Spokesman: Ritter not gunning for cabinet post

People of Colorado, your employee Gov. Bill Ritter wants you to know that his trip this week to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., to meet with President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team is absolutely, positively, most definitely not for a job interview.

Don’t read too much into the meetings, in which topics of discussion will include transportation and, a Ritter favorite, energy.

Don’t look suspiciously at the timing, during a period in which Obama is busy announcing his cabinet appointments.

This isn’t what it looks like, says Ritter’s spokesman.

“He has not talked to anybody about that,” Evan Dreyer, the spokesman, said about the possibility of a Ritter role in the Obama administration. “Nobody from the Obama transition team has talked to him about that. He’s very focused on governing the state of Colorado.”

Which is precisely why, Dreyer said, Ritter is making the trip back East.

Ritter is scheduled to leave this afternoon for Philadelphia, where he will participate in meetings with the National Governors Association and the Democratic Governors Association. Dreyer said Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden plan to meet with the groups to talk about what they can do in an economic recovery plan to help the states.

“President-elect Obama is specifically reaching out to the governors for input,” Dreyer said. “Gov. Ritter will be providing a Colorado perspective on what our greatest needs are.”

To that end, Dreyer said Ritter will talk about the need for greater transportation funding to fix roads and bridges and for greater investment in “energy infrastructure” like power transmission lines and gas pipelines that could carry Colorado’s burgeoning energy production – both renewable and not – to the rest of the nation.

Tomorrow afternoon, Dreyer said Ritter will take a train to Washington, where he will meet with members of Obama’s transition team to talk in greater detail about those issues before the trips ends on Wednesday.

Don’t expect the rumors surrounding Ritter’s future – it has been speculated among the chattering class that he could be a candidate for a cabinet spot at the Department of Energy or the Department of the Interior – to end with it.

Bookmark/Search this post with: