Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Perry closer to heading Energy
Ex-Texas governor, Rep. Zinke on tap for Cabinet posts
WASHINGTON — Rick Perry holds the Department of Energy in such low regard that in a presidential primary debate five years ago, he famously couldn’t even remember it was on the list of federal agencies he wanted to eliminate.
Now President-elect Donald Trump appears to be on the verge of picking the former Texas governor to run the department that builds and maintains nuclear weapons, regulates fracking and off-shore drilling and monitors the Iran nuclear deal, among its many responsibilities.
In Perry, Trump would have another oil industry ally and climate change skeptic in his Cabinet. And like other Trump choices, Perry is skeptical of the department he would lead.
Also, Trump offered Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke the job of interior secretary.
The congressman accepted the Cabinet post, according to two people with knowledge of the offer.
Zinke, 55, a retired member of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six, was an early supporter of Trump.
It was Perry’s disdain for the Energy Department — or, rather, his inability to articulate it — that helped sink his bid for the GOP presidential nomination in the fall of 2011.
“It’s three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone: Commerce, Education and, the, uh, what’s the third one there?” Perry said during a primary debate. “Commerce, Education and the uh, the uh...”
He continued. “The third agency of government I would do away with — the Education, uh the, uh, Commerce, and let’s see — I can’t ... the third one, I can’t. I’m sorry ... oops.”
It was one of the more awkward moments in the history of presidential politics. Perry finally remembered later in the debate that the agency he was reaching for was Energy.
Perry’s background and worldview contrasts with the Energy secretaries under President Barack Obama, both of whom are physicists — one, a winner of the Nobel Prize, and the other a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Their background in science helped Obama’s energy secretaries chart a course for an agency that takes the lead in managing America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons as well as global nonproliferation efforts. The current Energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, was deeply involved in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, which Perry has said should be scrapped.
Officials from the Trump transition declined Tuesday to confirm media reports that Perry was Trump’s pick, but they did heap praise on the former Texas governor when asked.
“We are big fans of Gov. Perry’s,” said transition spokesman Jason Miller. “He did a fantastic job with the state of Texas. As we talk about the Texas economic revival, a lot of that had to do with the energy sector and the growth that the state saw during Gov. Perry’s watch. He is very skilled, very talented.”
The officials would not say whether Trump favors the Perry proposal to eliminate the Energy Department altogether.
But transition spokesman Sean Spicer cautioned against reading too much into the policy plans of any nominee. “It is (Trump’s) agenda being implemented,” he said. “Not somebody else’s.”
When Perry was governor, from 2000 to 2015, Texas experienced a jobs boom. Much of it was linked to the state’s vast energy resources, which Perry worked with oil and gas firms to develop. The former governor also traveled the nation seeking to lure companies from other states to relocate to Texas, boasting that his state’s low tax rates and lax regulation would boost profits.
Perry also has a taste for the Hollywood spotlight, having competed on ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars.”
Environmental groups, expressing alarm at the exgovernor’s history of doubting climate science and flouting federal conservation efforts, announced opposition to Perry.
“The Cabinet choices become more absurd every day,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Yet again, Trump has chosen an unqualified individual who is at war with the central mission of the agency he is being nominated to lead.”
Perry is a backer of opening up more land for drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and supports doing away with subsidies for renewable energy.