No shoes, but all business: Can Rich Cordray save new consumer bureau?

Answer: The man President Barack Obama hopes can magically overcome the partisan divide in Washington D.C.

Question: Who is Rich Cordray?

It's a question millions of Americans are about to ask themselves, if they haven't already. Their three-year romance with consumer zealot and media star Elizabeth Warren just ended badly, as Warren was not picked to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Cordray is her surprise replacement. Apart from being a former “Jeopardy” champion -- a piece of trivia many already seem to know -- who is Rich Cordray? 

Warren -- a Harvard professor, best-selling author, and darling of TV programs like The Daily Show -- was the chief architect and driving force behind creation of the new consumer agency, which is the most visible part of the administration's financial reform efforts. But Warren's high-profile disdain for banks and Wall Street made her too divisive for Obama's taste, and she was ultimately passed over to run the agency.

Cordray, a relative unknown on the national stage, was named last week instead, but his selection can hardly be cast as a "compromise candidate."  Cordray, Ohio attorney general from 2009 through early 2011, was the face of government action against mortgage companies during the height of the financial collapse; his office sued AIG, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and several other lenders for investment fraud related to the mortgage crisis. He earned more than $2 billion in settlements from those firms.

The soft-spoken Midwesterner stands in contrast to Warren, the Harvard bankruptcy expert. He often shuns shoes and walks around his office in socks, and he never strides into a room with the air of a powerful man. His boyish looks could easily trick an unfamiliar visitor into thinking he's a law clerk; he's been favorably compared to the “30 Rock” TV show intern "Kenneth."  But friends and former staff members say his powerful intellect, inherent reasonableness and dogged work ethic quickly replace those first impressions with the image of a man who relentlessly fights for consumers – and usually wins.

"He is as authentic as you can get.  He's the same person when the cameras are on or when he's with his family," said Kimberly Kowalski, a former press aide for Cordray. "Sometimes it works to his detriment. He would just say what was in his heart, even if I'd prepared remarks for him ... but Rich is all for that man on the street. If he meets someone and they tell him a problem, he remembers it, and he acts on it, and three months later, he'll check to make sure it got fixed. Things never fall off his radar."

That's true even if that means Cordray must write follow-up e-mails at 4 a.m., which Kowalski said was common.

“I'm sure many people have said this: Rich is a machine,” she said.  “It's amazing to sit back and watch him work.”

It's hard to imagine Cordray will make it through the confirmation process unscathed, if at all: in a political environment poisoned by debt ceiling negotiations, a renewed fight over the new consumer agency is sure to be bitter. But friends say the mild-mannered, persuasive Cordray, who has argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, may yet have something to say about that.