Obama shuffle?
The ongoing scuttlebutt about President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet has generated an interesting scenario that’s filling e-mail boxes and has local tongues wagging.
It seems to have started after Republican Del. Pat McDonough talked about a musical chairs set of appointments during his Saturday radio program on WCBM.
It goes something like this:
Attorney General Doug Gansler, who co-chaired Obama’s Maryland campaign, is in line for a big-time appointment from the incoming president, most likely to the Department of Justice. From there, Gov. Martin O’Malley would appoint County Executive Jim Smith to replace Gansler. To complete the cycle, the County Council would replace Smith with out-going Council Chairman Kevin Kamenetz, who already has the needed votes.
McDonough swears he got his story from friends in the Democratic Party.
“I used to be one so there is still some love in that relationship,” McDonough said.
McDonough’s comments not only won’t die, they’re morphing into new versions where tellers insert the name of their favorite councilman as county executive.
A Democratic state legislator from the county called to tell me a slightly different version, one that had Bartenfelder with enough 
votes on the council to succeed Smith.
In reality, with three or four councilman wanting to be county executive in 2010, finding one who can gather the four votes required by the charter could be difficult.
A few months ago when Smith underwent heart bypass surgery, a source in the administration mused that if the worst had happened “you would have seven councilmen all voting for themselves.”
Don Mohler, a spokesman for Smith, said his office was getting a lot of calls about McDonough’s statements.
“We’re very amused,” he wrote in an e-mail.
“The (county executive) is committed to being working on behalf of families in Baltimore County - we still have work to do,” Mohler wrote.
For the record, Smith, Kamemetz and Bartenfelder were unwilling to seriously discuss the scenarios.
“Almost immediately after the polls closed (Nov. 4) the rumor season on 2010 opened,” said Kamenetz, who is considering a run for county executive in two years. “I expect there will be more.”
Bartenfelder said he found the whole thing “amusing.”
“If Pat said it, it has to be true,” said Bartenfelder with a grin.