Denver — Ken Salazar worked his way from a remote family ranch to become the state’s first Hispanic U.S. senator—and along the way he’s amassed an intimate knowledge of Western political issues.
The Colorado Democrat has been chosen by President-elect Barack Obama as interior secretary, an official familiar with the selection of Obama’s Cabinet said Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying the official was not authorized to disclose any personnel decisions not yet announced.
In the 2004 campaign that sent him to the Senate, Salazar vowed to fight for Colorado’s land, water and people. He narrowly defeated beer baron Pete Coors, rallying a political base built up as state attorney general.
Salazar has a reputation among Democrats as a maverick, once joining 13 moderate senators to block his party from a filibuster of appellate nominees by President Bush. He joined another bipartisan group to prevent renewal of parts of the Patriot Act because of concerns about civil liberties, and he upset Democrats when he backed Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s nominee for attorney general.
Western Democrats, he has said, made their gains by focusing on issues dear to a cross-section of voters—energy, the environment, water, agriculture, veterans’ affairs—and not on special interest groups.
Of the party’s national leaders, he once said: “I hope they heed the fact that we in the West have been able to get the Democratic Party back in the saddle, and that’s by being moderate pragmatists that don’t see Republicans as devils.”
Salazar’s family settled in Colorado’s San Luis Valley about 150 years ago and built a 220-acre ranch in an area called Los Rincones—the corners—because of the right angle formed by two snowcapped mountain ridges.
“I got my political values from my mother and father. They struggled mightily in one of the most rural and poorest counties in America,” Salazar said. “Their vision for their children was that they would have a better life.”
Salazar occasionally stayed at the ranch alone, a rifle by his side because they lived five miles from the nearest town. “It was rough. We struggled,” said his mother, Emma. Her husband, Henry, valued education and made sure all eight children went to college before he died in 2001.
Salazar obtained a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1981 and joined a prominent Denver law firm. Six years later, Democratic Gov. Roy Romer made him his legal adviser, then head of the Department of Natural Resources.
In 1998, Salazar was elected attorney general.
His older brother, John, was elected to Congress in 2004.
![Newspaper advertisement offering reward for the return of an escaped man to his oppressors, Princess Anne, Maryland, April 1, 1861. Text reads: “0 Reward. Ranaway from the subscriber on Tuesday Morning, 26th Ultimo [last month], My negro boy calling himself Severn Black. The said negro is about 5 feet six inches in height, chesnut color, has a scar on his upperlip, downcast countenance when spoken to, blink-eyed, showing a great deal of white, long bushy hair, is about twenty years old, had on when he lefta [sic] blue fustian Jacket, pantaloons of a greyish color, blue striped shirt, a Black slouch hat and shoes nearly worn out. The above reward will be paid by me for the apprehension and delivery of the said negro in the county jail at Princess Anne, Somerset County, Maryland. April 1, 1861. Richard E. Snelling. Somerset Herald Print, Princess Anne, Md.’ The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 obliged citizens and lawmen of free zones to return escaped men to those whom they fled. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)](/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-53262583-16x9-1.jpg?w=620 "GettyImages-53262583-16x9-1")
