Energy Secretary: California Buzz

10 November 2008 |permalink | email article

A key Barack Obama California supporter, former eBay executive Steve Westly, is on the short list for Secretary of Energy.

Westly, 51, co-chaired Cleantech and Green Business for Obama, a consistuency group of green technies, along with former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former Clinton Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner. 

Westly lost the Democratic primary race for governor to state Treasurer Phil Angelides in 2006. Recent reports suggest he’s weighing another gubernatorial run in 2010.

Westly, born in Arcadia, Calif., would be no stranger to energy issues.

In his early career he blossomed in President Carter’s Energy Department. Later, he served as state controller during California’s energy crisis from May 2000 to September 2001.

Opinion

“Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, is a date that will live in fame (the opposite of infamy) forever.” – Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, predicting that, despite many commentators urging Obama to think small, the cautious President-elect will usher in a new era of progressive policies.

“John McCain said repeatedly that he’d rather lose an election than lose a war. We ended up winning a war, and he ended up losing the election. It’s not quite the cosmic injustice of the British electorate rejecting Churchill in 1945 – but it’s no small injustice either.”— Center right columnist William Kristol, crediting McCain for preventing a second Vietnam humiliation in Iraq. The economic crisis was not mentioned until the last sentence in eighth paragraph.

524