matalin, a former senior advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, will entail “personal sacrifice” and shows Bush “continues to attract the best talent in the conservative ranks today.”

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james.gerstenzang@latimes.com

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