President-elect Trump is considering House members for cabinet and top administration positions at a rate unseen in modern presidencies.
For a candidate with no ties to lawmakers and who often found himself at odds with congressional Republican leaders, the attention paid to House Republicans is significant.
“It’s not surprising that a president-elect who connects with individual Americans in a fairly remarkable way is considering and tapping House members to fill his cabinet,” explained Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga. “Congress, and especially the House of Representatives, is where you go to find men and women who know our communities and have first-hand experience in the arenas that drive national policy.
“If President-elect Trump is in the market for individuals who have proven themselves as leaders on the ground and in the trenches, the House is the place to go,” added Collins, who was elected House Republican Conference vice chairman last month.
So far, Trump has picked Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., for CIA director, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., for Health and Human Services secretary and Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., to lead the Department of the Interior. He has considered, or is still considering, a host of others for positions ranging from homeland security chief, to U.S. trade representative, to secretary of agriculture. Four of his transition team vice chairmen are House members—three of them had turns in the headlines as potential cabinet member, and eight sit on his executive committee.
“He’s interested in bringing members of the House in because he knows that he doesn’t have strong existing ties in Congress, particularly to the House Republican leadership,” said American University’s Jordan Tama. “We know there was tension between Trump and many in the Republican establishment. And he doesn’t have experience in Washington generally. So he sees members of Congress as people who can help him advance his agenda.”
“It’s more important for him than might be for some presidents who already had close ties to lawmakers,” either from serving with them or from spending years in national politics, Tama said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan moved quickly after the election to bury the hatchet with Trump. Ryan distanced himself from Trump’s harsh campaign rhetoric, and ultimately broke from him after video was released of Trump discussing sexually assaulting women.
Now, Ryan has committed to working with Trump, and elevated Jonathan Burks to chief of staff this week. Burks was serving as Ryan’s point person to the Trump transition team.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence led the fence-mending, and as the person driving the transition, Pence may also be the voice suggesting his former House colleagues. Before leaving Congress to become governor of Indiana, Pence had risen to chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Many of the “cabinet and sub cabinet nominees, perhaps even most of them, are being done by Mike Pence and Pence’s team on the transition,” speculated Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Trump doesn’t know about or much care about most of the areas of public policy that are handled in the cabinet. So he’s delegated these choices to a man who knows well a lot of the House members.”
Tama suggested another reason Trump is going so deep into the House — the Republicans’ slim Senate majority. Removing too many GOP senators risks a Democrat replacing them, and possibly flipping control of the Senate, Tama said.
Trump has only selected one upper chamber member so far—Alabama’s Jeff Sessions—whom he intends to nominate or attorney general.
