Cabinet taking on role of emissaries to battleground states

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue tromped through a strawberry festival in central Florida, detailing the government’s new trade pact. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about foreign policy at a roundtable in south Florida. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler toured parts of Michigan and Wisconsin, where he boasted of the Trump administration’s efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.

And just this past week, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was listed as a headliner along with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for the president, at an event in Rapid City, South Dakota, where tickets prices started at $250, according to an independent watchdog group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

With President Donald Trump confronted by skyrocketing joblessness amid the coronavirus pandemic as he campaigns for re-election against Democrat Joe Biden, members of his Cabinet are busy making time in pivotal states. They are carrying a message to voters about what the Trump administration is doing for them.

At the same time, there are questions about whether these agency heads are running afoul of a law meant to bar overt campaigning by federal officials on the taxpayer tab.

It can be hard to spot any local impact that a housing or a health secretary may have on a presidential race when they are in town. But there can be an effect, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, who has been studying presidential politics in the battleground state.

Cabinet secretaries usually “aren’t generating the same kind of buzz. But it doesn’t mean that what they do is not important both for policy and also politics for their president,” Jewett said.

Biden campaign spokespman Michael Gwin accused the Trump administration of focusing on “scoring political points, not delivering for the people they work for. With COVID-19 raging unchecked, more than 17 million Americans unemployed, and our country divided, it’s shameful that Trump’s Cabinet is campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime instead of doing their jobs.”