The departure of Karl Rove from the White House means that Irish American Ed Gillespie, 46, who replaced Dan Bartlett as White House counselor when the latter resigned in June, will become a key figure.

CNN reported that Rove did not plan his resignation until he was assured that Gillespie would take the White House job, and that he would remain in place until the end of the Bush presidency.

Gillespie, the son of an Irish immigrant father, is very well known in Irish circles in Washington and is a frequent dinner guest at the Irish Embassy. His father came from Co. Donegal and he accompanied Gillespie back there on numerous occasions. Gillespie has also taken several trips to Ireland on his own.

In a passionate defense of immigrants and the need to deal with the issue of illegal immigration compassionately, he wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2006, “My father arrived by ship from Donegal, Ireland, in 1933, as a 9-year-old with nothing but the clothes on his back. John Patrick “Jack” Gillespie was processed through Ellis Island.

“As a young man, he worked as a janitor. Later in life, he started his own small business and made his children the first generation of Gillespies ever to attend college. He still can’t walk very far today, because in 1944 Nazi bullets ripped through both his legs in the course of earning a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and a Silver Star for his adopted country.

“I am proud to be the son of an immigrant. Like many first-generation Americans, I feel it has made me treasure the benefits of citizenship even more. I appreciate the opportunities that have been provided to my father — and by extension to me and my three children — by the greatest country ever to grace the face of the Earth.”

Gillespie argued passionately in the same article that Republicans could not turn their back on immigrants.

“The Republican Party cannot become an anti-immigration party. Our majority already rests too heavily on white voters, given that current demographic voting percentages will not allow us to hold our majority in the future.

“Between 2000 and 2004, President Bush increased his support in the Hispanic community by nine percentage points. Had he not, John Kerry would be president today.”

Gillespie is a member of the board of Irish children’s charity Project Children and has attended many Irish events, including the annual American Ireland Fund dinner in Washington each March.

Gillespie, who was born in 1961, grew up in a Democratic, Irish American household. He has admitted that he found himself “enamored” of Ronald Reagan, a man who he felt “captured the spirit of America” and so in 1984 he changed parties to run the campaign of Andy Ireland, the former Democratic congressman then running for reelection as a Republican in his Florida district.

He went on to become chairman of the Repub-lican Party from 2003 to 2005. He also played a leading role in securing the nomination of Bush’s two appointments to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Today Gillespie is widely regarded as one of the most successful strategists in the Republican Party. A graduate of the Catholic University of America in Washington, he was born and raised in Brown Mills, New Jersey. He is married with three children.

He worked for a decade as a top aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and was a principal drafter of the GOP’s 1994 “Contract With America.”