No, really. I have a favorite Republican, and it isn’t even one of those “he’s so awful, I love to have him to oppose” kinds of favorites.

He’s a colleague, Dave Baker, and today is his last day. Dave isn’t leaving to run for anything, at the moment. Although Dave and I have only worked together peripherally since I came to EarthLink, I’ve known him since 1999, and unbeknownst to him, he was one of the reasons the recruiter who lured me down here was successful.

I met Dave when I was working on the best single project I’ve ever worked on: GetNetWise. It launched in 1999 as a huge kids internet safety effort between nearly every internet company you’d heard of at the time, and every public official you think of when you hear the word “internet.” Vice President Gore announced that we were creating it at a press conference in the White House.

Getting all those companies and politicians to agree on the content of a site like that was incredibly challenging — and I was the person responsible for the at-launch content. Some companies were very difficult to deal with, but a few were a pleasure. Dave made EarthLink a pleasure to deal with, during an otherwise incredibly challenging 6 weeks or so.

Goodbye, Dave. I even look forward to you running for office again in the future. (Of course, count on seeing me lobbying to keep you from moving too far to the right! )