When President-Elect Barack Obama passed over Bill Richardson — the nation’s only Hispanic governor — to tap Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as secretary of state, Hispanic columnists like Rubén Navarrette reacted with searing criticism.
Richardson, tapped to be commerce secretary instead, is the only Hispanic Cabinet appointee so far.
“The way he was treated doesn’t say much about Obama’s respect for the Hispanic community,” wrote Navarrette, a nationally syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Nor does the fact that Obama seems to have filled his top four cabinet posts — justice, treasury, defense and state — and couldn’t find a single Hispanic to put in any of them.”
Lehman College Journalism Professor Miguel Pérez called the commerce job “a consolation prize.”
“I think after we have seen the 67 percent of the Hispanic vote (that went to Obama), he took a long time remembering to name a Hispanic to the cabinet,” Pérez, a nationally syndicated columnist, told Lou Dobbs on CNN the day Richardson got the nod.
The criticism has been echoed more generally by liberal advocates as Obama rolls out his cabinet choices. He’s about halfway done with the top jobs. There are still seven undesignated cabinet secretary posts: agriculture, education, energy, housing and urban development, interior, labor and transportation. There are also a few jobs with cabinet rank still empty: U.S. trade representative, EPA administrator, as well as the Office of National Drug Control Policy director.
Hispanic advocacy groups, many of whom met last week with Obama’s Transition Co-Chair John Podesta, to push for Latino appointees and discuss policy positions, say they’re hopeful about a turn-around.
The umbrella organizations — the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda and the Latino Congress — met with the hope of seeing at least three or four Hispanic cabinet appointments.
“We just wanted to let them know, we’re hoping he can do better than Bush and Clinton, both of whom did pretty well compared to their predecessors,” says Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, who says the transition team members made no numerical promise of Hispanic appointments.
