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Portman leaving OMB; ex-Iowa legislator tapped

WASHINGTON - White House budget director Rob Portman announced his resignation yesterday, joining a lengthening list of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 11/2 years of President Bush's administration.

WASHINGTON - White House budget director Rob Portman announced his resignation yesterday, joining a lengthening list of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 11/2 years of President Bush's administration.

Bush chose former Rep. Jim Nussle (R., Iowa), onetime chairman of the House Budget Committee, as Portman's successor.

Nussle, 46, ran for Iowa governor in 2006 and lost. He has been serving in Iowa as an adviser in former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.

A former Iowa county prosecutor first elected to Congress in 1990, Nussle quickly distinguished himself as a member of the "Gang of Seven," a group of young Republicans who demanded changes in the methods Democrats used to run the House.

Nussle served three terms as chairman of the Budget Committee, where he favored budget plans that accommodated Bush's tax cuts as well as the spending restraint that conservative Republicans advocated.

"There's no finer man in public service than Rob Portman," Bush said. "Fortunately we've found a good man to succeed him."

"I won't let you down," Nussle promised Bush.

Nussle's relationship with Bush dates to 1999, when Bush was seeking his first term and Nussle endorsed him for the Iowa caucuses.

Democrats signaled yesterday that Nussle's combativeness might place his nomination - which is subject to Senate confirmation - in peril.

"Mr. Nussle has a reputation, deserved or not, of being an intense partisan, quite different from Rob Portman," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.). He said he had heard concerns about the nomination from about a half-dozen senators, and "there are going to be issues with this confirmation."

Portman, a former six-term congressman from Cincinnati who initially joined the administration as trade representative, said he was leaving for personal reasons. His family has stayed in Cincinnati, and he has been commuting home on weekends for 14 years.

"I need to be home more," he said. "I've got three kids ages 12 to 17."

He made clear he might seek a return to office, either by running for governor of Ohio or running for the Senate.

As head of the Office of Management and Budget, Portman ran an agency that touched every major spending decision in the government.

Since Democrats won control of Congress in November, a number of top administration officials have stepped down.

Among those leaving or gone are White House counselor Dan Bartlett, chief White House attorney Harriet Miers, political director Sara Taylor, deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch, and Meghan O'Sullivan, another deputy national security adviser who worked on Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was forced out after the election over the unpopular war in Iraq.

Jim Nussle

Age: 46; born June 27, 1960,

in Des Moines, Iowa.

Education: B.A. in political science and economics, Luther College, 1983; J.D., Drake University, 1985.

Experience: U.S. House member, 1991-2007, including three terms as Budget Committee chairman; unsuccessful Republican nominee for Iowa governor, 2006; Delaware County (Iowa) attorney, 1986-90; lawyer in private practice.

Family: Wife, Karen Chiccehitto Nussle;two children from

an earlier marriage, Sarah and Mark.

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