Video: No Ritter plans for post with Obama

Speculation about a potential move to Washington aside, Gov. Bill Ritter sounds as if he's staying put in Colorado - and contemplating a run for re-election in 2010.

Following a press conference today about his recent trade mission to Asia, Ritter answered a couple questions about his own future.

Regarding a potential cabinet post in the Obama administration, Ritter demurred, but did say that "the next Secretary of Energy has to be somebody that has Barack Obama’s vision for creating a different energy future and really meshing our climate policy with our energy policy."

What about being U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican?

"No. No," said Ritter. "This is what I want to do. I want to be the governor of this state."

Ritter, a Catholic, put his career as a prosecutor on hold in 1988 and took his wife and then 1-year-old son to Africa to serve as a Catholic missionary in Zambia.

There is precedent for a Coloradan to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Jim Nicholson was in that post from 2001 to 2005, before becoming Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He left that post in 2007 and this year joined the Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck law firm in their Washington office.

The current Ambassador is Mary Ann Glendon, formerly a Harvard University professor.

_______________________________

PoliticsWest: I wanted to ask you real quick about any possibility of a cabinet post in Washington; would that be of interest to you?

Ritter: Well, you know, I haven’t talked to anybody and no one has talked to me. My name appears on a short list and that’s really not something I’ll think much about, or spend anytime thinking about, until somebody calls me. What I can tell you is the next Secretary of Energy has to be somebody that has Barack Obama’s vision for creating a different energy future and really meshing our climate policy with our energy policy.

PW: One other question. Would you be interested in an ambassadorship to the Vatican?

Ritter: No. No. This is what I want to do. I want to be the governor of this state. I have a lot of things that we’ve put in place that are very good things and that I think we need to continue doing, quite frankly. We’re halfway through the term. And we’re at the beginning of many very important things that'll take another couple of years - and maybe even another term beyond that - to accomplish.

PW: O.K. And so, has the Obama administration been in touch with you, or you to them, about any position?

Ritter: I’ve been in touch with them. I talked to Barack Obama the Friday before I left to go to Japan and China. But not about any position.

PW: And not about the Vatican position?

Ritter: No.

Bookmark/Search this post with: