Good news out of our nation’s cap­i­tal for a change: The Unit­ed States Sen­ate, by a vote of eighty-sev­en to eleven, has vot­ed to con­firm Wash­ing­ton’s own Sal­ly Jew­ell as Amer­i­ca’s next Sec­re­tary of the Interior.

Jew­ell, a long­time Ever­green State busi­ness leader, is the out­go­ing chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Recre­ation­al Equip­ment Incor­po­rat­ed, bet­ter known as REI.

“I am pleased that today the Sen­ate took bipar­ti­san action to con­firm Sal­ly Jew­ell as our next Sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or,” Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma said in a state­ment released a few min­utes ago by the White House. “With her exten­sive busi­ness expe­ri­ence, includ­ing her back­ground in the ener­gy sec­tor, along with her life­long com­mit­ment to con­ser­va­tion, Sal­ly is the right per­son for this impor­tant job.”

“She brings an impor­tant mix of strong man­age­ment skills, appre­ci­a­tion for our nation’s tra­di­tion of pro­tect­ing our pub­lic lands and her­itage, and a keen under­stand­ing of what it means to be good stew­ards of our nat­ur­al resources.”

“Sally’s com­mit­ment to ener­gy and cli­mate issues, her belief in our strong gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment rela­tion­ship with Indi­an Coun­try, and her under­stand­ing of the inher­ent link between con­ser­va­tion and good jobs ensure that she will be an excep­tion­al Sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or,” the Pres­i­dent added.

“I am very glad she is join­ing my team, and I look for­ward to her coun­sel on these impor­tant issues, as we con­tin­ue to lever­age our nat­ur­al resources respon­si­bly while pro­tect­ing our nation’s trea­sures for gen­er­a­tions to come.”

The board of REI also issued a state­ment prais­ing the con­fir­ma­tion vote.

“Speak­ing on behalf of REI’s board and staff, we thank Sal­ly for her sev­en­teen years of ser­vice to the co-op and wish her all the best with her new adven­ture in the ‘oth­er Wash­ing­ton’,” said Bri­an Unmacht, REI’s Inter­im CEO.

“Thanks to her out­stand­ing lead­er­ship, REI is in strong shape and well-posi­tioned for the future. As she did at REI, Sal­ly Jew­ell will lead the Inte­ri­or depart­ment with integri­ty, bal­ance and wisdom.””

Jew­ell suc­ceeds Col­orado’s Ken Salazar as the fifty-first Sec­re­tary of the Interior.

The Pacif­ic North­west del­e­ga­tion vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to con­firm Jew­ell. The roll call for our region was as fol­lows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray (WA), Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (OR), Jon Tester and Max Bau­cus (MT), Mark Begich (AK); Repub­li­cans Jim Risch and Mark Crapo (ID), Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: None

Although no sen­a­tors from the Pacif­ic North­west vot­ed against Jew­ell’s nom­i­na­tion, eleven spite­ful Repub­li­cans from out­side the region refused to make Jew­ell’s con­fir­ma­tion vote unan­i­mous. These Repub­li­cans were:

• Bar­ras­so (R‑WY)
• Sax­by Cham­b­liss (R‑GA)
• Tom Coburn (R‑OK)
• Mike Enzi (R‑WY)
• Deb Fis­ch­er (R‑NE)
• Mike Johanns (R‑NE)
• Mike Lee (R‑UT)
• Mitch McConnell (R‑KY)
• Mar­co Rubio (R‑FL)
• Tim Scott (R‑SC)
• David Vit­ter (R‑LA)

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, these eleven are some of the U.S. Sen­ate’s most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers. Five of them are from states east of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er. Sen­a­tors from the con­ser­v­a­tive Mid­west and the swing Rocky Moun­tain states were most­ly behind Jew­ell, with the prin­ci­pal excep­tion of the Wyoming and Nebras­ka delegations.

Con­sid­er­ing how often Repub­li­cans vote against Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s nom­i­nees, it’s impres­sive that Sal­ly Jew­ell gar­nered the votes of most of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus. Now that she is con­firmed, she can assume her new position.

Agen­cies Jew­ell will over­see include the Nation­al Park Ser­vice, Bureau of Recla­ma­tion, U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Ser­vice, the Bureau of Indi­an Affairs, and the recent­ly-cre­at­ed Bureau of Ocean Ener­gy Management.

Sal­ly Jew­ell is the sec­ond Wash­ing­ton­ian to serve as Sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or; the first was Richard Achilles Ballinger, who served under Pres­i­dent Taft more than a cen­tu­ry ago. (Ballinger was once the may­or of Seat­tle). One Ore­gon­ian (Dou­glas McK­ay) and two Ida­hoans (Cecil Andrus, Dirk Kempthorne) have also served as Sec­re­taries of the Inte­ri­or dur­ing the past century.