While Gov. Ed Rendell has largely taken himself out of the running for a job in Washington, he has made no secret of his desire to see his former top environmental aide appointed there. As President-elect Barack Obama rounds out his cabinet, Rendell has been touting the credentials of Kathleen McGinty, who headed up the state's Department of Environmental Protection for five years of the Democrat's administration.
"She'd be a great secretary of energy, a great [Environmental Protection Agency] administrator," Rendell told The Morning Call recently.
The Inquirer reports that McGinty is one a few area candidates under consideration for the EPA administrator post. Whether that is Rendell's doing remains unclear. The governor's spokesman, Chuck Ardo, said he was unsure if the topic came up when Rendell was in Washington meeting with Obama's transition team last week.
"What's he's been doing is trumpeting her qualifications both publicly and privately," Ardo said. "I don't believe that he has actually done any more other than remind people of what an unbelievably good job she did here in Pennsylvania and advise them that he believes she would do an equally good job at the national level."
McGinty has previous Washington experience, having chaired the White House Council on Environmental Quality under former President Bill Clinton. She is also said to be close to environmental guru and former Vice President Al Gore.
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