WASHINGTON — Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama’s top choice to run the Homeland Security Department, is tough on illegal immigration, child abuse and Republicans.
A former federal prosecutor, state attorney general and twice-elected governor of Arizona, Napolitano would bring a wide skill set to what many have called the hardest job in government.
If confirmed by the Senate, she would take over the newest and third-largest department in Obama’s Cabinet.
The Homeland Security Department, formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, includes divisions that protect the borders, develop new radiation-detection equipment, study and test infectious diseases, enforce immigration and maritime laws, protect the president and other dignitaries, coordinate disaster response, work to keep terrorists off of airplanes and other forms of transportation, and monitor and prevent cyber-intrusions.
Controversial agency
Under the scrutiny of more congressional oversight than any other federal department, Homeland Security has weathered a run of controversies, including its handling of emergency response during and after Hurricane Katrina, its involvement in a scuttled deal that would have allowed a Dubai company to manage certain U.S. ports, its mismanagement of large government contracts, and its delayed implementation of key, post- 9/11 security programs.
Napolitano, 50, an early Barack Obama supporter, is no stranger to Washington controversy either.
As a private attorney in Phoenix in 1991, Napolitano was part of the legal team representing Anita Hill, a former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission colleague of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, whom Hill had accused of sexual harassment. Her work on that case postponed Napolitano’s own Senate confirmation as U.S. attorney but did not derail Thomas’ confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice.
Breast-cancer survivor
Napolitano’s not known as a great orator; when she does speak, she takes care to be grammatically correct. Single and a breast-cancer survivor, Napolitano is a basketball fan, plays tennis and regularly visits her brother and his family in California.
People who work with her say she has a strong temper on occasions. She can be brusque and evasive when fending off reporters’ questions she doesn’t want to answer. She is known for her partisanship and has patronized and belittled critics, such as Republican legislators.
Among the homeland security secretary’s most visible tasks is announcing to the public when there’s been a change in the color-coded terror alert system and why. The alert level — currently at orange, or high, for the aviation sector, and yellow, or elevated for the rest of the country — has not changed since 2006.
As governor, Napolitano set career records for vetoes as she battled with the Republican-led Legislature over spending and illegal immigration. In her first term, she resisted initial efforts on a state crackdown on illegal immigration, instead taking the position that immigration and border security are federal responsibilities. As attorney general, she put a priority on cases involving abused and neglected children.
Napolitano also has been a prominent figure in the debate over REAL ID, a federal program launched after the 2001 terror attacks to make driver’s licenses more secure. In 2007, Napolitano struck a deal with the Homeland Security Department that was supposed to lead to her state adopting the REAL ID standards. But in June of this year, she signed legislation refusing to implement the standards.
As homeland security secretary, she would be in the position of persuading other governors to get on board or lead the administration’s effort to abandon the new rules, if Obama’s administration decides to do that.
State auditors faulted Arizona’s use of federal homeland security grants, citing sloppy record keeping of millions of federal dollars doled out to communities. As homeland security secretary, Napolitano would oversee $2 billion-a- year in counterterrorism grants to states and high-risk urban areas.
Napolitano has fought to curb illegal immigration but has been skeptical that building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border will solve the problem. She once said: “You build a 50-foot wall, somebody will find a 51-foot ladder.”
