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PHOENIX — Tucsonan Jan Lesher, chief of staff for Gov. Janet Napolitano, will follow her boss to the nation’s capital to take a job in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, she told the Star Tuesday.

Lesher has worked for Napolitano in several capacities since her administration started in 2003, most recently being named chief of staff in August.

In an interview Tuesday, Lesher said “there’s nothing final on job titles” and a formal announcement is expected later this week. But the lifelong Arizonan has already found an apartment in Washington and said she has been planning for the move since early December when president-elect Barack Obama announced Napolitano as his pick for Secretary of Homeland Security.

Whatever her title, Lesher’s long professional association with the governor — which propelled her from a Tucson political consultant to running the top political office in the state in the course of six years — is likely to put her close to soon-to-be Secretary Napolitano.

Lesher, a graduate of Tucson High School and the University of Arizona, said while the details are still being hammered out, she’s excitement about working in “an area that is absolutely needed for everyone.”

“There’s so many aspects of homeland security,” she said. “There are so many interesting challenges, so many management challenges.”

Lesher has been one of Napolitano’s most loyal staff members since the governor took office in 2003, holding three positions in the administration.

“We have some of the same basic philosophies,” Lesher said Tuesday. “It’s her job to make the major policy decisions and my job to implement them so she can get out of the weeds.”

Before being hired as Napolitano’s chief of staff last year — the first Tucson in years to serve in such a high-ranking role in a gubernatorial administration — Lesher was director of the state Department of Commerce. Prior to being named to that post in December 2006, Lesher ran Napolitano’s Southern Arizona office.

In 2005, the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce named her women of the year.

Lesher also has a business background. Before working for Napolitano, she ran Lesher Communications, a public relations agency involved in local and state political campaigns. And she has held management positions in economic development and cable television.

Lesher said when she took the chief of staff job last summer there were no discussions about the governor leaving for Washington.

And while she will be moving to D.C., Lesher plans to keep her home in Tucson, which she rents out, and maintain her voter registration in Tucson.

“I’ve spent my whole life in Arizona,” Lesher said Tuesday. “I have an apartment and life in D.C. now that I have not seen.”

In addition to planning her own transition to the Washington job, Lesher said she has been managing the gubernatorial transition that will hand the governor’s office to Secretary of State Jan Brewer once Napolitano is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Lesher said she couldn’t say how many other members of the Napolitano administration would be joining her in Washington, but she said more details are expected this week.

Lesher’s political roots run deep. While she has been active in Democratic politics for years, her father, lawyer and onetime Arizona Supreme Court Justice Robert Lesher, was campaign manager for Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Kleindienst in 1964.

Kleindienst would later serve as U.S. Attorney General under President Richard Nixon.