In January 2007, the fired FEMA director Michael D. Brown charged that partisan politics had played a role in the White House's decision to federalize emergency response to the disaster in Louisiana only, rather than along the entire affected Gulf Coast region, which Brown said he had advocated. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" Brown said, speaking before a group of graduate students at the Metropolitan College of New York on January 19, 2007. "'We can't do it to Haley governor Haley Barbour because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'" The White House fervently denied Brown's charges through a spokeswoman.