Going Back To `Grits And Gravy'
Rusty Paul, one of the many Bush appointees wrapping up loose ends, packing bags and getting out of town, has one thing to offer the Clinton people: a four-bedroom house in Annapolis.</br></br>Paul, 40, who came to Washington four years ago to work in Jack Kemp's Department of Housing and Urban Development, has prepared this ad to run in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: "Disappointed, disillusioned GOPer with only one asset an incoming Clintonite might want: 4-BDRM, 2 1/2 BA. house with a great water view and access . . . shorter commute than N. Va. Better parking than G'twn. Less Crime than Cap. Hill."</br></br>Paul, his wife, Jan, 41, and children are leaving behind the monuments, the power, the swiveling leather chairs, the Capitol Hill parties, the people who are nice to him "because they want something" and a view of Beards Creek, off the South River, to return to Atlanta - back to "grits and gravy."</br></br>It is a move they began preparing for even before the election, when Rusty, in his travels with Kemp, detected that voters were unhappy. Jan started one morning after she heard on a TV talk show that Bush would ask for the immediate resignations of all his appointees if he was reelected.</br></br>Either way, it looked like Rusty Paul would be out of his $112,000- a-year job as assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental relations for HUD. "That hit like a ton of bricks," said Jan, who had lost her own computer sales job to the recession two years ago. "It was like a sudden jolt, `Hey, we better figure out what we are going to do with everything we own.' If he's asking for resignations, we better snap to it . . . just in case."