During a CNN interview Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced she’d appoint a Republican to her Cabinet if she is elected president.
Including members of the other party in presidents’ Cabinets was a longstanding American tradition, Washington Monthly politics editor Bill Scher wrote. “Every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama had at least one cross-over Cabinet member for part of his administration,” Scher noted, until former president Donald Trump nixed the tradition.
In the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, President Joe Biden’s transition team began vetting Republicans for potential Cabinet positions, Politico reported. In the end, Biden did not appoint any Republicans.
Should Harris restore the tradition, here are four Republicans she may consider.
Mitt Romney
Sen. Mitt Romney will leave the U.S. Senate at the conclusion of his term in January. He has been coy about his post-retirement plans. The last time Romney, 77, attempted retirement, after his 2012 candidacy for the presidency, he later returned to public office by running for the U.S. Senate in Utah in 2018.
In the interim, he actively showed interest in a Cabinet position: in 2016, shortly after former Trump won the election, Romney met with him two times to discuss a potential post as secretary of state. Several individuals who formerly held the position — including Hillary Clinton — encouraged Romney to accept the post if offered.
Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins, he felt drawn to the position by the “really troubling times” in the world, with the rise of China and Russia as geopolitical threats. He also admitted another motive: “I like being involved and being in the middle of things, and having something important to do,” Romney said, per “Romney: A Reckoning.” “It’s like, you know, I wanted to be president. If you can’t be president, being secretary of state’s not a bad spot to come thereafter.”
Meg Whitman
Per Politico’s reporting, the Biden transition team vetted Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay and Hewlitt Packard, in 2020. Whitman served as a senior member of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign staff in both 2008 and 2012. Late in the 2012 election, Romney expressed interest in adding Whitman to his Cabinet.
Whitman spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Biden. In 2022, Biden nominated her to be U.S. ambassador to Kenya, a position she still holds.
Would she leave the diplomatic post for a Cabinet position? Whitman did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but according to a Politico profile in May, Whitman and her close allies do not rule it out. “When you’ve achieved sufficient financial success as Meg has, earning is going to be subordinate to serving,” Mike Leavitt, the former Utah governor and HHS secretary under President George W. Bush, told Politico.
Jeff Flake
The former U.S. Senator from Arizona seems to check the right boxes: He’s a vocal Trump critic and Biden-Harris supporter; he has international bona fides, having spent the past three years as U.S. ambassador to Turkey; and his tenure abroad will conclude this week, Axios reported.
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Flake told Politico he plans to split time between his native Arizona and his new home, Utah (where he is registered to vote), perhaps teaching courses at Arizona State University and Brigham Young University. But a potential position in the Cabinet may lure him back to Washington: He was vetted by Biden’s team in 2020, and he recently said returning to life as a private civilian will be an adjustment. “I’ve enjoyed this more than I thought I would,” he told Politico.
Flake declined to comment, saying he “can’t talk politics” as an ambassador.
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John Giles
Transportation Secretary John Giles? That’s what Scher suggests, saying Giles — the mayor of Mesa, Arizona — “makes sense” for the post. “Out of 19 Transportation secretaries, five have been mayors,” Scher said, including current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor had a much larger national profile than Giles after his 2020 Democratic presidential bid, but Giles’ city, Mesa, is some five times larger than South Bend.
On transit, Giles has a strong record: He’s pushed for lightrail, worked to expand the city’s public transportation and secured millions of dollars in grant money for electric vehicles. On that front, he’s been an outspoken supporter of the Biden-Harris administration. Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill had “huge economic impacts,” in Mesa, Giles told the Deseret News earlier this month, and he has become a leading Republican surrogate for the Harris campaign. He endorsed Harris in July, and has since appeared at rallies and the Democratic convention to voice his support.
