Gale Norton
Gale Ann Norton (born March 11, 1954) is the 48th United States Secretary of the Interior, serving under President George W. Bush. She is the first woman to hold this position.
Norton graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Denver in 1975 and earned her Juris Doctor degree with honors from the same university in 1978. She is married to John Hughes. In the late 1970s, she was a member of the Libertarian Party and was nearly selected as its national director in 1980. Norton has been associated with a number of groups in the "wise use" or "free-market environmentalist" movement, such as the Political Economy Research Center, of which she is a fellow. As a lawyer, Norton wrote about some industries' "right to pollute." She also worked as Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture and, from 1979 to 1983, as a Senior Attorney for the Mountain States Legal Foundation.
From 1991 to 1999, Norton served as Attorney General of Colorado. Prior to her election as Colorado Attorney General, Norton served in Washington, D.C. as Associate Solicitor of the United States Department of the Interior, overseeing endangered species and public lands legal issues for the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service.
In 1996, she was a candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, but was defeated by then-Congressman Wayne Allard, in part, because she was pro-choice. Before being named Interior Secretary in 2001, Norton was senior counsel at Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber, P.C., a Houston-based law firm formerly known as National Lead Company. The firm was also listed with the U.S. Congress as a lobbyist for NL Industries.
In 2004, Norton was mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate in her home state of Colorado, after the incumbent, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, decided to retire. However, she ultimately decided against it, and the seat was won by Democrat Ken Salazar.
Relationship to Jack Abramoff and his firm
Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) was founded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Grover Norquist in the 1990's. Jack Abramoff directed his tribal casinos to donate $225,000 to CREA [1].
In a February 2002 letter to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, John Doolittle complained that a Lousiana tribal casino had been wrongly shut down because the Bureau of Indian Affairs refused to recognize a newly elected tribal council. The subsequent new council hired Abramoff's firm after the elections. In June 2003, Doolittle wrote a letter to Norton criticizing the Bush administration's response to a tribal government dispute in Iowa. In October 2003, Doolittle appealed in a letter to Norton for quicker action for a Massachusetts tribe that was seeking federal recognition. Both the Iowa and Massachusetts tribes hired Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig, in that year.[2]
Photo of Norton with Jack Abramoff and his victims. [3]
External links
- Gale Norton at Sourcewatch
- Face to Face with Honesty in the DOI
- Her Record on the Environment
- Profile : Gale Norton Voltaire Network, Sept. 17, 2004