Bush Nominates Spellings for Education Secretary

Margaret Spellings, another confidant from President Bush’s days as governor of Texas, was nominated today to become secretary of Education.

At a morning news conference, Bush introduced Spellings, his domestic policy advisor, as his choice to replace the departing Rod Paige.

“The issue of education is close to my heart, and on this vital issue there’s no one I trust more than Margaret Spellings,” Bush said.

“I share your passion for education,” Spellings told the president at a White House ceremony in the Roosevelt Room. “Our schools must keep their promise to all children.

“I am a product of our public schools,” she said. “I believe in America’s schools, what they mean to each child, to each future president or future domestic policy advisor, and to the strength of our great country.”

Spellings, 46, is responsible for the development and implementation of White House policy on education, health, labor, transportation, justice, housing and other elements of Bush’s domestic agenda, according to her official biography. She has deliberately kept a very low profile.

She has been called “the most influential woman in Washington that you’ve never heard of,” by Karl Rove, the president’s political strategist.

Like some other recent nominations to Bush’s second-term Cabinet, Spellings shares a past with Bush. She worked for six years for then-Gov. Bush as the senior advisor to develop education policy. She is credited with such state programs as the push to raise reading scores and with the Student Success Initiative, designed to eliminate social promotion.

Her work was the basis for Bush’s No Child Left Behind program that Spellings helped put together from the White House.

Spellings is the third close associate to move from the White House to the Cabinet. Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, was nominated to become secretary of State, replacing Colin L. Powell. Alberto R. Gonzales, the president’s counsel, was named to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general.

The White House also announced that Harriet Miers, the president’s deputy chief of staff, will replace Gonzales as counsel. Miers was Bush’s personal lawyer in Texas.

Still to be named are replacements for Spencer Abraham at Energy and Ann M. Veneman at Agriculture. Other top posts are also expected to be shuffled.

Cabinet positions require Senate confirmation.

Today’s nomination had been expected. On Tuesday, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, called Spellings “a capable, principled leader who has the ear of the president and has earned strong, bipartisan respect in Congress.”