Opposition develops to Thompson for DOI job

Portland Oregonian

The rumor mill is humming that President-elect Barack Obama will pick California Congressman Mike Thompson for interior secretary - which has set off a certain grumbling in the blogosphere from those who don't think his environmental credentials are sufficient.

Rep. Mike Thompson at Interior Department press conference in 2002 on Klamath fish kill.

Be that as it may be, Daily Kos, the influential Democratic netroots blog, posted a scathing commentary about Thompson. It blasted him for voting to ease restrictions on logging in national forests and belittled his dead-fish demo at DOI, saying it was an easy move politically for him because boosting water levels in the Klamath only affected Oregon farmers.

Daily Kos also isn't happy that Thompson is a "blue dog Democrat" who has backed conservative fiscal policies and has been supported by the National Rifle Association. Instead, several from the blogosphere left have been pushing another congressman, Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva, the son of migrants and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's federal land policies.

UPDATE: Here's a letter from 117 environmental groups, including several in Oregon, urging Obama to appoint Grijalva.

Still, Thompson certainly looks as if he is in line with Obama's earlier cabinet appointees. He's someone who has been able to reach across partisan lines and it doesn't hurt that he's gotten lots of backing from the powerful California congressional delegation. And lastly, Obama said during the campaign he wanted a sportsman in the job. "I think that having a head of the Department of Interior who doesn't understand hunting and fishing would be a problem," Obama told Field & Stream.

SIDE NOTE: If you clicked on that last link, from The Washington Post, you'll see that the story says former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber is still a contender for the job. As reported in Oregon several times, that doesn't seem to be the case. Kitzhaber himself last week told Associated Press that it is "extremely unlikely" he would get the position.