Latinos Fear Fewer Jobs at Top in New Administration

With time and empty Cabinet slots dwindling, Latino leaders are beginning to fear that the Clinton administration may offer fewer top jobs this term than last to Latinos, a group that overwhelmingly supported his reelection.

The leaders are pressing to have the president’s Cabinet include at least two Latinos, as it did in the first Clinton administration when Federico Pena was Transportation secretary and Henry G. Cisneros presided at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But it appears more likely to some that Latinos may end up with only one Cabinet job, plus several senior sub-Cabinet posts.

For the administration to nominate fewer than two Latinos to the 14-member Cabinet “would be a major setback for Hispanics, and an embarrassment for [a group] that went out and supported the president with so much fervor,” said Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza.

A group of Latino leaders met with Vice President Al Gore and incoming White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles to discuss the matter last Monday. They were told that Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), a Latino, is likely to be nominated to a Cabinet post, probably Commerce secretary or ambassador to the United Nations. For other vacant seats, Latinos remain in the running, but are by no means a sure thing.

Among the top candidates for Labor secretary are Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-Pico Rivera), Labor Department wage and hour director Maria Echaveste, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Director Gilbert F. Casellas. Torres, with strong support from organized labor in California, may be the strongest candidate.

Yet the Labor post appears more likely to go to Harris Wofford, who heads Clinton’s national service program, and who has won strong backing from the national AFL-CIO.

Below the Cabinet level, Aida Alvaraz, an investment banker who heads a unit at HUD, is a candidate for director of the Small Business Administration. And there has been some talk among insiders that Echaveste may be asked to head the White House office of public liaison, a post now held by Alexis Herman.

Still, “the concern is that there are many at the top sub-Cabinet level, but not quite up to the Cabinet posts,” said a congressional aide.

After filling the posts of secretary of State, secretary of Defense, CIA director and White House national security advisor, Clinton still has plenty of openings. In addition to the Commerce, Labor and U.N. ambassador vacancies, still to be filled are secretary of Transportation, secretary of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. trade representative posts. But there are leading candidates for most of these jobs.

White House officials said Clinton will have made all of his choices by the end of this month.

HUD Secretary Cisneros has predicted that the administration would offer at least two Cabinet posts to Latinos. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, while asserting that Clinton is aiming for gender and ethnic diversity, said he had nothing so “arithmetic” in mind as two Cabinet slots for Latinos.