As governor of Nebraska, Johanns has led trade missions across East Asia to find new markets for his state’s manufacturing and farm products.
Johanns
is Chairman of the
Governors Biotechnology Partnership
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WASHINGTON – President Bush announced today that he will nominate Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns to be secretary of agriculture. If confirmed by the Senate,
Johanns, 54, will succeed outgoing Secretary Ann Veneman.
Johanns, the son of Iowa farmers, is expected to continue the focus on trade issues that was begun by his predecessor. Veneman started her USDA career in the
Foreign Agricultural Service, moving up through the ranks to become deputy secretary and then secretary in President Bush’s first term.
As governor of Nebraska, Johanns has led trade missions across East Asia to find new markets for his state’s manufacturing and farm products.
Johanns nomination was applauded by Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the chairman of the Senate Committee on Nutrition Agriculture and Forestry.
"I think Governor Johanns is a good choice for this job. His executive experience as Governor and Mayor will be a valuable asset as well as his first hand
knowledge of what it is like to live on a farm," said Cochran.
Farm groups were quick to congratulate Johanns. The American Farm Bureau Federation released a statement by President Bob Stallman, a farmer from Texas.
"As lead governor for agriculture for the Western Governors’ Association, Gov. Johanns helped lead the way for the re-authorization of the 2002 farm bill,"
he noted. "Presiding over the fourth largest agricultural exporting state, Gov. Johanns recognizes the importance of opening up new export markets for U.S.
agricultural products, as reflected in his many agricultural trade missions he led as governor.
"A past chairman of the Governors’ Ethanol Committee, Gov. Johanns understands the importance of furthering the use of ethanol as a renewable fuel. His
understanding and support of other important agricultural issues—such as acceptance of biotechnology and homeland security measures to protect the nation’s
food supply — and his experience growing up on a dairy farm, will serve him well in his new position.
National Cotton Council leaders also hailed the Johanns nomination although the Sun Belt once again was passed over in the search for a new secretary.
“Governor Johanns knows the challenges facing U.S. agriculture, and is keenly aware of the importance of trade to our nation’s food and fiber producers,”
said NCC Chairman Woody Anderson, a Texas cotton producer. “Farm and trade policy stand shoulder to shoulder for agriculture's economic stability,
particularly cotton.
"His experience in leading trade delegations will be important to production agriculture as those areas intersect in the future.”
Anderson noted that Governor Johanns has a proven record of promoting rural economic development, understands the importance of homeland security and has
proven to be a strong leader not afraid to make touch choices.
“The U.S. cotton industry looks forward to working with this well-qualified candidate and strengthening its partnership with the U.S. government, including
moving forward on the recently-initiated e-gov initiative,” Anderson said. Johanns was educated was educated at St. Mary's College in Winona, Minn., and
earned a law degree from Creighton University in 1974. Johanns then clerked for Nebraska Supreme Court Judge Hale McCown before joining a law firm.
Prior to being elected Nebraska governor in 1998 (and again in 2002) he served in a variety of state government jobs including a stint as mayor of Lincoln.
Although Veneman appeared to be interested in serving in the second Bush administration, she submitted her resignation on Nov. 12 along with Secretary of
State Colin Powell and Education Secretary Rod Paige. Veneman has not announced her future plans.
The Johanns announcement was a surprise to many in Washington who had Deputy Trade Ambassador Allen Johnson and White House Agriculture adviser Charles
Connor on the president’s short list.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday selected Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns , a Republican attorney who grew up on an Iowa dairy farm, as secretary of Agriculture to oversee the nation's farm and food programs.
Bush said Johanns was "an experienced public servant from America's agricultural heartland" with a long record of being "a faithful friend to America's farmers and ranchers."
Johanns , 54, would succeed Ann M. Veneman, who recently announced her resignation despite saying earlier that she wanted to stay.
So far, seven of Bush's 15-member Cabinet have announced they won't be part of the second term. More are expected to leave, and administration officials say Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson appears to be next.
Johanns ' appointment was praised by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
"During this process I have said that the next agriculture secretary must have a strong background in international trade," Grassley said in a statement. "As governor, he has demonstrated that he understands the importance of trade to the future of a prosperous agriculture community."
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said he wants to help Johanns make a smooth transition to the new job. "I look forward to working with this native Iowan to advance the causes of agriculture, rural development, conservation, nutrition and the broad range of food and agriculture issues facing our nation," Harkin said.
Bush announced his intention to nominate the two-term governor in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
The nomination, which requires Senate confirmation, reflects the administration's desire to focus heavily on farm trade over the next four years.
As his wife Stephanie looked on, Johanns thanked Bush for inviting him to serve, saying, "I have enormous respect for you."
"I look forward to advancing your rural agenda for the 21st century," Johanns said.
Born in Iowa and raised on a dairy farm, Johanns became a lawyer and served in county and city government before becoming mayor of Lincoln, Neb., in 1991. He won the governor's office in 1998 and in 2002 became the first Republican to win re-election in more than four decades.
"I'm very, very proud of my ag background. I do feel that those years on that dairy farm did much to define who I am as a person," Johanns said.
As governor, Johanns led a delegation of Nebraska's farm and business leaders on a trade mission to Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore and a half dozen other countries. Nebraska Lt. Gov. David Heineman will serve out the final two years of Johanns ' term as governor, the Omaha World-Herald reports.
According to a report on the Washington Post's Web site, in May 1999, Johanns signed a proclamation declaring a "March for Jesus Day," and he later endorsed a "Back to the Bible Day" in honor of a fundamentalist Christian group in Nebraska. But he refused to sign a proclamation honoring "Earth Religion Awareness Day," an event organized by the Wiccan church. The church practices witchcraft as part of a pagan religion that U.S. federal courts have said is protected under the First Amendment.
In explaining his refusal to declare the Earth Religion day, Johanns told reporters he wouldn't sign "something that I personally disagree with."
The American Civil Liberties Union criticized Johanns 's position, the Post reported.
According to the AP, Bush said that in his second term, he would put a high priority on helping farm families, including keeping taxes low and working to repeal the estate tax.
Bush praised Veneman, saying she had done a good job in dealing with agricultural issues, including fighting hunger, improvements in school nutrition programs, protecting forests and leading efforts "to prevent the spread of mad cow disease" when the nation's first case was reported a year ago.
Venman "earned the trust of farmers and ranchers across America," Bush said.
Veneman, a peach farmer's daughter who became the first woman to the head the Agriculture Department, presided during a period of unprecedented wariness about the safety of the nation's food supply. Weeks after taking office in 2001, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Europe prompted Veneman to increase inspections and testing to prevent its arrival in the U.S. After the Sept. 11 attacks that year, concern grew that terrorists might seek to contaminate the nation's food supply.
In the only confirmed U.S. case of mad-cow disease, a Canadian-born Holstein was found to have been infected in Washington state last December. Veneman quickly upgraded the country's defenses, banning high-risk meat products and meat from cows that couldn't stand or walk on their own, testing more cattle and promising to speed a nationwide animal tracking system.
Johanns had been considered a possible challenger to Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson in 2006.
Johanns graduated with a bachelor's degree from St. Mary's College in Winona, Minn., in 1971. He earned a law degree from Creighton University in 1974 and was a clerk for Nebraska Supreme Court Judge Hale McCown. He practiced law in the mid-1970s and became a partner in the Lincoln law firm of Nelson, Johanns , Morris, Holdeman & Titus in 1977.
First a Democrat, Johanns was elected to, and served as chairman of, the Lancaster Board of Commissioners in 1982. He left the board in 1987 and became a Republican in 1988. Before becoming mayor of Lincoln, he served on the Lincoln City Council in 1989 as an at-large member.
President Bush nominated Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns as his new agriculture secretary and will pick former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik as his new homeland-security chief, officials said.
Meanwhile, in another high-level departure from the Bush administration, Washington's ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, submitted his resignation after only a few months on the job. Mr. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, cited personal reasons for his departure.
An administration official said an announcement on the homeland-security post may come as early as today. The nominee will succeed Tom Ridge, the first head of the Department of Homeland Security, a sprawling, 180,000-employee agency formed from 22 government departments after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Mr. Kerik, 49 years old, helped oversee emergency operations after the strike on the World Trade Center. He also has experience in the Middle East, first serving as a security guard in Saudi Arabia and most recently helping train Iraqi security forces. He joined the New York Police Department in 1986, first walking a beat and then rising to commissioner in 2000.
With his law-enforcement experience, Mr. Kerik will likely be popular as chief of homeland security, as well as in Congress. "I don't want to take anything away from Tom Ridge, but Bernie's going to be more intense, more hands-on and more of a presence on Capitol Hill," said Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.). Both Mr. Kerik and Mr. Johanns are likely to face easy confirmation in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Mr. Johanns, a 54-year-old Republican lawyer in his second term as governor, would succeed Ann Veneman, one of seven cabinet members so far who have said they don't plan to stay for Mr. Bush's second term. An Iowa native, Mr. Johanns grew up on a dairy farm before setting up a law practice and running for public office as a county commissioner in Nebraska. "I am very, very proud of my ag background," Mr. Johanns told reporters. "I do feel that those years on that dairy farm did much to define who I am as a person."
As governor of a major farm state -- Nebraska is a big livestock producer and is third in the U.S. in corn production and sixth in soybeans -- Mr. Johanns is an ardent supporter of ethanol, a gasoline substitute made from corn produced largely in the Farm Belt with the support of heavy federal subsidies. He also presided over an $85 million property-tax rollback. In announcing his choice, Mr. Bush mentioned Mr. Johanns's focus on economic growth and alternative-fuels development as primary reasons for his selection.
Mr. Johanns would take over as agriculture secretary at a time when the Farm Belt's traditional ability to generate a trade surplus is evaporating, thanks in large part to the American consumer's growing appetite for foreign foods. One of Mr. Johanns's first tasks would be to reopen foreign markets to U.S. beef, a $3 billion market that was crushed by the 2003 mad-cow scare.
He also would spearhead the Bush administration's inevitable clash with Congress over how to rein in farm subsidies. The agriculture committees of the House and Senate long have controlled America's farm policy. Populated by rural legislators, the two committees largely ignored the Bush administration when they wrote the five-year farm bill in 2002. That bill potentially would have been the most costly on record for taxpayers, had a recovering farm economy not reduced the eligibility of some growers.
Congress probably will begin holding hearings next year on the shape of next farm bill. This time around, projected record federal budget deficits will put enormous pressure on the White House to cut spending on subsidy programs, which are expected to swell by billions of dollars in the wake of this year's price-depressing record harvests of crops such as corn and soybeans.
Additionally, pressure for change is growing from the World Trade Organization, where developing nations are making headway in their complaint that U.S. subsidy programs encourage domestic farmers to overproduce, thereby damping world-wide commodity prices. This year, for example, a WTO dispute panel sided with Brazil over its allegations that some subsidies collected by U.S. cotton farmers distort trade.
In his resignation letter, Mr. Danforth said he was stepping down to spend more time with "the girl of my dreams," Sally, his wife of 47 years. He said he hoped to return to private life by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, but remained available to help Mr. Bush from his home of St. Louis, as he did when serving as a special envoy to Sudan before taking the U.N. post.
Mr. Danforth took the U.N. post on July 1, succeeding John Negroponte, who was picked as U.S. ambassador to Iraq when the interim government took office there. An official familiar with Mr. Danforth's thinking said he had taken the job despite reservations about it and had been considering his exit for weeks. Mr. Danforth, 68 years old, who besides his long career in politics is an ordained Episcopalian minister, found life in New York too harried for his taste, the official said.
His appointment also came at a time of heightened tension between the U.S. and the U.N., primarily over the prosecution of the Iraq war, which was launched without Security Council authorization. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the war is illegal under international law, and some conservative U.S. lawmakers, already upset with alleged corruption in the U.N.'s Iraqi Oil-for-Food Program, have called for Mr. Annan's resignation. The Bush administration hasn't joined in those calls, but it is clearly angry over the world body's continuing refusal to commit significant resources to Iraq's rebuilding.
--Robert Block in Washington and Jess Bravin in New York contributed to this article.
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