Napolitano A "Tough Cookie" ... Dems Expect "Zero Problems" With Confirmation

Napolitano: A Safe Pair of Hands for Homeland Security

Obama Pick Gives Arizona A GOP Governor

At first glance, President-elect Barack Obama's pick for new Secretary of Homeland Security looks a lot like the person currently holding the job. Gov. Janet Napolitano is a former prosecutor who cares more about immigration and border security than almost anything else. But Napolitano will be very different from Secretary Michael Chertoff in two major ways: First, she is a notch to the left of Chertoff on immigration matters, having repeatedly criticized the building of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and having opposed state bills targeting illegal immigrants. Still, as governor of Arizona, she knows more about immigration than any other DHS fiefdom (and there are hundreds), so it's safe to assume that it will remain a top priority for the agency. And Napolitano is far from liberal on immigration: She was the first governor to call for the National Guard to protect the border at federal expense, and she has worked to penalize businesses that employ illegal immigrants.

Napolitano's other obvious distinction is that, as a governor, she can be expected to have much more sympathy for states, which have felt disrespected and excluded under a top-down approach to homeland security issues since 9/11. "The trust between federal, state and locals is just not there," says Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association. Governors, including Napolitano, have protested the costs of REAL ID, a 2005 law passed by Congress to upgrade the security of driver's licenses, as well as the failure of the Federal government to take a lead in repairing the country's immigration policies. (Napolitano declared a state of emergency in Arizona in 2005 to direct more funds to the state's border.)
And then there is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the agency that has been under fire ever since Hurricane Katrina. "Fifteen years ago, if I had surveyed every state employee and said, 'What is the one federal organization that you think does a great job,' it would have been overwhelmingly FEMA," says Scheppach. "Now, if I ask what is the one organization that is a failure, they would probably point to FEMA." Scheppach, who knows Napolitano from her time as chair of his organization, expects that she will work to rebuild the trust between the Feds and the locals, which will go a long way to fixing FEMA. "She's smart, she reaches out well, but she knows how to move things. She's pretty highly respected among governors on both sides of the aisle."

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