Philmont connection
Many GOP leaders have trekked wilderness at northern N.M.’s sprawling Scout Ranch
Prominent Republicans have trekked the ranch
Arugged piece of northern New Mexico wilderness provides a connection between Presidentelect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state and other highprofile members of past Republican administrations.
Think “Do a good turn daily” and “Be prepared” and you’re on the right track.
Trump nominee and Exxon Mobil head Rex Tillerson, along with former Secretary of State Robert Gates and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld all tramped hills and trails as Boy Scouts at the Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron.
Tillerson and Gates are also former national presidents of the Boy Scouts of America — Tillerson from 2010-12 and Gates from 2014-16. Those two and Rumsfeld all have received the Scouts’ national “Silver Buffalo” award for outstanding service to youth.
Rumsfeld, 84, first discovered New Mexico when he served at Philmont as a scout ranger or guide in the late 1940s. He later bought several properties in Taos and has a home there.
Gates, 73, was head of the CIA in the 1990s and served as Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, serving under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He and Tillerson, 64, are friends and both were Eagle Scouts back in the day.
Trump decided on Tillerson as his nominee for Secretary of State after “being prodded” by Gates and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to the Wall Street Journal. Exxon Mobil is a client of a international consulting firm run by Gates and Rice.
“Gates said Exxon is only ‘one of many clients of ours’ and that he recommended Tillerson because of a personal relationship rooted in leadership roles they both held in the Boy Scouts of America,” the newspaper reported.
In a blog titled “Walk the Walk with Bob Mazucca,” a Boy Scout executive from when Tillerson was president of the organization, Mazucca writes about “walking backcountry camps at Philmont Scout Ranch” with Tillerson.
A request for comment from Philmont on Tillerson’s time there resulted in a statement from the Boy Scouts that said Tillerman’s service includes “upholding the longstanding traditions of character and good citizenship that are essential to Scouting’s mission.”
Gates visited Philmont as a teenager.
“When he was 13, Gates went to the Boy Scouts’ National Junior Leader Training Program at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico,” says a 2014 Esquire magazine article.
“‘It was the only formal management course I’ve ever had in my life,’ he says. ‘Can you imagine a better experience for learning leadership?’” the article said.
It’s fitting that Tillerson, as head of a huge energy company that is the sixth largest in the world in revenue, would have camped at Philmont.
Another leader in the oil business, Waite Phillips of Oklahoma, acquired a 300,000-acre northern New Mexico ranch in 1922, and in 1938 he offered more than 35,000 acres to the Boy Scouts to create Philmont. Phillips eventually donated a total of more than 127,000 of the 140,000 acres of the current scout ranch.
Tillerson, because of Exxon’s operations in Russia and his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is expected to face harsh scrutiny during Senate confirmation hearings. He’s also catching flak from the religious right because under his leadership, the Boy Scouts embraced allowing boys identifying as gay to become members.
Rumsfeld’s love affair with northern New Mexico that started at Philmont was not wholly reciprocated. A 2007
Journal North article recounts when Rumsfeld, in the midst of the war in Iraq, was burned in effigy in Taos.
Trump’s prospective Cabinet is in fact well populated with Eagle Scouts — former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama also earned the honor. No word on whether either made it to Philmont.