WASHINGTON - In a possible further sign that President-elect Donald Trump has not settled on a choice for Agriculture secretary, Vice President-elect Mike Pence is scheduled to meet today in Washington with former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs, the Trump transition team confirmed today in a call to reporters.
Jason Miller, the Trump transition communications director, confirmed the Combs-Pence meeting while listing the people with whom Trump and Pence will meet and their schedules in the coming days. Miller did not elaborate on the Combs-Pence meeting.
The Texas Tribune reported that Pence would meet with Combs, but highlighted the fact that she most recently was Texas state comptroller of public accounts (2007 to 2014).
Combs served as Texas agriculture commissioner from 1999 to 2007, and was the first woman to hold the post. Combs, 71, grew up on a ranch and has served on the boards of agriculture organizations, but in Republican terms is a relative liberal or moderate. Combs graduated from Vassar College and worked in advertising and finance in New York before she returned to Texas to go to law school.
She has encouraged healthy eating, and when her successor as agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, proposed gutting the healthier school meals and overturning restrictions on deep-fat frying, she wrote on an op-ed article in The Houston Chronicle questioning why he would take that action.
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Politico reported today that the Republican National Committee Chief Strategist Sean Spicer said Trump would likely make announcements regarding two remianing cabinet positions and administration jobs "over the next couple days."
Scott Stofferahn of Fargo, a former agricultural aide for U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who worked on the 2002 and 2008 farm bills, says he hasn't talked to Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., on the political calculus of a potential appointment.
"I haven't put much stock in the idea that she'd be either offered the job, or that she would take it," Stofferahn says, of her silence on the prospect, adding, "Why respond to a hypothetical?"
Stofferahn speculated the issue of her electability in 2018 may not affect changes in her popularity with Native American tribes in the state. Some key Heitkamp supporters have perceived as being relatively silent on the DAPL issue, considering she is in the same party as the administration. Her office said this isn't true, and as proof offered a joint statement with the rest of congressional delegation on Sept. 15. In it, she calls on the Barack Obama administration to send law enforcement, to cover the cost of policing, to ask for a "clear and timely" response to the permitting. The Democratic administration rejected the permit on Dec. 9, and so far hasn't agreed to the other requests. Heitkamp supported Obama's presidential candidacies.
"She spends time visiting with the tribes," Stofferahn says. "We may not see all of that, but I know how she operates. They recognize the circumstances this is in." The question of whether the tribes or more liberal Democrats would support her for re-election would also depend on who she would running against. "At the end of the day, they'll want her to stay in that office, and they have to remember the state that they live in," he says, as far as Republican domination
Stofferahn, a former Democratic-NPL state legislator and former state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency, as an eastern North Dakota state staff director for Conrad from 2001 to 2012, says Heitkamp still looks viable for re-election in 2018.
Chief among the reasons: Trump will be president. "It's harder to win if you have the president in your party," Stofferahn says. It is conceivable that decisions in a Trump administration might not be popular with North Dakota citizens, even though he was elected here.
If she were appointed to the ag post, Heitkamp would sit atop an agency that is different than others that are largely run by civil servants. USDA has "a lot of appointees," and many of those would be Republicans. Further, the USDA would live in the "modern environment of cabinet posts" in that the decisions are highly influenced by directives Office of Management and Budget.
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Miller said that Trump would remain at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach through the Christmas holiday. He also said that Trump will hold a news conference in January.
