From the Montgomery County Council to U.S. attorney general in less than 10 years?
That could be the career path of Takoma Park resident Thomas E. Perez. The New York Times reported Friday that the U.S. labor secretary is President Barack Obama’s leading candidate to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced his resignation Sept. 25.
The Times reported: “No final decision has been made, [sources familiar with the administration] said, but Mr. Perez, 53, a former Justice Department civil rights official and the son of Dominican immigrants, is at the top of the list. His nomination would be applauded by many Hispanic leaders. And he has a compelling personal story, having worked as a trash collector to help put himself through Brown University.”
After leaving Brown, Perez received a law degree from Harvard and later began working for the civil rights division at the U.S. Department of Justice in the late 1980s. He spent 12 years in the division, rising to the position of deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights under Attorney General Janet Reno, according to his White House biography.
Perez was elected in 2002 to the Montgomery County Council to represent District 5 and served one term representing Silver Spring, Kensington, Wheaton and Takoma Park. He left the council in 2006 to run for Maryland attorney general, but he was never placed on the ballot. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled he lacked sufficient legal experience in the state to run because he had not practiced in Maryland for 10 years or more.
In 2007, Gov. Martin O’Malley appointed Perez to lead the state’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation; a position he held until Obama appointed him in 2009 to the post of assistant attorney general for the civil rights division at the Department of Justice.
In that position, Perez handled significant civil rights issues, such as leading a federal inquiry into the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager shot and killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman as Martin was returning to a Florida home he was staying in February 2012. And investigating unlawful conduct by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona, in which Perez issued a scathing report focusing on the sheriff department’s discriminatory practices toward Latinos and aggressive crackdown on illegal immigrants.
In 2013, Obama appointed Perez to his current position as U.S. labor secretary. In August, Perez visited Bethesda Row with O’Malley and Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett to push for a higher federal minimum wage, an issue he has taken on as labor secretary.
According to the Times, other candidates for attorney general include Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York, and former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. The newspaper said Obama is expected to name a new attorney general before the Nov. 4 election.
