If Democrats clean up in November, Gov. Chris Gregoire will ask Barack Obama if he will let her “vet some names” for the often-overlooked and often-incompetently filled Cabinet job of U.S. Secretary of Energy.
The reason is the long-behind-schedule cleanup of radioactive waste on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation along the Columbia River in eastern Washington. “Every new administration starts over at Hanford: We can’t afford that anymore,” Gregoire said.
The governor also suggested her 2004 Democratic primary rival—King County Executive Ron Sims—as talent for an Obama administration . . . “if Ron is interested in anything having to do with housing.” New American administrations must fill thousands of jobs.
Appointees can reflect favorably or disastrously on a president.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had a successful director, James Lee Witt, in the Clinton years. It was filled with political hacks under President Bush and performed disastrously after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.
Republicans, until recently, wanted to abolish the Department of Energy. The Reagan administration put a South Carolina dentist in charge of DOE, and later the president’s former scheduler. The Clinton administration used the DOE job to meet racial and gender goals in the Cabinet.
Curiously, leading Democrats from this state say they will use chits with Obama not to put friends in high places, but to wash corners of the federal government clean of cronyism.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., indicated in a recent interview that she would like similar vetting over the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. A few years back, with a former Republican National Chairman running the department, it was revealed that veterans’ health services were billions of dollars short of resources needed to care for returning Iraq and Afghanistan war vets.
Washington has a history of influential congressional delegations. It has, however, been 29 years since the last Cabinet secretary from the state—Transportation Secretary Brock Adams—was fired by President Carter.
Despite loads of name-dropping by Seattle newspapers, a trio of prominent Republicans—Dan Evans, Slade Gorton, and Jennifer Dunn—were bypassed during selection of the Bush I and Bush II Cabinets. The Bush administrations have mainly nominated wealthy Republican donors to ambassadorial posts.
Illinois is a state where political helpmates get rewarded, and expect to be consulted.
The late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley was President Kennedy’s first overnight houseguest at the White House, and Daley intimate Abraham Lincoln Marovitz was JFK’s first federal judicial appointment.
Who will Obama owe? Gregoire gave him a well-timed endorsement—as the state’s leading feminists were supporting Hillary Clinton—and has worked his cause at this week’s Democratic National Convention. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., was an early Obama backer. Smith was warned that he was putting his political career on the line.
Out of the Hillary camp, Murray and Sims and Reps. Norm Dicks and Jay Inslee moved immediately to unite Washington Democrats behind the insurgent victor. A co-chairman of Clinton’s national energy task force, Inslee is now celebrating Obama as the person to transform U.S. energy policy.
Obama has made four visits to Washington, but has not really come up to speed on Pacific Northwest issues. He has, however, been briefed on two key questions, the Hanford cleanup and the just-launched cleanup of Puget Sound.
In a fiery speech to Washington’s convention delegation, Dicks on Thursday left no doubt that Puget Sound and the Air Force tanker deal will be atop the state’s demands on a new administration, with dollars needed to identify pollution problems, and a fair playing field for Boeing on the tanker decision.
“These are not backyard issues,’ Gregoire said of Hanford and Puget Sound. “These are national issues.” The governor also predicted that two of her term-limited colleagues—Govs.
Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas (an early Obama backer) and Janet Napolitano of Arizona — will likely be Obama Cabinet secretaries.
And Gregoire could be in line for a major appointment, possibly in the Justice Department, if she loses in a gubernatorial rematch with Republican Dino Rossi.
Of course, the biggest test of who can deliver lies ahead—November. Daley found a bed at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. after delivering Illinois’ 26 electoral votes to JFK by a margin of 8,800 votes.
P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com. Follow politics on the P-I’s blog at .
