Rep. Kenny Hulshof not commenting on reports he's eyeing Missouri post

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Kenny Hulshof is not commenting on reports that he's a candidate to become the next president of the University of Missouri system.

But speculation about the Columbia, Mo., Republican increased this week with the announcement that his longtime chief of staff, Manning Feraci, has resigned.

Hulshof's office did not return repeated phone calls and e-mail requests for comment on Wednesday. The Associated Press also left several messages at Hulshof's Columbia home and sought out his press secretary at the Columbia district office.

University of Missouri curators have said they would not discuss the search or the list of finalists to replace Elson Floyd, who left to head Washington State University.

Curators, who are serving as the search committee, began interviewing candidates in St. Louis last week and held another round of interviews in Kansas City on Monday. While there is no firm timetable, university officials hope to name a new president over the summer.

The outlined search process calls for a 19-member advisory panel of faculty, students and alumni to interview a group of finalists after the initial round of curator interviews.

A former special prosecutor for the state attorney general's office, Hulshof received a bachelor's degree in agriculture economics from the University of Missouri in 1980. He has represented his northeast Missouri district since 1996.

He has long been considered a rising star in the GOP and briefly considered a bid for governor in 2004 but decided against challenging Matt Blunt in the GOP primary. A solid conservative, Hulshof has stressed fighting crime and expanding ethanol use -- issues important to his mostly rural constituents. He was re-elected in 2006 with 61 percent of the vote.

Hulshof raised about $50,000 for re-election during the first three months of this year and has $227,000 in the bank, according to his latest campaign finance report. That's about the same amount of cash on hand that Hulshof had a year and a half before his 2006 re-election campaign.

Hulshof delivered the commencement address to graduates of the University of Missouri-Columbia's School of Health Professions on Saturday. Seated nearby on the dais was curator Doug Russell, who also heads the state Republican Party.

Asked about Hulshof's interest in the presidency -- as well as the university's interest in Hulshof -- Russell declined to comment.

While university chancellors and presidents typically make their mark in academia, tapping political and business leaders isn't unprecedented.

The University of Massachusetts at Lowell, for example, recently named Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., to be its next chancellor.

The job requirements for the four-campus Missouri system include wooing private donors and lobbying state lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature, for which Hulshof is well-suited.

The president also must work closely with curators, who are appointed by the governor.

Before his departure for Washington State, Floyd sometimes clashed with curators, in particular Gov. Matt Blunt's initial three appointees to the board.