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January 16, 2009 09:44 PM UTC

Salazar Says So Long to Senate

  • 29 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

From the Rocky Mountain News:

Sen. Ken Salazar bid a soft-spoken farewell to the U.S. Senate, celebrating the family heritage and values that put him on the way to joining President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet as Interior Secretary.

In his last, televised address on the Senate floor this morning, Salazar began by asking that his family genealogy – dating to 1520 – be entered into the official record, and he highlighted the values he learned growing up on a ranch in southern Colorado.

Salazar spoke of how he hoped his relatively short, four-year term in the Senate had helped shed a spotlight on a Hispanic heritage that was “for a long time shoved beneath the dust” of American history, and yet again he urged his Senate colleagues to remember the “forgotten America” outside the big urban areas…

…Fellow Senators heaped praise on Colorado’s soon-to-be-departing senior senator.

“Parting really is such sweet sorrow,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. “I have such great respect for this man we call Ken Salazar.”

Reid cited Salazar’s work on the so-called “Gang of 14” senators who helped broker a truce in a partisan showdown over judicial nominations. And he praised Salazar’s role last year in brokering a compromise within the Democratic caucus to allow Sen. Joe Lieberman to keep some key committee assignments even after the one-time Democratic vice presidential nominee became an independent and supported Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain.

“The most important thing I have found about Ken Salazar … was his ability to be a peacemaker, to reach out and bring us together,” Reid said. “He’s a peacemaker not bound by labels, but only by his own integrity.”

The Senate’s leading Republican, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, said he hated to see Salazar leave the Senate to move into the cabinet.

“The first thing I said to Senator Salazar was, ‘Say it ain’t so,'” McConnell said.

Salazar faced few challenges on Thursday at his confirmation hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and now he awaits Obama’s formal swearing-in as president before he can be officially confirmed to become Interior Secretary. That could happen as early as Tuesday, shortly after the inauguration, or the following day.

Comments

29 thoughts on “Salazar Says So Long to Senate

  1. I have often disagreed with Sen. Salazar on his approach to issues but agree with the assessment of him as calm, cool, and respectful.

    I would still like to urge him, especially as our new Sec. of the Interior, to provide greater transparency in government decision-making and I hope he can make quick progress on resolving the issues in the BIA and Indian Trust Fund.  That has gone on too long!

      1. In the West, a home state Secretary of the Interior is hardly “obscure.”

        And the obnoxious racial comment aside, Ken Salazar has contributed far more to this country and the state of Colorado than you ever will.

        Asshole.  

        1. I believe that dealing with even illegal immigrants has to involve a much more thoughtful approach that putting them on a bus and returning them whence they came. That does not make me from Mexico, China, Russia or anywhere else. Many, many Americans want to find a better way and I have found them to be reasonable people.

      2. lost….but I don’t think he’s headed for obscurity.  Obama has pledged to work with him and he has a relatively moderate reputation.  I see some pretty good things in McCain’s future.

        Not sure how this figures into Colorado having two senators (I’ll admit, I often have a hard time following your “logic”), but really, AS, I think you’re being a bit hard on McCain, the author and chief sponsor of the amnesty bill…a bill that was modeled on the amnesty program first initiated by Ronald Reagan more than 20 years ago.

        1. Yes, but that was when we had a powerful external enemy we could face down with a nuclear arsenal. We didn’t need to scare the children with roofing crews and housekeepers, we could just point to the Russians. Things have changed, but John McCain didn’t get the memo.

      1. Oh, I’m sorry “massta.” I didn’ realize black men with college educations weren’t allowed to hold opinions on this site.

        I’ll just run out to the field and pick you some cotton. How about that? No place for a black man in politics.

        1. You’re stereotyping.  How do you know what color RedGreen is?  I’d assume red and/or green, making RedGreen a dramatic minority.  Have some respect.

        1. I hope.

          Come on, AS, pretty low class calling Salazar a “Mexican”.  You’re usually above that stuff.

          Sankore, you’re not, unfortunately.  Get bent.

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