WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the Interior Department, Sally Jewell, cleared her first hurdle on the way to confirmation Thursday, winning approval of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee by a large bipartisan margin.
Only three of the panel’s 22 members - Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Mike Lee of Utah and Tim Scott of South Carolina, all Republicans - opposed the nomination. Barrasso said Jewell had given incomplete answers to oral and written questions and was not clearly qualified to head the sprawling Interior Department.
Obama nominated Jewell, 57, currently chief executive of Recreational Equipment Inc. in Seattle, to replace Ken Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado.
The committee’s senior Republican, Sen. LisaMurkowski of Alaska, announced her support Thursday morning for Jewell after a Wednesday meeting in which Salazar told her the agency would reconsider a decision to block construction of an airport access road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in a remote corner of southwest Alaska. He committed Jewell to follow through on the pledge.
Other Republicans on the committee said Jewell’s willingness to seek a range of opinions on the Alaska wilderness issue and other natural resources questions was sufficient to win their support.
Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, voted to send the nomination to the full Senate but reserved the right to place a hold on the vote if demands by Western lawmakers to keep the sage grouse, a pheasantlike prairie bird, off the endangered species list are not met.
Farmers, ranchers and oil prospectors in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Colorado oppose listing the sage grouse because it would put hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands off-limits to commercial and agricultural development.
“Because of the assurances we have gotten, because of progress that has been made, I’m willing to vote yes,” Risch said. “It’s unfortunate it takes a nomination like this in order to get urgency out of a federal agency.”
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Jewell’s varied career and love of the outdoors fully qualified her for the post.
”She is going to give each member of this committee her ear and her expertise that comes from having managed to pack a host of professional careers - petroleum engineer, CEO and banker, to name just a few - into just one lifetime,” Wyden said. “I have full confidence in Sally Jewell’s ability to take on this important assignment.”
No date has been set for full Senate consideration of the nomination, but an aide to Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said that the leader hoped to take the nomination to the floor shortly after the Easter break.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/22/2013