Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is President-elect Joe Biden’s frontrunner for the Department of Commerce role, reports Axios.
Raimondo, 49, was also seriously considered to be Biden’s health and human services secretary, but the New York Times said labor unions blocked her appointment because of her record on pension changes.
The Department of Commerce promotes job creation and economic growth for Americans. Raimondo, a Rhodes scholar with an economics degree from Harvard and a law degree from Yale, is considered a traditional choice, according to Axios. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first woman to serve as governor of Rhode Island.
The former venture capitalist made job creation her No. 1 priority during her run for governor in 2014, and she succeeded by driving the unemployment rate down to about 4% and awarding tax incentive packages to companies in the state, though the coronavirus pandemic took a hit on many jobs in 2020.
Unemployment surged to nearly 100K in April of last year, compared with 20,000 in 2019 during the same time frame.
Biden’s transition team wouldn’t comment on the report and neither would Raimondo’s office.