| | |  Americas & Beyond | November 2008 
Bill Richardson to Commerce?
 Chris Cillizza - The Washington Post
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| | New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has emerged as a "serious contender" to head the Commerce Department under President-elect Barack Obama. (Alex Brandon/AP) | | |
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has emerged as a "serious contender" to head the Commerce Department under President-elect Barack Obama, according to a Democratic official close to the proceedings.
Richardson was originally in the mix to be the secretary of state, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is now expected to be announced for that post after the Thanksgiving holiday.
The rumors of Richardson as the next head of the Commerce Department bring to a close a wild week in the transition of Obama from candidate to president. In the last seven days, a series of leading Cabinet picks have been revealed including Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to Homeland Security, former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle to Health and Human Services, Eric Holder to Justice and, last, but certainly not least, Clinton to State.
The idea of the erstwhile rivals putting the bad blood of the primary season behind them and throwing their lots in together on the world stage has dominated the media coverage of the Obama transition since it was revealed that late last week Clinton had traveled to Chicago to meet with the President-elect.
With the major impediment - former President Bill Clinton's finances and business relationships - now apparently behind them, sources in both camps suggest a post-Thanksgiving announcement is likely.
Obama promised in a post-election news conference that he would move with "deliberate haste" to fill out his Cabinet and senior White House staff - a recognition that with a global financial crisis growing by the day and the United States involved in two wars abroad there was little time to waste.
Commerce was originally rumored to be going to Penny Pritzker, the finance chairwoman of Obama's campaign and a close friend of the Illinois senator, but she removed herself from consideration on Thursday due to an inability to extricate herself from a series of complex business ties.
Richardson, who was elected governor of the Land of Enchantment in 2002 and reelected with 69 percent of the vote in 2006, has made no secret of his interest in returning to Washington to take a place in the Obama Administration. A longshot contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Richardson endorsed Obama in his primary battle with Clinton (to the dismay of many Clinton supporters), and, if nominated for Commerce, would help round out Obama's "Team of Rivals."
Richardson spent 15 years in the U.S. House - from 1982 to 1997 - before being named by then President Bill Clinton as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. A year later Richardson became Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Cabinet.
The major remaining Cabinet posts in the Obama Administration are the secretaries of Defense and Treasury.
Robert Gates, current head of the Defense Department, is rumored to be a candidate to stay on in an Obama administration. Richard Danzig, a senior adviser to Obama and a former secretary of the Navy, is also considered a serious possibility.
For Treasury, conventional wisdom seems to have coalesced behind former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as the top two candidates. |
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