Ann Arbor’s Eugene Kang takes position in Obama’s White House

He may have lost his bid for Ann Arbor’s city council by only 100 votes a few years ago, but local Eugene Kang’s landed a gig no other Michigan bigwig could: a slot in the Obama adminstration. Clearly, our new commander-in-chief sees something we missed. Mad props Eugene!Excerpt:The national images emerging of 24-year-old Eugene Kang are impressive.There are Nov. 10 photographs of the Ann Arbor native on an airplane conversing with then President-elect Barack Obama as they fly to Washington for a post-election meeting with George Bush. There are a half-dozen or so Dec. 21 shots of him playing golf with Obama in Hawaii. The president even joked about Kang having a better golf game than him.And there’s a full-page portrait of Kang in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine that is included in a cover piece called “Obama’s People.” The article highlights the prominent players in the new presidency.Kang, a Greenhills School and University of Michigan graduate, has seen his political fortunes skyrocket in three years. In 2005, while an undergraduate at U-M, Kang made an unsuccessful run for a 2nd Ward seat on the Ann Arbor City Council. This week, he took on a much more important role: “Special assistant to the president.”Read the rest of the story here and see the original New York Times photo essay here.