ken salazar: Obama picks Salazar as Interior secretary

Reporting from Washington -- Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), a Latino with deep knowledge of water and land issues, is President-elect Barack Obama's choice to lead the Interior Department.

Two senior Democrats confirmed Monday that Obama will name Salazar to the post, rounding out an energy and environmental policy team announced at a Chicago news conference.

The Senate's confirmation of Salazar would probably put the brakes on several controversial Interior Department decisions on energy development.

The department oversees national parks and other large swaths of public lands, and sets policy for oil and gas drilling, mining and other resource extraction. 

Earlier this year, Salazar criticized the department for decisions to open Colorado's picturesque Roan Plateau for drilling. Salazar said the regulations to begin opening land for oil shale development would "sell Colorado short."

Salazar's family helped settle what is now New Mexico in the 1500s. He was raised on a ranch in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, and became an attorney with an expertise in water law. 

"In rural areas," Salazar said in an interview this summer, "they understand water as their lifeblood."

Salazar led Colorado's Department of Natural Resources and served as the state's attorney general before winning a vacant Senate seat in 2004. He entered Congress in the same freshman class as Obama.

The senator campaigned vigorously for Obama in Colorado, a swing state, barnstorming rural areas in a recreational vehicle while preaching alternative-energy development and its potential to revitalize rural economies. After the election, Salazar publicly urged Obama to build his planned economic stimulus package around investments in energy infrastructure.

Salazar campaigned for the Senate as a centrist and was part of the Gang of 14, a group of moderate lawmakers who brokered a compromise on judicial nominations. He quietly made his mark on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee but occasionally stirred controversy on both sides of the aisle.

He outraged many religious conservatives when he called James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, "the antichrist" -- though he revised the comment to "un-Christian." 

He upset liberals by introducing Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush's nominee for attorney general, at his Senate confirmation hearing. Salazar later called on Gonzales to resign over allegations of politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter Jr., a Democrat, professed "mixed emotions" Monday about a possible Salazar nomination. 

"Ken Salazar has been an extremely effective U.S. senator for Colorado these past four years, particularly as a moderate and as a centrist," Ritter said. "But if a nomination to join the Obama administration comes to pass, Sen. Salazar would make an equally outstanding Interior secretary for the country, for the West and for Colorado." 

Tankersley is a writer in our Washington bureau.

Source: latimes.com