Clinton Fills 4 Key Posts; 3 Women Among Nominees : Appointments: His candidates for top health, labor, environmental and economic positions are known as innovators, activists. No minorities among those named.

President-elect Bill Clinton sounded a renewed commitment to activism Friday as he named an eclectic group of innovators, including three women, to help forge labor, social and environmental policies in the new Administration.

In his second round of appointments to top government jobs, Clinton chose 51-year-old Donna Shalala, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, to take charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Carol Browner, 36, Florida’s top environmental official, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

He also chose 46-year-old Harvard lecturer Robert B. Reich as secretary of labor, and UC Berkeley economist Laura D’Andrea Tyson, 45, to head the Council of Economic Advisers.

Although with Friday’s appointments Clinton has lived up to his pledge to give key roles in his Administration to women, the lack of racial diversity thus far has aroused concern among some black and Latino leaders. Some Clinton aides spent Friday afternoon working the phones to offer reassurances that minority appointments would be forthcoming.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown arrived in Little Rock to meet with Clinton Friday night, and transition officials said he was in line to be named either commerce secretary or U.S. trade representative as early as today.

Apart from Brown, the most prominent black candidate was said to be Rep. Mike Espy (D-Miss.), who now appears to be the leading candidate for secretary of agriculture. Clinton has also interviewed another black candidate, Jesse Brown, a combat-injured Vietnam veteran who heads the Washington office of the Disabled American Veterans, for the post of secretary of veterans affairs.

Several prominent black political leaders have taken themselves out of the running for Cabinet slots because of reluctance to abandon their own business ventures, sources said, and Clinton appears not to have a viable minority candidate for a number of posts.

In addition, efforts to bring even more women to the Administration faltered slightly as federal appeals court Judge Patricia M. Wald of Washington, once the leading candidate to become attorney general, withdrew her name Friday from consideration for the post.

In moving first to appoint what he called “a new generation of American leaders,” the President-elect said the choices announced Friday would bring “energy, dynamism and fresh thinking” to an Administration intent on upholding its mandate for change.

The four, who joined Clinton at a news conference here, form a group bound mostly by relative youth and brashness.

With their latest Cabinet choices, Clinton and Vice President-elect Al Gore turned to academe and state government to assemble a cadre of policy experts with whom they seemed uncommonly at home.

As Clinton praised the “new perspectives and new creativity” the outsiders would offer, Gore hailed the group, which includes close friends of both men, as a “new wave” in American government.

Even as Clinton announced his selections, however, it was apparent that their somewhat unconventional pedigrees could carry a measure of risk. In particular, Reich’s appointment as labor secretary met with some wariness from orthodox labor leaders, and that reaction seemed likely to exemplify the kind of uneasiness the new nominees could inspire.

Each of the nominations remains subject to congressional approval. But it was apparent that each member of the team would bring to the new Administration credentials closely matched to the principles Clinton outlined in his campaign agenda.

In Reich, Clinton would install at the Labor Department a longtime friend and unconventional leader whose background reflects none of the trade-union ties regarded by some Democrats as a precondition to the post.

A scholar and writer who has devoted much of his attention to issues of worker training and competitiveness, Reich carries a reputation as an outspoken advocate of measures to improve productivity, a step Clinton regards as central to the nation’s long-term economic strength. His fervent advocacy of a strong government role in managing the economy and international trade has made him controversial within some sectors of the policy community, and may have kept him from winning one of the Administration’s top-tier economic jobs.

Even the labor post, where his advocacy of government involvement in “industrial policy,” is likely to be well-received, Reich’s free trade views are expected to remain a source of concern. Lynn Williams, head of the United Steelworkers Union, and a key Clinton supporter, called the appointment “a complete surprise.”

Associates said they expected Reich, who has been the transition team’s top economic adviser, to retain a powerful voice in the new Administration. Even before appointing his former Oxford University classmate to its helm, Clinton singled out the Labor Department as an agency that had “not been as important as they should have been” in formulating economic policy.

Tyson, Clinton’s choice to head the White House economic advisory council, also brings a somewhat unorthodox voice to Administration discussions. The Berkeley economist is best known for her activist approach to trade and manufacturing policy, where she argues that the government should give support to high-tech and cutting-edge industries.

That approach will add a new dimension to a Clinton economic team whose titular chief is to be Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the 71-year-old Treasury secretary-designate. Tyson made clear that she takes a broad view of her new role.

“We definitely need sound fiscal policies,” she said Friday. “We definitely need sound monetary policies. But we need other things as well.” Tyson singled out the importance of health care, a sound national infrastructure, competitive companies and new technologies, and said the Council of Economic Advisers would help seek “to address all of these economic concerns.”

Shalala, the designated health and human services secretary, is an educator by training and lacks direct expertise over any of the issues overseen by the department.

But her helmsmanship at the University of Wisconsin has earned her a strong reputation as a manager, an important qualification for a job that will put her in charge of what many consider the most unmanageable department of government.

As a former chair of the Children’s Defense Fund, Shalala may bring a more liberal perspective to the HHS post than that embraced by Clinton. But she is a longtime and close friend of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, a relationship certain to add both to her loyalty and clout as she seeks to redirect spending to reflect the new President’s priorities.

At the same time, however, her particular skills will make even more important than usual the policy ideas of her deputies in a vast department whose agenda under Clinton is likely to focus on AIDS policy, welfare reform and management of any national health care system.

Clinton already has indicated that his health care reform proposals will be fashioned almost entirely at the White House rather than at HHS. But transition sources said a first step toward adding expertise to the agency would probably be taken with the appointment of Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.) to the department’s No. 2 post.

Downey, who was defeated for reelection last month, is one of Gore’s closest friends and concentrated during his congressional career on issues involving human resources.

Browner, who is to head the EPA, comes to the job after just two years heading Florida’s environment department. In that post, she spearheaded efforts to preserve the Everglades and took a strong stand against off-shore drilling in the areas near the Florida Keys.

While she worked as a legislative aide to Gore, she lacks direct experience in the complicated processes of federal environmental regulations. But Clinton, who spoke bitterly during the news conference about his own frustrations in dealing with the EPA, said Browner’s experience as a state government official could make her uniquely qualified to make the agency operate more efficiently.

Clinton also made clear that he intended to accord Cabinet rank to the agency whether or not Congress agrees to make that status formal. And as word of her appointment began to circulate, environmental activists in Washington described the choice as an indication that Gore had won agreement from Clinton for EPA to assume the role as the lead agency in setting environmental policy.

The fact that all the jobs in Clinton’s Cabinet so far have gone to whites has put an ironic cast on the President-elect’s oft-repeated promise to deliver a Cabinet that would “look like America.”

Clinton promised anew Friday that his final Cabinet would be “genuinely reflective of this country in gender and racial terms.” But an official close to the Congressional Black Caucus described “a lot of grumbling” among African-American leaders who believed the President-elect was moving too slowly to meet that goal.

While Democratic chairman Brown was regarded as likely to accept a Cabinet position, some sources cautioned that he had previously indicated an unwillingness to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, and said his past representation of foreign companies might complicate his appointment to the commerce or trade representative posts.

But Brown’s name also continues to surface in speculation as a possible White House chief of staff.

The job prospects of another black candidate, federal appeals court judge Amalya Kearse of New York, were believed to have increased with Wald’s decision not to accept the top Justice Department post. But transition officials indicated that they were now broadening their search for candidates to the position, and said earlier suggestions that the post would be reserved for a woman might now be invalid.

Clinton aides had indicated to leaders of women’s groups that a woman would be named to at least one of the Cabinet’s top four positions--widely regarded as Treasury, justice, state and defense. That was interpreted as a signal that the attorney general would be a woman.

But Clinton on Friday gave himself room to move away from that idea by disputing the notion that those four agencies were more senior than any other. “I mean, I have redesigned the entire Cabinet,” he protested at his press conference, suggesting that the vast budget set aside for HHS could qualify that department for top rank.

Times staff writers Marlene Cimons and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this article.

The Growing Roster of Clinton Appointees

Thumbnail sketches of President-elect Bill Clinton’s appointees Friday:

Labor Secretary

Robert B. Reich

Age: 46

Currently: Harvard University professor specializing in political economics.

Career: A driving force behind Clinton’s economic themes during the campaign, particularly the idea of improving the long-term economy through investment in infrastructure and worker education. He’s been a close associate of Clinton since their days as Rhodes scholars at Oxford.

Health and Human Services Secretary

Donna Shalala

Age: 51

Currently: Chancellor since 1988 of the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus.

Career: Served as an assistant housing and urban development secretary during the Jimmy Carter Administration and later as president of Hunter College in New York. She recently took over Hillary Clinton’s position as chairwoman of the national Children’s Defense Fund.

EPA Administrator

Carol Browner

Age: 36

Currently: Director of Vice President-elect Al Gore’s transition.

Career: Florida environmental regulation secretary the last two years. She’s been praised for her political savvy in settling a federal lawsuit over pollution in Florida’s Everglades and getting a gasoline tax increase passed to pay for environmental cleanups.

Chairwoman, White House Council of Economic Advisers

Laura D’Andrea Tyson

Age: 45

Currently: Teaches economics at UC Berkeley

Career: Has served as an adviser to Clinton since the campaign. She championed a philosophy that the United States’ security rests on being more competitive in the international marketplace.

Source: Times wire and staff reports