Ken Salazar

Former secretary of the interior

• Born: March 2, 1955
• Place of Birth: Alamosa, Colorado

AMERICAN POLITICIAN AND LAWYER

Salazar was confirmed as the fiftieth secretary of the US Department of the Interior in 2009 and he served in this position until 2013. Prior to his appointment to President Barack Obama’s cabinet, Salazar had served in numerous government positions, including Colorado state attorney general and US senator.

AREAS OF ACHIEVEMENT: Government and politics

Early Life

Kenneth Lee Salazar was born in Alamosa, Colorado, to Henry and Emma Salazar. Both parents served in World War II, his father as a staff sergeant in the Army and his mother as a clerk for the War Department. The Salazars’ main livelihood, however, came from farming the lands of the family’s ranch in the small town of Los Rincones in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.

Although Salazar refers to himself as Mexican American, his family history can be traced back to the Southwest as early as the sixteenth century, long before the states of Colorado or New Mexico belonged to either Mexico or the United States. His Spanish ancestors helped to establish the city of Santa Fe in New Mexico. His family later settled in southern Colorado.

Salazar, along with his seven siblings, grew up on a ranch owned by his family for five generations. Without electricity, running water, or telephone service, Salazar grew up with very little material resources. He and his siblings often had to sit around a kerosene lamp in order to finish their schoolwork. His family placed a high value on education and reminded him of the many opportunities an education could offer him. His parents’ educational aspirations instilled in Salazar and his four brothers and three sisters the importance of attaining a higher education. Salazar and his siblings became the first generation in his family to graduate from college.

Living in the vastness of rural Colorado inspired in Salazar a great appreciation for nature and the environment. Working and tending to the land taught him the meaning of hard work. Multiple generations of his family had labored the same lands, working to provide him and his siblings with greater opportunities.

Salazar earned a degree in political science from Colorado College in 1977. He received his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. In 1985, he married Esperanza (also known as Hope) Hernandez. The couple had two daughters, Melinda and Andrea.

Life’s Work

After graduating from law school, Salazar worked in the private sector, focusing primarily on water and environmental law. He also owned a variety of business ventures with his wife, including a Dairy Queen and two radio stations, one in Pueblo, Colorado, and another one in Denver.

In 1986, Salazar served on the cabinet of Colorado governor Roy Romer. He worked as chief legal counsel to the governor. From 1990 through 1994, he served as executive director of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources. In this position, he fought to protect the environment by reforming oil, mining, and gas operations. Great Outdoors Colorado, created under his leadership, is a major portion of a constitutional amendment authored by Salazar that aims to protect and preserve Colorado’s open spaces.

In 1999, Salazar was elected attorney general of Colorado, becoming the first Latino to hold statewide office in Colorado’s history. He was reelected in 2002 but left the position in 2004 to serve as a US senator.

In 2004, Salazar ran as a Democrat and won election to the US Senate. He defeated the Republican candidate Pete Coors, the heir to the Coors Brewing Company founded by his great-grandfather. Salazar’s election was a significant and historic accomplishment on many levels. Coors, fairly new to politics, was recruited as the Republican candidate mostly for his name recognition and his wealth. Latinos were the largest ethnic group in the state of Colorado but before the 2004 race, they had not had a significant influence on statewide elections. Campaigning in a predominantly Republican and conservative state, Salazar had to assiduously reach Latino voters, as well as moderate Republicans and independents. That same year, his brother John Salazar won his bid for the US Congress. Ken Salazar and Mel Martínez, a Cuban American from Florida, were sworn into the US Senate in 2005, the first Latinos elected to the Senate since 1977.

As a senator, Salazar served on numerous committees, including the Agriculture, Ethics, and Veterans Affairs Committee, and he continued his conservation efforts on the Energy and Natural Resource Committee. Along with Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, Salazar took on the difficult task of drafting an immigration bill aimed at reforming the country’s immigration system.

In 2009, Salazar was confirmed unanimously as the fiftieth secretary of the US Department of the Interior, appointed by President Barack Obama to be one of two Latinos to serve on his presidential cabinet. (The other Latino is Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis). As secretary of the interior, Salazar oversees the Bureaus of Reclamation; Indian Affairs; Land Management; and Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement, as well as the National Park Service; the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement; the US Fish and Wildlife Service; and the US Geological Survey. Under the administration of President George W. Bush, the Department of the Interior had been plagued by scandal. Touted for his years as an advocate for environmental conservation, Salazar was brought in to overhaul the department.

Early in his tenure, in April 2010, the infamous BP oil spill occurred at a deepwater drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, which was quickly considered one of the worst oil spills in US history and a detriment to the gulf habitat. This incident revealed a great weakness in the department's regulation of such offshore oil operations, and in an effort to rectify the situation, Salazar instituted a six-month moratorium on offshore drilling and hired Michael R. Bromwich to help overhaul the Minerals Management Service to ensure that no similar accidents would occur. Throughout the ensuing years, he was praised for creating ten new parks and ten new wildlife refuges; as of 2011, he had been vigorously pushing the National Park Service to locate more sites significant to women and minorities, which he felt were lacking. In addition, as part of an effort to increase renewable energy sources on public lands, he oversaw the approval of several new, large-scale solar energy projects; the first construction project he approved in 2010 was also the first ever approved.

Salazar stepped down from his post as secretary of the interior at the end of his term in 2013. Most political commentators reflected fondly over his accomplishments during his time in office. After returning to his homestate of Colorado, Salazar joined the nationally renowned law firm WilmerHale, opening an office in Denver. He has described his new duties as providing legal and policy advice pertaining to many of the same issues that he fought for in the Senate and the Department of the Interior.

In 2021, Salazar was appointed US Ambassador to Mexico by President Joe Biden. Salazar remained in that position into 2024.

Significance

Ken Salazar has had a significant impact on the Latino community, transforming the public perception of Latinos’ relationship to the environment. His humble beginnings served as the foundation for his political career. Growing up in rural Colorado as a landowner and rancher, he has been at the forefront of land conservation efforts at the state and national levels. As secretary of the interior, Salazar expanded the Youth Conservation Corps, providing the opportunity to foster a commitment to the environment among young people through education and recreational programming. Remembering his family’s heritage in the United States and the limited perspective of history he received in school, he continues to advocate for the discovery and discussion of the impact of Latinos on the United States, including by serving on the Commission for the National Museum of the American Latino.

Bibliography

Aledo, Milagros “Mimi,” Rafael J. Lopez, and Liz Montoya. “The Joy in the Journey: An American Dream Realized.” Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy 17 (2004/2005): 5–11. Print.

Bartels, Lynn. "Colorado's Ken Salazar Joins Top Law Firm, Will Open a Denver Office." Denver Post, 5 June 2013, www.denverpost.com/2013/06/05/colorados-ken-salazar-joins-top-law-firm-will-open-a-denver-office/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Broder, John M. "Salazar Looks Back on a 'Joyful Run' as Interior Secretary." New York Times, 5 Apr. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/us/politics/ken-salazar-joyful-run-interior-secretary.html. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Juenke, Eric Gonzalez, and Anna Christina Sampaio. “Deracialization and Latino Politics: The Case of the Salazar Brothers in Colorado.” Political Research Quarterly 1 (2010): 43–54. Print.

“The New Law of the Land.” Hispanic Magazine 22.1 (2009): 38–41. Print.

"U.S. Ambassador to Mexico – Ken Salazar." U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Mexico, 26 Jan. 2022, mx.usembassy.gov/u-s-ambassador-to-mexico-ken-salazar/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.