Lisa Graham Keegan as the New Margaret Spellings?

(Photo from the Arizona Republic)

Back when Lisa Graham Keegan was just another young attractive blonde female contender for the Arizona Superintendency of Education, she was lucky to have a gentleman and mentor like John McCain to rally to her support and to push her name forward. It was the move that would rocket Lisa to the top of the education industry privatizers and corporate socialists that moved into Washington when W was elected. All those delicious discretionary grants! And what a capable grant writer Lisa turned out to be.

Now after some years of laying low following the evaporation of milllions of dollars from some of those big federal grants to the Education Leaders Council that Lisa headed up, Lisa is on the move once more as an advisor and education consultant to the McCain campaign. Will John ask Lisa where the federal grant money went? Will Lisa become the new Margaret if John is elected? After all, she loves charter schools and high-stakes testing for social engineering purposes. Stay tuned.

From the Arizona Republic:

Yvonne Wingett
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 6, 2008 12:00 AM

Lisa Graham Keegan will scale back on her job as an assistant Maricopa County manager to spend more time working on John McCain's presidential campaign as an education-policy adviser.

She has worked for the county since last year, first as a contract consultant, then as one of its top - and best-paid - administrators, at a $175,000-a-year-salary. Keegan will scale back her role no later than May 1, and will continue to work with the county and bill by the hour.

Keegan is part of an unpaid crew of five from across the nation that will advise McCain on education policies, speak at events and travel with him, she said.

"We write for him, but because it (education) hasn't been a really active issue, none of us have had to spend very much time with him on this issue yet," said Keegan, a Republican from Peoria.

Keegan is a former Arizona superintendent of public instruction, and was the architect of controversial education reforms of the 1990s.

She is best known for opening the door to charter schools, enacting new state curriculum standards and fighting a bitter political battle to impose the state's high-stakes AIMS graduation test.

Keegan and McCain go way back, to the 1980s, when he first took office. He later served as chairman of her campaign for superintendent of public instruction, and prepped her when she was on President Bush's short list for Education secretary in late 2000.

Keegan has no interest in joining McCain's team as a full-time, paid staffer, she said.