BREAKING. Senator Heidi Heitkamp May Join Trump’s Cabinet

This is a win for everyone but Chuck Schumer.

Trump meeting set for Friday with North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat up for re-election in 2018: https://t.co/b2qleTDlc5

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) December 1, 2016

Via Roll Call.

President-elect Donald Trump is considering adding North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp to his Cabinet, and will meet with her on Friday in New York.

So far, the incoming chief executive’s picks to head federal departments and agencies have all been Republicans. Presidents of both parties have, in the past, tried to get at least one secretary from the other party into a first-term Cabinet.

Trump and his team view Heitkamp as being “an asset in any role or capacity,” should she make the cut, an aide told reporters Thursday morning. She “comes very highly recommended and [is] qualified,” the aide added.

Rumors are that Heitkamp is being looked at for Agriculture or Energy.

If this appointment happens, and one has to assume that Trump and Pence aren’t going to meet with a unimportant senator in the minority party unless it is a very serious job interview, it is a major plus for Trump and for the GOP Senate Caucus.

Heitkamp has been estranged from her party in that she sees the oil shale boom in North Dakota and US energy independence as something positive rather than something to be strangled in its crib. Her appointment to Energy would also signal that we’ve stopped flushing billions of dollars into bullsh** “green” technologies and are now focusing on US national interests.

For Heitkamp this is also a case of enlightened self interest. She won her seat in 2012 when Mitt Romney “only” won North Dakota by 20 points. This year North Dakota went for Trump by 35 points. She’s up for reelection in 2018 and things don’t look good for her survival. And this weakness is well known to her

But, notably, she was absent when 12 other female Democratic senators appeared onstage at their party’s national convention in July to show support for Clinton.

If she does take a cabinet post, this will trigger a special election in April 2017 to fill out the remainder of her term. She will undoubtedly be succeeded by a Republican and put Schumer in an even weaker position.

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