When incoming Gov. Rick Scott was putting his transition team together, he tapped two out-of-state attorneys and a cadre of Jeb Bush advisers.
A consummate outsider -- Scott has lived in Florida for less than 10 years, far removed from Tallahassee -- the former health-care executive imported close confidantes from Washington, D.C., and Tennessee to lead his team. Like him, both are lawyers.
Transition team chairwoman Enu Mainigi, a corporate attorney with Williams & Connolly, has been through the wars with Scott. She advised him after his departure from Columbia/HCA and she carried Scott's winning case against Florida's campaign finance law during the GOP primary.
Mainigi also connected Scott to Tony Fabrizio, the hard-nosed Republican consultant who masterminded the insurgent campaign that knocked out GOP insider Bill McCollum. She went on to vet lieutenant governor candidates, leading to Scott's selection of state Rep. Jennifer Carroll.
Like Scott, Mainigi is a loyal Republican (she contributed $1,000 to John McCain in 2008) and a creature of corporate America, with expertise in the health-care industry. Among her chief clients:big pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and insurance.
Unlike Gov. Charlie Crist, who relied heavily on gut instincts and political calculations, Scott relies on close, trusted advisers who exhibit workaholic tendencies. As chair of the transition team, Mainigi leads the field.
In one of her rare interviews, the low-profile Mainigi described herself as "an impatient person." That attribute, along with her skills as a litigator, suggest that the Scott transition will be executed with razor-sharp efficiency.
Mainigi says the transition team is looking for people "who are optimistic and excited to go work for the government, maybe people who haven't worked for the government."
Mary Anne Carter, executive director of the transition team, brings similar intensity and urgency to the task. Also an attorney, the Tennessean headed Scott's "Conservatives for Patients' Rights" political action committee, which ran a national campaign opposing the Democrats' health-care legislation.
Leading Scott's policy and research team in Florida, Carter joined Mainigi in interviewing lieutenant governor prospects.
Like Mainigi, Carter is a staunch Republican, having worked for former presidential candidates Fred Thompson and Bob Dole.
The outside combination of Mainigi and Carter is complemented by nine Florida insiders, who comprise Scott's transition advisory board.
In selections designed to reassure Florida's Republican establishment, panelists include three Bush administration veterans: former Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings and former Bush chiefs of staff Sally Bradshaw and Kathleen Shanahan.
Jennings, Bush's lieutenant governor from 2003-2006, served in the Florida House from 1976-1980 and from 1980-2000 in the state Senate, where she was twice elected president before being term-limited.
The former elementary school teacher reputedly was Bush's preferred choice to be his successor. But she left active politics. She has been involved in the family construction business, Jack Jennings & Sons, and serves on several boards.
Bradshaw, a Mississippian who is widely recognized as a political "brain," has been associated with the Bush family since the 1980s and ran George H.W. Bush's 1992 re-election campaign in Florida. Though the senior Bush lost the White House, he carried the state.
Bradshaw subsequently ran Jeb Bush's first (unsuccessful) and second (successful) gubernatorial races in 1994 and 1998. She previously served as staff director for the Florida House's Republican office under Minority Leader Sandra Mortham.
Working as Bush's first chief of staff, Bradshaw said at the time: ''My job is to help make the trains run on time and move the agenda forward.''
Shanahan, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's top staffer during the 2000 presidential campaign, is chairman and chief executive officer of WRS Infrastructure & Environment, a civil construction, engineering and environmental remediation company. She also serves on the State Board of Education and the Florida Council of 100. Shanahan was Bush's chief of staff from January 2001 to November 2003.
Scott reached out to his tea party/anti-establishment roots by selecting state Sen. Paula Dockery. The Lakeland lawmaker, who infuriated GOP legislative leaders with her opposition to the CSX-Central Florida rail project and her early challenge to McCollum, expects to play a role in the Scott administration going forward.
Both Dockery and Jennings were believed to be on the short list to be Scott's running mate. After dropping her own bid for the gubernatorial nomination, Dockery campaigned for Scott.
The incoming governor touched two other political bases by choosing Sen. George LeMieux and former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre.
LeMieux's appointment could help him as much as he helps Scott. The interim senator, whose term expires in January, is said to be looking to get back to the Senate in 2012. By joining Scott's team, he plugs himself back into a political power source, after unplugging himself from his longtime pal, the fizzling Crist.
Ferre, the lone Democrat on the panel, is a popular six-term former mayor who ran for his party's U.S. Senate nomination this year. He endorsed Scott in October and helped Scott compete against Democrat Alex Sink in Miami-Dade.
Ferre is joined by another Miami-Dade politician, Sweetwater Mayor Manny Marono, one of the first elected officials to endorse Scott in the primary.
For geographic diversity and legislative expertise, Scott tabbed state Rep. Michael Weinstein of Jacksonville and term-limited state Rep. Bill Galvano of Bradenton. Weinstein is a solid fiscal and social conservative while Galvano was a key legislative negotiator on Crist's Indian gaming compact and served as rules chairman in the House for the last two years.
Underscoring the Bush influence on his transition panel, Scott appointed another Jeb alum, Donna Arduin, as his chief budget adviser.
Arduin was Bush's budget director and is a widely respected fiscal hawk. And like Mainigi and Carter, she has a political perspective beyond Florida, having served as a budgeteer for three other Republican governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, George Pataki in New York and John Engler in Michigan.
Clearly, Scott is hoping that his lineup of inside-outside players will make a winning combination.
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
