Obama Names Republican Senator to Lead Commerce Department

Judd Gregg, a fiscal conservative and Republican senator from New Hampshire, is US President Barack Obama’s pick to serve as secretary of commerce, the White House announced last week.

Gregg, the highest-ranking member of his party on the Senate Budget Committee, voted in favour of every major free trade agreement that came up for a vote during his 16 years in the Senate. He has also gone record in support of drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and has opposed raising taxes on oil and gas companies.

“Clearly, Judd and I don’t agree on every issue,” Obama said last week. “But we agree on the urgent need to get American businesses and families back on their feet.”

Pundits say that having Gregg at the head of the Commerce Department, which oversees a wide variety of activities ranging from promoting US exports abroad to helping foster minority-owned enterprises at home, will help Obama gain the trust of the business community.

Gregg, a former businessman who has also been a member of the House of Representatives and the governor of New Hampshire, is the third Republican that Obama has asked to join his cabinet.

“He’s willing to bring into his council chamber and to listen to somebody who comes from a different philosophy and he actively sought me out to do that,” Gregg said of Obama in an interview with The New York Times. “But he’s the captain. Put another way, I’m a field commander.”

New Hampshire governor John Lynch has named a Republican, former Capitol Hill staffer Bonnie Newman, to serve as Gregg’s replacement in the Senate. Gregg’s Senate confirmation hearing has yet to be scheduled.

In December, Obama asked former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson to lead the commerce department, but Richardson stepped back from the nomination last month amidst a federal grand jury investigation into his campaign finances.

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