Yarmuth adds staff, including Obama adviser

Veterans of the presidential campaigns of U.S. Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) are the newest additions to U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth's (D-Louisville) staff for his first re-election campaign.

Maryland native Dan Geldon will serve as campaign manager for Yarmuth, fresh off of a bid as an adviser for the National Youth Vote program for Obama.

Geldon previously was executive director for the College Democrats of America and worked as managing editor of the Harvard Law and Policy Review during his legal studies.

The hiring of Geldon further accentuates the overlap between the Obama and Yarmuth campaigns. Yarmuth was the first Kentucky superdelegate to endorse Obama, and functioned as the Illinois senator's foremost surrogate in the state. Yarmuth's campaign has also moved into the Louisville building that served as Obama's Kentucky headquarters prior to the Commonwealth's May 20 primary.

An open house and cook-out at that facility - located at 900 East Market Street -- will be held June 28 from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.

Yarmuth also adds a new press secretary to his staff in Christopher Hartman, a Louisville-native just returning to the community. The campaign notes Harman previously served as a "leader in the Pennsylvannia grassroots effort" for Senator Kerry's 2004 presidential bid.

A first-term U.S. representative, Yarmuth will face the woman he unseated in 2006 - Anne Northup (R-Louisville) -- in a rematch this year.