Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Personality Spotlight: Janet Napolitano

|
|
 
  
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano 
License photo
Published: Dec. 1, 2008 at 12:47 PM

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano's experience in confronting illegal immigration in her home state could serve her well as the new secretary of homeland security.

Napolitano, 51, was named by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to his Cabinet Monday in Chicago.

As Arizona governor, Napolitano called in 2006 for the federal government to pay for the deployment of the National Guard along the state's porous border with Mexico, a move ultimately approved by U.S. President Bush. As homeland security leader, Napolitano will be in a position to expand some of the experimental programs she's been using to secure the Arizona border on a national level, immigration analysts said.

After serving as U.S. attorney for Arizona, Napolitano won the state's 2002 gubernatorial election with 46 percent of the vote. She became the first woman in U.S. history to be elected a governor to succeed another elected female governor.

In 2006 she was mentioned as a possible running mate for Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, but instead won a second Arizona gubernatorial term in a landslide.

Topics: Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama
Recommended Stories
© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Notable deaths of 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee AmfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala
Indianapolis 500 Presidential Medal of Freedom Memorial Day around the nation
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 27
Snigdha Nandipati of San Diego wins Finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee
View Caption
Snigdha Nandipati of San Diego, California watches confetti rain down as she wins the two-day Scripps National Spelling Bee championship, May 31, 2012, in National Harbor, Maryland. Nandipati successfully spelled the word .* guetapens *, meaning to lure or ambush. UPI/Mike Theiler
fark
Photoshop this power tower technician
Driving drunk and unlicensed, with a kid not even buckled let alone in a safety seat, en route to...
Man killed in Spencer fire. The lava lamps must have ignited the blacklight posters
Passenger jet crashes into apartment building in Nigerian capitol. Over 150 princes, bank officials,...
I'll see your zombie apocalypse, and raise you "swarms of deadly spiders" invading a town in India...
Photoshop this woman at the wheel