Minneapolis Mayor Rybak D.C.-bound under President Obama?

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, said to be on John McCain’s vice presidential short list, is by no means the only elected official in Minnesota who may have Washington, D.C., job prospects riding on the outcome of the November election. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak could likewise get tapped for a post in an Obama administration. Rybak scoffs at the suggestion, calling it "highly unlikely" and backing up boilerplate pooh-poohing with added metrics: "I haven’t spent 0.6 seconds thinking about that," he said Wednesday in an interview with the Minnesota Independent.

Minneapolis City Council Member Gary Schiff, sometimes mentioned as a possible Rybak successor, also laughed off such speculation, calling it a "favorite DFL parlor game [in which] every mayor in the country suddenly becomes indispensable as the next secretary of HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development]."

But Rybak isn’t just any mayor in the country. He lays claim to an Obama movement lineage that runs deeper even than Vice President Dick Cheney’s purported Obama family relations: first as an early "draft Obama" stalwart, then as state Obama campaign co-chair, and now as a newly minted Obama superdelegate and co-leader (with Sen. Amy Klobuchar) of Minnesota’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention.

Perhaps due in part to Rybak’s national television exposure following the I-35W bridge collapse, he is sometimes seen as a transportation leader (though he trails U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar and most of the field in a Daily Kos poll for most likely transportation secretary).

But he has also gained a high profile as an environmental leader with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, where one issue he championed was municipal water over bottled water. At the Conference of Mayors’ annual meeting this weekend, Rybak plans to push a national approach to youth crime, as well as transportation initiatives. Obama will address the group Saturday; Rybak said he’s not slotted to introduce the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

One thing sets Pawlenty and Rybak apart, concerning their semi-plausibly denied D.C. destinies: If Rybak leaves for Washington, his replacement will not be Minnesota Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau. But — at least temporarily — it will be a woman who holds two jobs (as Molnau did until the state Legislature removed her as state transportation secretary following the I-35W bridge collapse).

Under the Minneapolis City Charter, a vacancy in the mayor’s office before March 1, 2009, would be filled by special election within 75 days; after March 1, by the general election in November 2009. Either way, City Council President Barbara Johnson would serve as mayor for the interim, while maintaining her responsibilities as council president and representative of the city’s Fourth Ward. (A similar scenario seemed imminent when former Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton appeared poised for a post in Clinton or Gore administrations, with the powerful Council President Jackie Cherryhomes waiting in the wings. Both women lost in 2001, Sayles Belton bowing after two terms to Rybak’ insurgent campaign.)

The charter rules would put Johnson — whom City Pages anointed as "Boss Lady" long before her ascension to council president, and whom the Washington Post recently mentioned in the company of powerful political women nationally — in position to run for mayor while serving as mayor, perhaps even with the next generation of her family’s political dynasty making a run to represent her ward.

Rybak’s conspicuous interest in running for governor had set some wheels in motion already. Other potential mayoral contenders include Schiff, who says he loves his job but would consider a run at mayor if Rybak were out of the picture; first-term City Council Member Ralph Remington, another Draft Obama movement veteran and Obama delegate at the Democratic National Convention; and Minneapolis Park Board President Tom Nordyke.

Now with Obama’s having apparently secured the presidential nomination at the national convention, party rumor mills have fresh reasons to seek new grist.

One telling item, mentioned in a new DemConWatch interview with Rybak, is that the Rybaks’ son has just finished his freshman year at George Washington University — located in, of all places, Washington, D.C. Could he be a scout for a full Rybak family advance on our nation’s Capitol? Doubtful: The Rybaks seem not to select schools that way. Early on the mayor took heat for sending his kids to private school instead of Minneapolis Public Schools, but the mayor stood by the family’s decision, saying it was a personal, not political, choice.

Still, doesn’t having one member there already make uprooting the remainder more appealing? Putting himself in his son’s shoes, with the family crashing a Friday frat kegger, the mayor suggested not.