After all, Mentzelopoulos is one of the premier's closest friends, having been a bridesmaid at her wedding to Marissen. The two also served in Ottawa together following Chretien's election victory in 1993.

According to a federal phone directory from that time, while Clark was working in Transportation Minister Doug Young's office as his special advisor, western region, Mentzelopoulos was doing a similar job for Public Works and Government Services Minister David Dingwall.

Mentzelopoulos -- who is known for her tough management-style -- went on to serve in several other federal posts. They included being the press secretary to senior cabinet minister David Anderson and the regional director of policy and communications for Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

But, by April 2004, she had joined the provincial public service as the Campbell administration's deputy minister of intergovernmental relations.

Five months later, Mentzelopoulos -- who is married to then Vancouver Sun deputy managing editor Stewart Muir -- took on additional responsibilities as the head of the government's public affairs bureau.

But, by June 2005, Mentzelopoulos had been discharged of those responsibilities and eventually replaced by Linda Morris, who had formerly worked for the new minister in charge of the bureau, Carole Taylor.

Mentzelopoulos continued on as deputy minister of intergovernmental relations before going on maternity leave. But, when she returned, it was to head up the B.C. Progress Board and the government's board resourcing and development office before leaving for the federal bureaucracy.

Now, however, like McDonald, she's back at centre of provincial power to help her friend Clark keep it.

Don Millar

Millar, who was a key part of Clark's leadership campaign team, made a name for himself as an environmental communicator. But he's now advising a premier whose rhetoric has, at times, put economic development ahead of the environment.

Millar was the former president of The Element Agency, a Vancouver and New York-based firm that was founded in 2003 and helped "businesses go green," as well as environmentally friendly politicians and parties.

Those politicians have included organic juice manufacturer and former New Democratic Party candidate Gregor Robertson during his successful first run for the Vancouver mayoralty, as well as Dion.

Millar supported Dion's 2006 bid to win the federal Liberal leadership -- a campaign that was coordinated by Marissen. In addition, The Element Agency was responsible for the party's advertising in the 2008 election.

That was the same election where the Liberals advocated for a carbon tax.

By contrast, Clark has told oil and gas executives she's "tired" of hearing people say, "No, I don't want those trees cut down," supported the controversial Prosperity Mine proposal during the leadership race, and recently rolled out a jobs plan that was light on green jobs.

Nevertheless, Millar, who recently departed the company that bought out The Element Agency in late 2008, is nothing if not a political professional.

He was involved in several campaigns for Dion's predecessor, Jean Chretien, according to marketing magazine. But it was in the competitive world of American politics that Millar -- who first worked for Clark during her bid for the Non-Partisan Association's mayoral nomination -- cut his political teeth.

In 1995, The National Journal described Millar as having been deputy national field director for Dick Gephardt's failed 1988 Democratic presidential nomination bid.

After that, between 1991 and 1994, Campaigns & Elections reported he "produced hundreds of radio and television spots" at political consulting firm Fenn King Murphy Communications before setting up Gorman Millar Media with then American vice president Al Gore's lead advance man Tom Gorman and, by 1996, the Conover-Millar Group.

But it remains to be seen whether all that experience will be enough to keep Clark in power.

Sharon White

White was on the team that won the Liberal leadership race... but she almost wasn't.

She was set to co-chair powerful cabinet minister Rich Coleman's campaign to succeed Gordon Campbell. However, when Coleman decided not to step up to the starting gate, White ended up doing the same job for Clark.

That was good news for the then-CKNW talk show host, whose supporters had been looking to recruit politicos with right-wing credentials to counterbalance their candidate's federal Liberal connections.

White, who is said to have gotten to know Clark after working on her bid to win Port Moody-Burnaby in the 1996 election, fit that bill -- both personally and by pedigree.

Her father Cyril had unsuccessfully run as a Social Credit Party candidate in Vancouver Centre in 1958, 10 years before the government named him chairman of the Workers' Compensation Board.

He was credited, in a Vancouver Sun obituary, with changing the Crown corporation from a "bureaucratic and paper-oriented organization into one that became service-oriented."

According to the paper, the government also put White in charge of a special provincial judicial panel in 1970 to overhaul the provincial court system before he briefly became its chief judge and then later president of the Vancouver Stock Exchange.

For her own part, White -- like her father -- ran unsuccessfully for the Socreds, succeeding Grace McCarthy as the party's candidate in Vancouver-Little Mountain during the 2001 election.

Also like her father, White is a lawyer -- chairing the securities and corporate finance group at Richards Buell Sutton LLP where she is a partner.

And she's had her own share of provincial and federal government appointments, having been a Partnership British Columbia director, a member of the public service commission and chair of Farm Credit Canada.

The federal New Democrats blasted that later appointment, made in 2006, along with several others doled out to Conservative supporters as being at odds with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promise to end "patronage pork-barrelling."

But now White, who hails from the federal party's Progressive Conservative side and is reputed to have a good relationship with Kinsella, has an even bigger job.

As BC Liberal president, she's going to be responsible for seeding the grassroots of a party where none have flourished for a very long time.

[For more Tyee stories like this, see: Politics.]