As the United States awaits the inauguration of its first nonwhite president, organizations representing women, gays and lesbians and people of color are working overtime to encourage President-elect Barack Obama to make good on his remark that he would nominate "one of the most diverse Cabinets and White House staffs of all time."
Recommending names of possible presidential nominees is a time-honored part of the political process for interest groups of all stripes. But the push for diversity, which gained steam over the last couple of presidencies, has reached a crescendo this year, political observers say, with constituent groups building sophisticated "talent banks" of promising job candidates.
This year, the zeal to work in the administration of the nation's first African American president has been overwhelming. The Obama transition Web site, www.change.gov, has so far received 331,000 job applications for about 3,000 positions, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a Maryland political scientist who is director of the White House Transition Project, a nonpartisan group that assists presidential transition teams. That's almost triple the number received by President Bill Clinton and almost eight times the applications to serve in the government of President Bush.
The constituent groups say Obama's transition staff has met with them and encouraged their efforts to broaden the talent pool, but some have expressed anxiety that Obama's appointments are less reflective of the country's diversity than they had hoped.
"We're worried that the top positions are going fast and there are few Latinos in the Cabinet so far," said Brent Wilkes, executive director of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens. "With Latinos in the Cabinet, you have someone at the table who is aware of the Latino experience and understands why key issues impact Latinos."
Wilkes applauded Obama's choice of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is Mexican American, for secretary of commerce. But given the fact that Latinos now make up 15 percent of the population and that two-thirds of Latino voters chose Obama, he and other leaders of Hispanic organizations are hoping for more. They recently forwarded to the Obama team the names of almost two-dozen Latinos they would like to see in the administration.
The fact that the president-elect himself is African American is a historic addition to the new administration's diversity, but it doesn't relieve Obama of the pressure for representation from other constituencies, said Kumar.
"The White House is such a rarefied world," she said. "It makes a difference, for the small circle of people who are going to be working together, what they know about the universe outside. People think of diversity in a scorecard sense, but it shouldn't be. There's a substantive reason for it."
Months before Obama won the Nov. 4 election, he had designated John Podesta, a chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, to head transition preparations, Kumar said.
"When people know that they have a person they can start sending (resumes) to, you can bet they do it," she said, referring to the start, as early as last summer, of Podesta's efforts. "The savvy groups are looking for people (on the Obama transition team) they know as ways in."
A coalition of national women's organizations has set up a "wiki," or interactive document on the Internet, where members can post names of promising female candidates for positions listed in the so-called federal "plum book," the list of presidentially appointed jobs. The liaison for women on the Obama transition team is then alerted by e-mail each time the wiki is updated, said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.
"We're a little concerned," said Gandy. "There are a lot of places where really top-notch women were put forward, and those positions have been filled by men."
The Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute began work last January on its own nonpartisan "presidential appointments project," and has so far collected and vetted 1,400 resumes, said spokesman Denis Dison.
"This is the first time we've been this organized, this early," he said. "The mission of the program is to let the administration know that there are thousands of people willing to serve, and many are extremely qualified."
Firsts of Cabinet rank
Woman: Frances Perkins, secretary of labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt
African American: Robert Weaver, secretary of housing and urban development under Lyndon Johnson
Latino: Lauro Cavazos, secretary of education under Ronald Reagan
Asian American: Norman Mineta, secretary of commerce under Bill Clinton
Native American: Charles Curtis, vice president under Herbert Hoover.
Openly gay or lesbian: None yet
E-mail Tyche Hendricks at thendricks(at)sfchronicle.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com.
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