U.S. President-elect Donald Trump picked the last member of his cabinet on Wednesday. Former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue — who has been linked to big agribusiness and has sympathized with confederate history — has been tapped to become the head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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Unsurprisingly, like Trump and the rest of his cabinet, Perdue has links to big business and in particular corporate agriculture. He has been a supporter of factory farms, and in 2009 he signed a bill to stop the local regulation of the industry to prevent animal cruelty.
In 2009, he was named “Governor of the Year” by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, which the Organic Consumers Association referred to as “a front group for the GMO industry.” During his campaigns for governor, he also received donations from pesticide companies. After finishing up as governor, he founded his global exporting business Perdue Partners.
The 70-year-old was on Trump’s agricultural advisory committee during last year’s presidential campaign. During his time as Georgia governor from 2003 to 2011, Perdue drew the support of many disillusioned white voters and was well known for leading a service at the state capital building in Atlanta to literally pray for rain during a harsh drought in 2007.
“Farmers need a champion in the USDA who will fight for conservation programs to help farmers be more resilient in the face of extreme weather, not pray for rain,” Kari Hamerschlag, from Friends of the Earth, said in a statement.
In 2010, Perdue signed a law that proclaimed April “Confederate History and Heritage Month.” The month, which was also declared in six other southern states, is particularly controversial because it failed to mention the history of slavery in its proclamation.
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Many were upset in Georgia that the state’s flag featuring a confederate design was scrapped in 2001. Perdue then supported a flag referendum in the state where a design based on the first national flag of the confederacy, the ”Stars and Bars,” was chosen.
Tom Price, a former Georgia state senator picked by Trump for the Department of Health and Human Services, has also been grilled over his support of the confederate flag and controversial historical commemorations.
Trump's last pick completed his cabinet less than two days before he is set to be officially inaugurated as president on Friday. It is the first time since 1988 under Ronald Reagan that a presidential cabinet has not included a Latino. Instead, Trump has filled his cabinet with a motley crew of millionaires and former military figures who seem intent on carrying out his divisive, maverick approach to politics.
“Trump has not only been the most anti-Latino, anti-immigrant president in the history of the nation," Hector Sanchez, chairman of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, told the Dallas Morning News. "By not including Latinos in the Cabinet he is just showing how he is planning to govern.”