Mabus to advise Obama on Middle East issues
The SunHerald | May 22, 2007
By Emily Wagster Pettus
Former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Clinton administration, is joining Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign as an unpaid adviser on Middle Eastern issues.
Mabus told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he'll also travel around the nation to make campaign appearances for the Illinois senator.
"I think that Obama, more than anybody else, has a chance to unify this country," Mabus said. "This country has been so divided, particularly by this administration, that I think (Obama) is talking about problems in a different way. I think he's a new voice from a new generation. That's what America needs now."
Mabus, now 58, was Mississippi governor from January 1988 to January 1992, serving during a slump in the state's economy. While supporters praised his efforts to move Mississippi's schools off the bottom of national rankings, opponents said he left a state budget that was stretched too thin.
Mabus lost his 1991 re-election bid to blunt-spoken contractor Kirk Fordice, who became Mississippi's first Republican governor since Reconstruction.
Mabus was governor when another young Democrat, Bill Clinton, was governor of Arkansas. After Clinton became president, he appointed Mabus to the ambassadorship. Mabus held the job in Saudi Arabia from 1994-96.
Now, Clinton's wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, is running for president.
Asked why he's not supporting Hillary Clinton, Mabus said: "This is about being for somebody and not about being against anybody."
Political scientist Marty Wiseman said Mabus, who has been working in private business since returning from the ambassadorship, "may have been out of the limelight a little too long for just the name to contribute much."
"On the other hand, it doesn't hurt to have a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia advising on Middle Eastern issues," said Wiseman, director of Mississippi State University's John C. Stennis Institute of Government.
Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Mabus will have "a leadership role in the campaign in Mississippi and across the nation."
Mabus serves on the advisory board for the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research group. He's also on the board of directors of America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc., a Washington-based nonprofit group designed to strengthen ties among the U.S., the Middle East and north Africa.
Mabus is not the only Mississippi politician to publicly endorse a 2008 presidential candidate.
Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering in February became the Mississippi chairman and Southern co-chairman for the campaign of Sen. John McCain of Arizona. In a news release, Pickering called McCain "a proven leader in national security."
Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, has said he'll wait to endorse a presidential candidate.
Mabus said he does not know whether Obama will make campaign stops in Mississippi, a state that last gave its presidential electoral votes to a Democrat in 1976.
