President-Elect Donald Trump chose former Texas Governor Rick Perry to serve as his Secretary of Energy on Tuesday.
Perry was the Governor of Texas for 14 years and ran for president unsuccessfully in 2012 and 2016.
During the 2012 presidential primary, Perry famously blanked on the third federal agency that he would choose to eliminate if elected. The New York Times noted the now irony of this 2012 gaffe.
The selection of Mr. Perry to lead the energy agency would offer a rich paradox: During a televised debate in 2011, when he was seeking the Republican nomination, Mr. Perry intended to list the Department of Energy among agencies he wanted to eliminate, but he could not remember its name.
As Energy Secretary, Perry will be tasked with overseeing the country's nuclear weapon stockpile.
About 60 percent of the Energy Department’s budget is devoted to managing the National Nuclear Security Administration, which defines its mission as enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science.
The administration manages the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile and runs American programs on nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism. The two men who served as President Obama’s energy secretaries were physicists, one with a Nobel Prize, the other a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Senators Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D., N.D.) were also rumored to be in the running for the position.