Janet Napolitano

Secretary of Homeland Security (since January 2009)

(Tim Sloan/
AFP/Getty Images)

Why She Matters

Known as a tough pragmatist with bipartisan credibility, Napolitano is one of the nation's most prominent female politicians.

She entered Democratic politics in 1991 as an attorney representing Anita Hill during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Hill accused of sexual harassment. Napolitano credits the episode with deepening her commitment to electoral politics. "It really did bring home how issues of women really didn't have an avenue to be heard at that time," she has said.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Chair of National Governors Association (2006 to 2007); Governor of Arizona (2002 to 2008); Attorney General of Arizona (1999 to 2003)
Birthday: Nov. 29, 1957
Hometown: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Alma Mater: University of Santa Clara, B.A., 1979; University of Virginia, J.D., 1983

Spouse: Single
Office: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Nebraska Avenue Complex, Washington, DC 20528
Web site

Path to Power

The daughter of an anatomy professor, Napolitano was born in New York City and raised in Albuquerque, N.M., where her father was dean of the University of New Mexico Medical School. In high school she played clarinet, and she was the valedictorian of her college class at Santa Clara University in California.

Napolitano's first political break came after college with a job as a budget analyst on the staff of New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, an acquaintance of her father's.

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Napolitano then attended law school at William and Mary, where she was known as a student with political aspirations. When Judge Mary Schroeder of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals called one of Napolitano's law school professors for a clerkship reference in 1983, the professor told her, "She was a wonderful student, very smart, but there was one odd thing about her. He said, 'Well, she wants to be in Congress or something like that.' And I thought, 'Huh?' So I knew from that point that she had a yen for politics," Schroeder remembers.

After her clerkship, Napolitano moved to Phoenix to join Schroeder's former law firm, Lewis & Roca. It was a fortuitous step. Lewis & Roca had deep ties to Democratic politics, and was nationally renowned for trying the case that established Miranda Rights for criminal suspects.

Representing Anita Hill

It was through Lewis & Roca that Napolitano ended up representing Anita Hill; her job on Hill's legal team was to prepare the testimony of supporting witnesses. During the hearings, congressional Republicans accused Napolitano of coaching one witness, Susan Hoerchner, a friend and colleague of Hill's during the time she worked for Clarence Thomas. The charge has repeatedly surfaced among conservatives as Napolitano has advanced in her career, most recently on The Weekly Standard blog, The Corner, after news broke of her impending cabinet appointment.

Despite controversy, Napolitano was able to use her involvement in the Hill-Thomas episode to her advantage, as the Democratic Party was anxious at the time to promote women's leadership. At the urging of Arizona's Democratic senator, Dennis DeConcini, President Bill Clinton appointed Napolitano U.S. attorney for Arizona in 1993. In that role, she dealt with border-related crime, including drug smuggling. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Napolitano led an FBI office in Kingman, Ariz., that was hastily erected to investigate Michael Fortier, who confessed to having advance knowledge of the attacks.

More controversially, especially to fellow Arizona Democrats, Napolitano looked the other way when Maricopa County's sheriff, Joe Arpaio, became nationally infamous for running one of the toughest, even draconian prisons in the United States. Arpaio forced prisoners to wear pink underwear, work on chain gangs and sleep outdoors in tents. "We run a strict jail but a safe jail, and I haven't heard from anyone who thinks that this is a bad thing," Napolitano told the Associated Press in 1995. Thirteen years later, as governor, Napolitano stripped Arapaio of state funds he was using to conduct immigration raids. In a typically PR-conscious move, she immediately reinvested the money in a program to track down at-large fugitives.

Arizona Attorney General

As attorney general, Napolitano continued to burnish her moderate credentials, defending Arizona's use of the death penalty in front of the Supreme Court. She lost that case; the state was told capital punishment cases must be heard in front of a jury, not just a judge. In her gubernatorial run of 2002, Napolitano beat Republican Matt Salmon by less than one percentage point. But attesting to her popularity - approval ratings of up to 76 percent - Napolitano sailed to re-election in 2006, winning 62.6 percent of the vote. She has been credited with reinvigorating Democratic politics in Arizona, once a staunchly conservative state.

Ahead of Arizona's Super Tuesday primary on Feb. 5, 2008, Napolitano endorsed Barack Obama, surprising some who thought she would've felt a kinship to Obama's rival and Secretary of State choice Hillary Clinton as a woman in politics. "He and I don't always agree on all our positions," Napolitano said of Obama. "But I think it's more a sense of style, a recognition that there are good ideas held by people of both parties, all parties, a recognition that Washington is in gridlock and that is an unhealthy development for our country. A recognition that a lot of people have been turned off of politics because of the negativity and the kind of ugliness of overall campaigning."

In accepting the appointment to secretary for Homeland Security, Napolitano chose to forgo a Senate run against 2008 nominee and home-state Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2010. The new governor of Arizona will be a Republican, current Secretary of State Jan Brewer.

The Issues

The Department of Homeland Security is a doozy of a federal agency. Created in 2003, DHS combines what used to be 22 separate organizations. As a result, the department has suffered from low morale, a lack of a clear vision, and overlapping job resonsibilities. The Department is also responsible for two of the U.S.'s most thorny issues - immigration and disaster managment.

At her confirmation hearings, Napolitano pledged to address those problems by developing a unified vision and streamline communication. She also vowed to develop a new recruiting system to bring "the best and the brightest" to the department.

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"To secure the homeland means to find and kill the roots of terrorism, to stop those who intend to hurt us, to wisely enforce the rule of law at our borders, to protect our nation's infrastructure, particularly things like our cyber infrastructure," she said at her Jan. 2009 confirmation hearings.

She called for closer collaboration with foreign partners, better cooperation with local law-enforcement officials and increased involvement by citizens in homeland security."For too long, we've treated the public as a liability to be protected rather than as an asset in our nation's collective security," Napolitano said at a speech in July 2009. "This approach, unfortunately, has allowed confusion, anxiety and fear to linger."

Immigration

The issue that cemented Napolitano's reputation in national politics is immigration. During her first term as governor, she sent the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border, becoming the first governor to do so. Four months later, the Bush administration adopted the policy. Immigrants' rights activists disapproved of the move, which they saw as intended to criminalize immigration, but Napolitano rebuffed their criticisms. In an interview with The American Prospect, she explained the policy as a way to pave the way toward comprehensive immigration reform in a way the public would accept.

"I would say that you need a safe and secure border if you're going to have a reasonable immigration policy, one that the citizenry will accept. The federal government simply can't hire enough border control agents for the great expanse of U.S.-Mexican border. What the National Guard does is it takes responsibility off the border patrol so the border patrol can spend its main hours actually working on the border picking up illegal immigrants - what they're supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, the National Guard is putting up fencing, monitoring cameras, all the sort of processing documents and IDs that takes hours and hours away from the border patrol agents," Napolitano said.

Napolitano has managed to pave a third way on immigration, Arizona's most explosive political issue. She supports a state guest worker program and an eventual path toward legalization for undocumented immigrants. She also opposed four Arizona ballot initiatives in 2006 that would have denied public services to illegal immigrants, including health care and education. But she signed into law one of the most punishing employer sanctions laws in the nation, which imposes strict fines on businesses who hire undocumented workers.

The Network

At her former law firm, Lewis & Roca, Napolitano reported to the late John P. Frank, a nationally recognized expert on Supreme Court appointments. She was a member of Anita Hill's legal team. President Bill Clinton appointed Napolitano to her first public office, as U.S. attorney for Arizona.

At DHS, Napolitano will rely on chiefs of staff Noah Kroloff and Jan Lesher, as well as her deputy Jane Lute and FEMA administrator William Craig Fugate.

Campaign Contributions

According to OpenSecrets.org, Napolitano made no personal campaign contributions during the 2008 cycle. According to the Associated Press, however, her fundraising committee, the Competitive Edge PAC, raised at least $390,000 for various Congressional races during 2007-2008, including Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Jeanne Shaheen's (D-N.H.) successful Senate runs.

From 1991 through 2002, Napolitano made a number of small contributions to the Arizona Democratic Party, EMILY's List, and a number of individual Democratic candidates, many of the women.

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Additional Resources