President Obama dissuaded his longest-serving cabinet member, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, from quitting in late 2015 by putting Vilsack in charge of the administration’s efforts to stem heroin and prescription opioid abuse in rural America, says the Washington Post. Vilsack felt rural issues were ignored in Washington and, after seven years on the job, there was little left for him to accomplish at USDA.
Vilsack said, “Mr. President, I think it’s time to go,” during an Oval Office meeting, according to the Post’s front-page story. “The new assignment would force Vilsack to confront not only the immediate drug crisis in the country but also the frustrations and feelings of economic hopelessness that allowed the epidemic to flourish.” Vilsack was a logical choice, given his role as chair of the interagency White House Rural Council.
“In January, President Obama asked me to lead an interagency effort focused on heroin and prescription opioids in rural America, a role I was humbled to accept,” wrote Vilsack on a USDA website on opioids. “This issue is very personal to me.”
During a webcast interview with the Post, Vilsack encouraged Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to play up her support of agriculture and rural development. “What she needs to do, what the campaign needs to do, is talk about it,” he said. Rural voters tend to be socially and fiscally conservative but they are not an automatic voting bloc for Republicans. “If you have a candidate who speaks to rural voters, that empowers people at the local level to get active.”
Afterward, Vilsack said he has spent weekends campaigning for Clinton in Iowa and four other swing states — Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, said The Hagstrom Report.