Ballotpedia's Daily Transition Tracker - December 16, 2020
December 16, 2020
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Joe Biden selected former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg as his nominee for secretary of transportation. Prior to taking office on January 20, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden (D) and his team must prepare for the transition between presidential administrations, including selecting senior White House staff and appointees to top government positions. In 2016, there were 1,714 government positions subject to presidential appointment: 1,242 positions required Senate confirmation and 472 did not. The new administration is also responsible for filling thousands of other positions across the federal government, including in operations and policy. Every weekday, Ballotpedia is tracking potential Cabinet nominees, appointments, and news related to the Biden presidential transition.
For a full list of Biden’s Cabinet nominees, click here. Pete Buttigieg, secretary of transportationPete Buttigieg is a former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. He served in the United States Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, where he earned the rank of lieutenant. He graduated from Harvard University and Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. Biden said in a statement, “Jobs, infrastructure, equity, and climate all come together at the DOT, the site of some of our most ambitious plans to build back better. I trust Mayor Pete to lead this work with focus, decency, and a bold vision — he will bring people together to get big things done.” Buttigieg would be the first openly gay Cabinet secretary confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Five special elections were held in 2017 to fill vacancies created by Republican members of Congress who joined the Trump administration. One of the five resulted in a partisan flip to Democratic control.
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