Obama to nominate Charlotte mayor to transportation post
Baku, April 30 (AZERTAC). President Obama on Monday plans to nominate Anthony R. Foxx, the mayor of Charlotte, N.C., to be the next secretary of transportation, choosing a rising young African-American from the South to balance out a cabinet criticized for a lack of diversity. Mr. Obama also appeared close to nominating Penny Pritzker, a hotel magnate, longtime friend and fund-raiser, as the next commerce secretary, and Michael Froman, his international economics adviser, as the United States trade representative, although neither nomination was scheduled to be announced on Monday.
The selections, all of which would require Senate confirmation, would help fill out Mr. Obama’s second-term cabinet more than five months after his re-election. Consumed by fiscal clashes and legislative battles and delayed by painstaking vetting, Mr. Obama has been slow to finish assembling a team to carry him through the second half of his administration.
Word of Mr. Foxx’s nomination, confirmed on Sunday by White House officials who insisted on anonymity to discuss it before the formal announcement, comes at a time when the president has been scrutinized for the demographic makeup of his circle. After drawing criticism that many of his initial second-term national security picks were men, Mr. Obama has named a succession of women and minorities to other top-level posts.
The issue provoked one of the laugh lines at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association on Saturday night. “Mr. President, your hair is so white it could be a member of your cabinet,” Conan O’Brien joked.
Mr. Foxx, who turns 42 on Tuesday, has served as mayor for nearly four years. But just three weeks ago, he announced that he would not seek re-election this year because he wanted to spend more time with his family, including two children born after he joined the Charlotte City Council in 2005. “I do not want to be a father who looks back and wishes I had spent more time with them,” he said in a statement on April 5.
Mr. Foxx, who was raised by a single mother and his grandparents, became the first black student body president at Davidson College and earned a law degree from New York University. He worked as a lawyer for a private firm as well as for the House Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department before returning to Charlotte to begin his career as an elected politician.
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