President-elect Donald Trump has offered the interior secretary position to Montana’s freshman Rep. Ryan Zinke, an ex-Navy SEAL commander, according to two transition officials and someone familiar with the offer.
The sources said Zinke has yet to accept and has given no indication as to which way he is leaning. But Zinke is also being discussed by prominent Washington Republicans as a possible 2018 candidate for the Montana Senate seat now held by Democrat Sen. Jon Tester.
Zinke’s office declined to comment, and Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zinke was an early Trump supporter. The Big Sky state Republican threw his weight behind the controversial nominee-turned-commander in chief in late May and stuck by him despite numerous Democratic attacks for doing so. He also campaigned with him, and his wife, Lola, is a member of the transition team dealing with veterans issues.
The offer comes just days after multiple news outlets reported that No. 4 House Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) was the favorite to win the position. But multiple top Trump aides weren’t sold on the Washington Republican and encouraged Trump to broaden his search.
She, Zinke and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) all interviewed for the job Monday.
The Trump team called Zinke last Thursday, and asked him to come in for the interview. He was traveling by plane on Tuesday evening, but is expected to accept Trump’s offer when he lands.
Zinke, who was first elected to the House in 2014, has been considered a likely challenger to Tester in Montana ever since then. The Republican has built up statewide name recognition while winning two races in Montana’s sole House district. And the last two House members from the state both ran for Senate: Republicans Steve Daines, who won in 2014, and Denny Rehberg, who lost to Tester in 2012.
Tester is widely considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection in 2018. The two-term Democrat helped boost Zinke’s 2016 House challenger, Denise Juneau, helping her fundraise and lending her staff during the campaign in the hope of knocking Zinke out of the House.
But Zinke won reelection with 56 percent of the vote — the same share that Trump got in Montana. Several weeks later, Zinke told The Associated Press that he was considering challenging Tester.
Out of all the Republicans on the Hill, Zinke has one of the strongest track records on conservation and public land issues — and he’s even voted against his own party at times. He voted against the GOP’s fiscal 2016 budget because it sold public lands, and even resigned as a delegate to the RNC this summer because the party platform included language calling for the sale of public lands.
Zinke has also opposed efforts by House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop(R-Utah) to transfer land and other GOP measures to hand over millions of acres of public land from the U.S. Forest Service to the state.
He’s also partnered with Democrats on conservation issues: In October 2015 he was the only Republican to support a Democratic amendment to permanently authorize the so-called Land and Water Conservation Fund. He’s also received praise from conservation groups, including the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Teddy Roosevelt Conservancy Partnership, Friends of the East Rosebud and the Outdoor Industry Association.
As secretary, Zinke would oversee about one-fifth of the nation’s land, including national parks, wildlife refuges, tribal lands and areas ripe for drilling, mining, wind and solar development, and oil and gas pipelines. Zinke’s targets could include ending limits on offshore drilling, lifting Interior’s freeze on new coal leases and abandoning federal fracking regulations, such as a rule that a judge struck down in June.
Zinke could also help Trump unravel the department’s recently finished five-year road map for offshore oil and gas drilling, which took two areas in the Arctic out of contention, although doing so could take several years.
On climate change, Zinke has called for a “prudent” approach to the issue that does not do too much damage to the coal industry. Montana is the sixth-largest coal-producing state in the nation, according to the Energy Information Administration.
“You know, if you go up to Glacier Park and you have your lunch on one of the glaciers, you will see the glacier recede while you eat lunch. So you know I have seen the change in my lifetime,” Zinke told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle last year, although he questioned the extent to which carbon emissions were to blame.
“So something’s going on, and so I think you need to be prudent. It doesn’t mean I think you need to be destructive on fossil fuels, but I think you need to be prudent and you need to invest in all-the-above energy,” he added. Zinke touted natural gas as the “easiest path forward,” but also boasted that Montana coal was cleaner than varieties mined in other countries and promoted coal exports.
