To compare its trivial nature to our current fiscal mess and as
a commentary on the media, Mark Steyn in one of his recent articles
blasted ABC News for a story it ran in 2007 about a scandal at the
Bush-era Department of the Interior. Interior Secretary Dirk
Kempthorne had authorized $220,000 of Interior Department funds to
be used to remodel his office bathroom. After performing his usual
skillful evisceration, Steyn demands of his readers: “Name a
Secretary of the Interior. Any Secretary of the Interior.”
Well, President Obama is going to do just that in short order
because Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently announced that
he’ll be stepping down in late March after serving Barack Obama in
that capacity for the president’s entire first term.
Like Bill Clinton’s Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who
cynically used the 1906 Antiquities Act to help his boss create
sixteen new national monuments, Salazar has not earned the
affection of Western Republicans. “Secretary Salazar was not a
friend to my home state of Utah or other public lands states for
that matter,” Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of the House subcommittee
over national parks and public lands,
told the Salt Lake Tribune. “Under his watch, the
Department of the Interior sought to impose historic new limits on
access and multiple use of our nation’s resources and worked
aggressively to hinder certain types of domestic energy
production.”
Salazar began his tenure in 2009 by killing 77 energy leases on
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) parcels in Utah, hence Rep.
Bishop’s opprobrium. Leases in the Gulf of Mexico following the
2010 BP Deepwater Horizon spill have been slow to be approved. The
controversial Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) remains closed
to energy development. And as of May 2012, new “fracking”
regulations affecting the nationwide natural gas industry are in
place.
Traditionally, the Interior cabinet post goes to a Westerner of
the sitting president’s party, many times a governor or ex-governor
(Kempthorne and Babbitt are good examples), and one certainly
familiar with the Interior Department’s purview of a half billion
acres of federal public land, most of it in the West. Interior
oversees the National Park Service (NPS) and its 59 national parks,
including Yellowstone and Yosemite; the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) and its quarter of a billion acres devoted to grazing,
recreation, and energy resources; the Bureau of Reclamation
(BuRec), and its 180 dams/reservoirs; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service (USFWS); and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), serving
566 native tribes on 310 reservations amounting to 55 million
acres. A total of 54,000 employees covering all agencies. Here are
a few likely candidates for the wide-ranging post, based on my
reading of the western press. They are all Democrats.
Brian Schweitzer, the recently term-limited Montana governor
(2005-2013), is an ex-agronomist with little public lands
experience other than reacting to federal policy when he occupied
the governor’s office in Helena. Schweitzer supported Montana
Senator Jon Tester’s so-far failed Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,
which would have designated as wilderness 600,000 acres of federal
land in Montana, along with 100,000 for small-scale selective
logging projects designed to battle bark beetles and improve forest
health. But the latter proposal was seen by environmentalists as a
bouquet to the timber industry, leaving both Tester’s and
Schweitzer’s green credibility suspect. Though given President
Obama’s hostility to coal production, Schweitzer’s main negative
might be his public cheerleading for Montana’s “clean coal” (an
oxymoron on the green left) industry. Media outlets such as 60
Minutes have branded him “The Coal Cowboy.”
Ex-Wyoming governor David Freudenthal shares some aspects of
Schweitzer’s résumé. Both served conservative red state
constituencies as “NRA Democrats” (though currently that label
might work against them). Previous to serving as the Cowboy State’s
chief executive (2003-2011), Freudenthal was appointed U.S.
Attorney for the District of Wyoming (1994-2001) by President Bill
Clinton. While governor, Freudenthal supported Wyoming’s oil and
gas industry, its tax revenue for years ensuring that state
government in Cheyenne ran a perennial surplus. And for a Democrat,
Freudenthal came down on the “right” side of the now
eighteen-year-old wolf issue, supporting “predator” status; that
is, wolves are now legally hunted in some parts of the state, and
simply shot as a danger to livestock in others. Wolf advocates
decry this dual policy, and it is the subject of continuing
litigation.
Byron Dorgan, the recently retired Democratic senator
(1992-2011) from North Dakota, served on numerous public
lands-related Senate subcommittees, including Energy and Water
Development (chairman), and Interior, Environment and Related
Agencies. Also subcommittees on Energy and National Parks, and the
Committee on Indian Affairs. Dorgan also served in the U.S. House
(1981-1992), working on many of the same issues. Dorgan’s main
liability in President Obama’s eyes could be his involvement in the
2005 Jack Abramoff scandal, when the North Dakota senator returned
questionable campaign donations that had originated with some of
Abramoff’s clients.
Raul Grijalva, a Democratic congressman representing Arizona’s
3rd District (Grijalva represented Arizona’s 7th from 2003 to 2013;
the district was renumbered following redistricting after the 2010
Census, and in the current term it’s now the 3rd), was on the short
list in 2008, when Ken Salazar got the nod. Grijalva is the most
radical green of the aforementioned group, and in 2008 had the
support of 130 national and local environmental groups. He serves
on the House subcommittee for National Parks, Forests and Public
Lands. Grijalva was a prominent voice in Congress calling for more
congressional oversight of the oil industry following the Deepwater
Horizon spill. He is no friend of the oil and gas industry.
Other names farther down the list are ex-Washington governor
Christine Gregoire; ex-Washington 6th District representative
Norman Dicks; and Sally Jewell, the CEO of the outdoor gear giant
“Recreational Equipment, Inc.” (REI). The latter has no experience
in public service.
My picks are Dorgan, based on experience; or Grijalva, if Obama
seeks to truly radicalize the Department of the Interior. That
would be the same Grijalva who not long ago called for a tourist
boycott
of his own state.
