When trying to predict presidential nominations, a parlor game that enchants Washington with special fervor when a new administration is in the wings, recall the unconventional way Mike Espy persuaded Bill Clinton to tap him for agriculture secretary: He wrote him a note before a Democratic Leadership Council dinner at Union Station.
Clinton read the note and gave Espy a thumbs-up. The gesture assured Espy, the first black congressman from Mississippi since Reconstruction, of a cabinet post and short-circuited the transition team that was vetting potential nominees. It was not the first time or the last that aggies were surprised by a nominee to head USDA. Few of the selections have been obvious in advance in recent decades.
For good reason, presidents-elect settle on nominees for the big jobs — Treasury, State, Justice and Defense — before filling out the rest of the cabinet. By that point, their goals of gender and racial diversity in the cabinet compete with ideology and the desire to thank key voting blocs by giving them, literally, a seat at the cabinet table.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said at least half of her cabinet, if she is elected, would be women. Only 30 women have held cabinet posts, says NBC News. Ann Veneman was the first, and so far only, woman to be agriculture secretary.
Several names already are circulating as possible nominees for agriculture secretary, based on political chatter and published reports. On Clinton’s side, they are California agriculture secretary Karen Ross, former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, former deputy agriculture secretary Kathleen Merrigan and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding. Lincoln was the first woman to chair the Senate Agriculture Committee. For Republican nominee Donald Trump, mentioned as potential nominee are agribusinessmen Bruce Rastetter of Iowa and Charles Herbster of Nebraska.
While transition teams have been at work for months for Trump and Clinton, the candidates are focusing on winning the Nov. 8 election. After election day, the victor will turn to selection of policymakers to put campaign promises into reality.
Washington hands say experience, competence, and political skills and connections are the key criteria in selection of a USDA chief, outweighing any claim of friendship. Incoming administrations are always daunted by USDA’s broad portfolio, so they look for an able manager with a political ear, said a White House official from the George W. Bush era. “That’s why governors rise to the top pretty quickly.” Most important, he said, is to prevent distractions from the president’s agenda; presidents and their staffs “don’t want problems every month.”
Agriculture “is not known for our gender diversity,” said the former Bush official, which could give a boost to a female candidate for agriculture secretary if there is an issue in balancing cabinet membership. If so, that would be a boomerang effect from male dominance of the sector. Some senior civil servants believed there was an element of sexism in the sector’s relations with Veneman, who was a Californian holding a job that often goes to a Farm Belt native.
Nominees for agriculture secretary tend to be announced late in the process. President Obama, for example, announced Tom Vilsack as his choice on Dec. 17, 2008, six weeks after winning the presidency. Vilsack reportedly was on the post-election list for USDA, then off it, and then back as the nominee.
Now the longest-serving agriculture secretary since the Johnson years, Vilsack is the third in a string, dating from 2005, of active or former governors to head USDA. They were preceded by Veneman, a former California agriculture secretary, and a trio of former members of the House Agriculture Committee — Dan Glickman of Kansas, Espy, and Ed Madigan of Illinois. The last farmer to serve as agriculture secretary was Jack Block in the Reagan era.
Accounts of Espy’s path to USDA are dramatic: “Sitting on a wooden milk crate behind Washington’s cavernous Union Station, Rep. Mike Espy scribbled on an envelope 10 reasons why president-elect Bill Clinton should nominate him agriculture secretary,” says a Los Angeles Times story. Espy gave the note to transition chief Christopher Warren and later mentioned it to Clinton, who “read it on the spot, then gave him the thumbs-up signal.”
In retrospect, Espy had clear entree to Clinton. Espy “worked with then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton to develop the centrist Democratic Leadership Council which most black lawmakers avoided,” says the site BlackPast. Espy and Clinton worked together on rural-development issues and Espy was an early backer of Clinton for president. Espy was on the transition team’s list for consideration for agriculture secretary but he did not talk to Clinton about it until the night he wrote the note.