Inside D.C.

An ag advisor in the White House — finally

Commentary

The Obama Administration did a very good thing this week when the President ended nearly 18 months of indecision and named someone to fill the legally mandated ag/food advisor slot on his policy staff.  David Lazarus, currently a senior advisor to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, got the nod, and, to my mind, the selection makes this a two-fer for the Prez.

There’s been a lot of low-key grumbling for the past 18 months over President Obama’s failure to fill the ag slot on the White House Domestic Policy Council staff, a job mandated by Congress.  For most in conventional agriculture, the President’s seeming indifference to filling the slot is seen as the most obvious symbol of how low agriculture ranks on this Administration’s priority list — unless your definition of agriculture is organic, small, local and holistic.

Lazarus moves to the White House on Monday, July 12. He’s technically a detailee, meaning USDA continues to pay his salary, but in his new gig, he operates as the senior policy advisor to the President for rural affairs and agriculture. While Vilsack may have a friend and former trusted advisor in that slot, the job reports directly to Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Well-respected for being intelligent, analytical, quick on the uptake and pragmatic in his policy work, Lazarus went from a total unknown in the backroom of Sen. Richard Durbin’s (D, IL) office, to Durbin’s ag legislative assistant when the Senator was elevated to majority whip. Almost immediately, Lazarus handled the melamine in dog food issue and the resulting law, but won his stripes as the chief staff architect for Durbin’s bipartisan comprehensive food safety bill, S. 510, a bill enjoying producer, food industry and consumer support, an almost impossible hat trick in this town.

He went on to the number two slot on Obama’s rural outreach campaign team, moved to the Obama transition team after the election, and was one of the first staffers to join Vilsack when he got the nod to be secretary. In his role as special assistant and senior advisor, Lazarus has been the food safety go-to guy in the “office of the secretary” — we’re not allowed to call Room 201 “the cage” any more — and has been the lead Vilsack staffer on Obama’s interagency Food Safety Working Group.

Lazarus has tough shoes to fill, being the first Obama appointee in the ag advisor slot.  During the eight years of the Bush Administration, former USDA Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner, a long-time Capitol Hill and Washington veteran, held the job of special assistant to the president for food, ag and trade. When Conner went to USDA, he was followed by Mike Sommers, former personal office chief of staff for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R, OH), and now Boehner’s number two man in the GOP leader’s office. The last of the Bush special assistants was Hunter Moorhead, a long-time lieutenant to former Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Sen. Thad Cochran (R, MS).  All three knew agriculture from farm to fork.

Lazarus will do just fine. As the Farm Bill discussions ramp up, he’s going to be a very popular guy, particularly if this President keeps talking about local marketing networks and broadband access rather than keeping farmers solvent.