Before power transfer, Hill press shops bury hatchet

While their bosses will have a formal handing over of power in January involving a gavel and a lot of applause, the press staffs for the outgoing and incoming House majority passed the torch their own way in a burger joint last week.

No sooner did Kevin Madden, press secretary for soon-to-be Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, announce his departure, that Jennifer Crider and Brendan Daly, the communications team for speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., invited him to lunch. Madden is moving to Boston to helm the communications efforts for Mitt Romney’s nascent presidential campaign.

The former rivals dined at Bullfeathers, the GOP-leaning saloon on the Hill.

“We were joking with each other that folks were going to start a whisper campaign when they saw two top Democrat staffers lunching in a GOP hangout with John Boehner’s spokesman,” said Madden. “It was a lot like the scene from the movie ‘Heat’ where Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino meet face to face in a diner.

“Lest our allegiances be questioned though, our conversation focused mostly on our families and non-political stuff. We definitely were not sharing secrets. As much as I like them and respect them, I’d rather they be gainfully employed working for Minority Leader Pelosi instead of Speaker Pelosi.”

As for Crider, she said the invitation came out of friendship as well as bipartisanship.

“He didn’t share any secrets, but we’ll all been doing this for a very long time so I can’t imagine there are any secrets to share,” she said.

“It was really more social.”

Kennedy Center Honors Weekend notes:

» BET founder Bob Johnson shut down Posh, his new downtown supper club, on Saturday to throw a private party for honoree Smokey Robinson. Also in attendance: Vernon Jordan and legendary Motown song guru Berry Gordy. A Posh representative said the back of the restaurant was tented off under a chandelier for Smokey and the “old town Motown crew.” But the VIP area couldn’t hold Smokey for long. He spent most of the night groovin’ on the dance floor.

» Fran “Nanny” Drescher was escorted to the Honors on Sunday by Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I. But on Saturday, she was spotted at Blues Alley for the Kim Waters show, as well as at the Keith Lipert Gallery in Georgetown. In fact, her little dog, Esther, became the first celebrity dog to avail herself of the treats at Lipert’s dog bar.

D.C. Welcomes Luda

Ludacris, who’s made several appearances in Washington recently, stopped by our lovely District again on Friday to wrap up his four-city speaking tour for YouthAIDS (Ludacris is a YouthAIDS ambassador and Friday was World AIDS Day).

After appearing at George Washington University at mid-day Friday, Ludacris headed to PS7 Restaurant, where a private reception/$1,000-per-head fundraiser featured such notables as YouthAIDS’ Kate Roberts, DC Magazine’s Peter Abrahams, Viacom’s David Sutphen, Recording Industry Association of America’s Michele Ballantyne and political consultant Hilary Rosen.

Ludacris snapped pictures and chatted with attendees but, exhausted, he opted against partying the night away in Washington and grabbed a flight back to Los Angeles.

Quick fix for State Department links

Who says the State Department is slow to respond? After our piece Thursday on the State Department’s many broken links on the Web page for “Web sites of Foreign Embassies in the U.S.,” we discover that, suddenly, all the links are fixed!

Kudos to the State Department’s rapid response and additional kudos for their quiet inclusion of one more embassy on the page: The Embassy of Iraq to the United States. That’s at least one mission accomplished.

Diamonds are not forever

You’d probably call it a “bad night” if you lost a cell phone or a $20 bill or that phone number on the cocktail napkin.

But what if you lost a $12,000 diamond earring? Charlotte Bobcat forward-center Sean May (in town to play the Washington Wizards on Friday) was seen by a Yeas & Nays spy frantically scrambling around Fly Lounge late Thursday night, trying to find a diamond earring that he claimed cost $12,000.

As he and others, including some of his Bobcat teammates, looked around for the earring, some friends teased him by saying, “Not like you bought it anyway!” and “You can get another one — it’s just an earring” and “Here, take this tequila shot.” As the evening wound up, the earring had yet to be found. A call put into Fly Lounge Sunday for an update was not returned at press time.

Speakeasy

“There’s lots of stress on the other side having to govern for the first time in 12 years. There will be a redefinition of Republicans and Democrats.”

– Soon-to-be Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., in the News-Leader of Springfield, Mo.