WHCInsider favorite Kevin Sheekey announced he’s leaving Bloomberg politics and returning to Bloomberg business this spring, after serving as one of Mayor Bloomberg’s closest advisers for 13 years.

A Washington legend through his work as chief of staff to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Sheekey played a critical role in the development of the super-select Bloomberg after party following the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Kevin Sheekey and Rev Al Sharpton spoof Meet the Press in the Betsy Fischer birthday video last week.

As the story goes, when Vanity Fair stepped down from hosting the exclusive after dinner party, Sheekey made the Russian Trade Ministry an offer they couldn’t refuse. And when the cast of NBC’s “West Wing” TV show arrived on candidate John McCain’s bus, the Straight Talk Express, a new Washington monument was born.

gtruong Schedules and Announcements John McCain, Kevin Sheekey, Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Now that the dust has settled and the 2009 election results have sunk in, the pondering and pontificating by the pundit elite (and not so elite) continues on cable news and online media sites about what the results mean for the president and the nation’s political future. Much of what is discussed is, and will continue to be, partisan in nature (as is the nature of cable news) and quite frankly, without much merit or solid research beyond party talking points and Wikipedia entries.

Discussions have been playing out on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News on whether Obama’s coattails are still strong; whether 2009 elections are a prediction of the 2010 midterms; whether the GOP can turn 2 key gubernatorial wins into a midterm Congressional movement, and so on. Most of these are unknowns, but there is one major continuous thread of the ’08 and now ’09 election cycle that is guaranteed to be part of every successful future campaign whether GOP or Dem or Conservative or Independent: the integrated use of social media and online communications (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, SMA, web 2.0, etc), combined with an authentic, engaging candidate, must be paramount within a campaign’s overall strategy in order to be successful.

Read more…

LBrenner News Media Chris Christie, Mayor Bloomberg, President Obama, Robert McDonnell, Scott Goodstein