Out of a cavalcade of candidates, Sonny Perdue, the first Republican governor of Georgia since Reconstruction, is President-elect Donald Trump’s leading candidate to become agriculture secretary in what has become the lengthiest selection process in at least 40 years. Perdue would be the second southerner to serve as agriculture secretary in the USDA’s 118 years as a cabinet department.
Early today, Trump announced the selection of Robert Lighthizer, an international trade lawyer and veteran of the Reagan administration, as his nominee for U.S. trade representative. Trump said Lighthizer would work for “good trade deals that put the American worker first.” The Trump transition office said Lighthizer negotiated two dozen bilateral trade agreements as a deputy trade representative in the 1980s and “these agreements were “uniformly tough.”
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to questions about Perdue, or when a nominee could be expected. Reuters cited a senior official on the transition team in saying Perdue, a member of the Trump agricultural advisory committee, was the leading candidate. Perdue declined to comment to Politico and other news outlets. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said, “[T]wo people with direct knowledge of the situation” identified Perdue as the leading candidate but that “a transition official said Trump hasn’t yet made a final decision.”
Perdue was the first person that Trump interviewed, on Nov. 30, for agriculture secretary.
“He asked me what my skill sets were and I told him what they were, aside from having been governor, as a business person and primarily in agricultural commodities, trading domestically and internationally … And he lit up,” Perdue told reporters afterward, according to the Journal-Constitution. “He knew what it takes to make America great again by doing the things we do well, which is agriculture for one, and to free up farmers from the regulations that we see. He was spot-on on those issues.”
The hunt for a nominee was shadowed by demands by farm leaders that the job go to someone with experience in mainstream agriculture, and by equally loud calls for a loyal Republican. If Perdue, 70, becomes secretary, he would be the fourth active or former governor in a row to run the USDA. Secretary Tom Vilsack, who leaves office on Jan. 20, says governors have experience in managing diverse issues.
A veterinarian by training, Perdue was a state senator who switched to Republican from Democrat and was in the vanguard of flipping Georgia to Republican control. “As governor, he carved out a reliably conservative record that included legislation that aimed at cracking down [on] illegal immigration and new photo ID requirements for Georgia voters,” said the Journal-Constitution. After two terms as governor, ending in 2011, “Perdue has run a string of trucking, agriculture and logistics firms from his base in middle Georgia.”
A first cousin, Georgia Sen. David Perdue, is a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, which will hold confirmation hearings on the eventual USDA nominee.
Trump’s agriculture secretary will begin work with congressional Republicans aiming to make large cuts in public-nutrition programs and some Tea Party-influenced lawmakers who want to curtail farm subsidies as well. House Republicans have voted repeatedly, but without success, to convert food stamps, the largest U.S. anti-hunger program, into a block grant for states to run. Congress deadlocked over an update of the school lunch program in 2016 so that issue remains on the table.
Cotton and dairy farmers say the 2014 farm law has failed to protect them from low market prices and must be improved, while corn and soybean farmers complain about subsidy payment rates that vary widely from county to county. Congress is due to write a farm bill in 2018 at a period when farm income is low, compared to the boom times of 2006-13, and when there is little reason to believe larger federal funding will be available.
In the past week, the president-elect met four USDA contenders at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida — former Rep. Henry Bonilla of Texas, former Texas state comptroller Susan Combs, former Texas A&M president Elsa Murano, and former California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado. More than a dozen people have been mentioned as possible nominees.
In the past 40 years, the average date for announcing an agriculture nominee has been Dec. 17. Every president-elect since Jimmy Carter named his choice for agriculture secretary before Christmas. Mike Espy, the first black elected to the U.S. House from Mississippi since Reconstruction, was the first southerner to become agriculture secretary, in 1993, during President Clinton’s first term.