Trump picks Sonny Perdue for agriculture secretary

Donald Trump has chosen former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue to be his secretary of agriculture, completing a protracted search with implications for how the president-elect plans to deliver on his promises to the army of rural voters widely credited with helping him win the election. A transition official confirmed the pick — the final Cabinet department chief to be selected — which could be formally announced as early as Thursday. Perdue, a former Democrat who switched to the Republican Party before governing Georgia for two terms from 2003 to 2011, has a strong agricultural background, having grown up on a farm and earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine. As governor of Georgia, he also took conservative stances on immigration and voting rights and drew national headlines for holding a public vigil to pray for rain in 2007 amidst a crippling drought. Although Perdue’s Georgia is not among the nation’s top 10 agricultural states, it is home to 42,000 farms, with a strong focus in the cattle industry. Perdue’s pick heads off abundant speculation that Trump was seeking a Latino for the job and aligns with the desires of Trump’s influential agricultural advisory committee, empaneled during the 2016 election and comprising influential Republican representatives, state officials and representatives of the industry. Members of this group reportedly disapproved strongly of Trump’s early consideration of a Democrat, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, for the position. Perdue was a member of the advisory committee. By picking Perdue, Trump has passed on appointing any Latinos to his Cabinet, the first time Cabinet meetings will lack someone from the nation’s largest minority population since 1988. That’s the year Lauro F. Cavazos became Ronald Reagan’s last education secretary and the first Latino ever nominated to the Cabinet...more