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David Hayes

Interior Department Deputy Secretary (since January 2009)

(Department of Interior)

Why He Matters

Hayes surmounted Senate roadblocks to become yet another Clinton alumnus on the Obama administration's environmental team.

Hayes is deputy secretary of Interior under Secretary Ken Salazar, reprising a role he played under Bruce Babbitt at the end of the Clinton era. In fact, Hayes, a top environmental lawyer, was thought to be on the short-list to head the Interior Department, but his previous job as a registered lobbyist past provoked grumblings.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Lead, Energy and Natural resources Agency review Working Group, Obama-Biden transtition Project (November 2008 to January 2009); Consulting professor, Woods institute for the Environment, Stanford University (2007 to 2008); Partner, Latham & Watkins, LLP, (2001 to 2007)
Hometown: Rochester, New York
Alma Mater: University of Notre Dame, B.A., 1975; Stanford University Law School, J.D. 1978

Spouse: Elizabeth Haile Hayes
DC Office: Department of the Interior1849 C Street, N.W.Washington DC 20240202-208-3100
Web site

Path to Power

A native of upstate New York, Hayes graduated summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1975. He then attended Stanford Law School, where he was note editor of the law review and earned his J.D. in 1978.

After law school, Hayes clerked for a year for Judges William Jones and Louis Oberdorfer on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

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Hayes spent the 1980s working his way up to partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm Hogan & Hartson.

Along the way, he developed a legal expertise in the environment, energy and natural resources. He published articles on the Superfund program, a toxic waste clean-up program run by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and represented the Chemical Manufacturers Association in opposing an EPA report listing cancer-causing chemicals.

In 1990, Hayes became a partner at prestigious Washington, law firm Latham & Watkins. He chaired the firm's environmental division, created largely by another partner named Robert M. Sussman, who is Obama's deputy secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1992, then President-elect Clinton asked Hayes to be a member of his White House transition team, analyzing the EPA.

From 1993 to 1995, Hayes was chairman of the board at the Environmental Law Institute, a non-profit research center.

Clinton Interior Department

Hayes joined the Interior Department in March 1997 as a counselor to Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

In April 1999, Hayes was named acting deputy Interior secretary. He was nominated to become deputy secretary in August of that year, and his nomination received unanimous Senate confirmation.

As second-in-command at Interior, Hayes was in charge of operations, overseeing the department's $10 billion budget and its 70,000 employees.

Hayes primary focus at Interior was protecting America's natural resources. He spearheaded programs to repair damaged eco-systems, protect the habitats of endangered species and acquire threatened areas, including old-growth Redwood forests in California. He also worked on water-management and energy initiatives.

Hayes stayed at the Interior Department until Clinton's term ended in 2001. He then returned to Latham & Watkins, where he served as global chairman of the Environment, Land and Resources practice. There, he worked closely with Robert M. Sussman, who is now deputy secretary of the EPA.

Lawyer and Lobbyist

In his work at Latham & Watkins, one of Washington's premier law firms, Hayes registered as a lobbyist and worked on behalf of corporations including Sempra Energy (owner of San Diego Gas and Electric), the Metro Water District of Southern California and the Hearst Corporation on environmental issues. He also represented Ford Motor Company as a lawyer.

Upon leaving the Clinton administration, Hayes also became a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, where he wrote on energy. He also advised the president of the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) on climate change as a WWF senior fellow.

Stanford

Hayes spent the 2007-2008 academic year back at his alma- mater as a consulting professor at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

He directed an institute project on capping carbon emissions that resulted in a papers published by John Podesta's influential think-tank, the Center for American Progress.

Obama Transition Team

After President Obama's 2008 election, Hayes was asked to join the transition team's agency review working group. He led the review of energy and natural resources agencies, including the Departments of Interior, Energy and Agriculture as well as the EPA.

Reporting to Hayes was his Latham & Watkins colleague, Robert M. Sussman, another Clinton administration alumnus who joined current EPA head Lisa Jackson to review that agency. Sussman now serves as deputy EPA secretary.

Hayes officially retired from Latham & Watkins on December 31, 2008.

Interior Nomination

Hayes' name was floated as an Interior secretary candidate, but his lobbying past raised red flags for an Obama administration that implemented new rules regarding lobbyists working in the administration. Critics accused Hayes of "exploiting the revolving door from regulator to lobbyist for the regulated."

In January 2009, Hayes was nominated to return to the deputy secretary position, this time under Obama's choice for Interior secretary, Ken Salazar.

The Issues

Ten years ago during the Clinton administration, Hayes was unanimously confirmed as deputy Interior secretary. He might have been thinking nostalgically of those days, since this time around his nomination ran into a series of roadblocks.

At his March 2009 confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) challenged Hayes about one of his articles for the Progressive Policy Institute in 2006.

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In it, Hayes had written, "Like Ronald Reagan before him, President [George W.] Bush has embraced the Western stereotype to the point of adopting some of its affectations-the boots, brush-clearing, and get-the-government-off-our-backs bravado."

McCain called the remarks "highly offensive" and asked Hayes whether he stood by them.

Hayes replied, "The prose is overly florid, and I regret that."

"So you had to throw Reagan in there?" McCain continued.

"I shouldn't have done that," Hayes said.

Though McCain seemed dubious about supporting Hayes' nomination, he eventually voted to send the nomination to the Senate floor.

But more trouble came from Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah). During the hearing, Bennett asked Hayes about the sale of 77 oil and gas leases in his state. Hayes said he was told the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, both Interior Department agencies, had not coordinated on the sale of the leases. Bennett produced a December 2008 press release saying otherwise.

Shortly after the hearing, Hayes sent Bennett a letter clarifying his answer and pledging to review the lease sale, but Bennett was not appeased.

"I don't think I'm getting straight answers, and until I do, I cannot vote to move this nomination forward," Bennett said.

Bennett voted against sending Hayes' confirmation to the Senate floor. When it passed 17-5, Bennett vowed to put a hold on the nomination.

"We've been trying to get an appointment with them," Bennett said of Hayes and Secretary Salazar after the March 2009 vote, "I think maybe now they'll give us one."

Meanwhile, Salazar told the Salt Lake Tribune that the empty offices at his department were "hampering his ability to move forward with his agenda." He spoke about his frustrations to the Washington Post's Lois Romano:

In May 2009 the nomination was put to a procedural vote, which requires 60 votes to pass. Republicans, led by Sens. Bennett and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), defeated the confirmation 57 to 39.

On May 20, 2009, Murkowski and Bennett agreed to lift the holds on Hayes' confirmation, after Salazar pledged to review the lease-sales.

Hayes was confirmed on May 21, 2009.

Lobbying Ties

Sen. McCain was also irked by Hayes' former clients as a lobbyist for Latham & Watkins, which included representing the Southern California Metropolitan Water District in 2001, two years after he negotiated an agreement involving that group as deputy Interior secretary.

Hayes also represented Ford Motor Company in a controversial 2005 toxic-waste case in New Jersey.

Oil and Gas

Though environmentalists consider Hayes' conservation record to be respectable, the nominee has been criticized for his Clinton-era support of oil and gas exploration on U.S. public lands.

"The Clinton Administration is supportive of the U.S. domestic oil and gas industry," Hayes testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources panel in July 2000. "We have supported efforts to increase oil and natural gas recovery in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico; we have conducted a number of extremely successful, environmentally sound off-shore oil and gas lease sales; and we have opened a portion of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) to environmentally responsible oil and gas development."

Bush Administration Criticism

In August 2008, just ahead of the presidential election, Hayes wrote a policy report while working at the Progressive Policy Institute accusing the George W. Bush administration of leaving a "damaging legacy" in their natural resource management policies. He argued that the administration reversed several successful initiatives undertaken by the Clinton administration, and that it ignored alternative-energy development and relied on traditional energy sources such as gas and oil to power operations on public lands.

Hayes also criticized George W. Bush for governing through Washington-based, centralized decision-making "that is particularly out of step with the open, collaborative approach adopted by many of the new leaders in the West."

The Network

Hayes is a past chairman of the board of the Environmental Law Institute. Robert M. Sussman and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) have also sat on that board.

Hayes and Sussman worked in the environmental practice at Latham & Watkins and co-chaired the energy and natural resources agency review team for the Obama-Biden transition team.

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Campaign Contributions

Hayes donated $2,300 to Obama-rival Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign in early 2007. Hayes had donated to the former Senator's 2005 Senate campaign.

After Clinton withdrew from the presidential race, Hayes donated the same amount to then-Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

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Additional Resources