Surprisingly, President-Elect Obama has selected a second person for his cabinet whom I've met; this one I actually spoke with briefly. It's Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, Obama's new selection for director of the Department of Homeland Security. It's a surprising pick not so much because of Napolitano's lack of qualifications (the previous occupant, Michael Chertoff, was selected primarily because he had bashed the department in several judicial opinions) but because of the political fallout it will create in Arizona -- elevating a Republican to the governor's office and removing Democrats' only serious chance of defeating John McCain for Senate.

I met Napolitano, ironically, in the same year I met Gregory Craig, which was about ten years ago. At the time, she had just been elected to the position of state attorney general. I was captain of a local LifeSmarts team which was competing in the state championship for the first time that year. At the time, the tradition -- inherited from Napolitano's predecessor, Grant Woods -- was that the state AG would read questions for the final two rounds of the competition. Unfortunately, the competition was delayed over an hour while organizers waited for Napolitano to arrive.

Despite her efforts to portray herself as an authentic Westerner, Napolitano still sports a hint of a New York accent, something that cost me a question in the contest. Napolitano asked me whether fair-skinned, olive-skinned, or dark-skinned people were more likely to sustain serious sunburn. However, she pronounced "olive-skinned" as "aulive-skinned," which I heard as "all of skinned people" (obviously, I was a bit addled at the time from the stress), and I picked that answer. DING!

After we won the competition (despite my silly miss on that question), Napolitano engaged me in conversation (I don't remember who started it, her or me). She told me I'd like New York City, where the national contest was being held, and that she'd grown up there.

Napolitano was a good governor, shielding the state from the excesses of a violently anti-immigrant state legislature. She was also very attentive to the small northern city of Flagstaff, where I grew up -- she rode in the local Fourth of July parade every year from 1998 until last year, when she sent current Attorney General Terry Goddard in her stead. She also held several state cabinet meetings in Flagstaff. I attended one of them in 2004. I went up to her after the meeting to thank her for bestowing some recognition on the northern part of the state, and she took me for a campaign worker on the Paul Babbitt for Congress campaign, probably because I was wearing a Babbitt t-shirt (I was actually only a volunteer). In both brief conversations, she struck me as both down-to-earth and a tough operator who knew what she wanted and how to get it.

Finally, while many will no doubt remark that Napolitano is not a movement progressive -- and she's not -- it's worth remembering that she was a member of Anita Hill's legal team during the Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearings. In fact, it was that position that earned her the notice of former President Bill Clinton, who appointed her to her first political job, U.S. Attorney for Arizona.

Labels: Jeremy Young