Former U.S. Rep Sean Duffy is Trump's pick to head the Department of Transportation, an agency whose work has never been an area of interest for him. | Official U.S. House of Representatives photo

When President-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate Wisconsin’s former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy as Secretary of Transportation, I had two reactions: Why Duffy? And why transportation?

As a reporter I’ve covered Duffy since he was the Ashland district attorney running as a Tea Party candidate for Congress in 2009 and winning election in 2010. I followed him through subsequent town hall meetings and election interviews until he won his fifth term in 2018, then resigned in 2019 because of concern for his newborn daughter’s heart condition. I’ve been around Duffy, a Republican conservative, enough to know he is an intelligent man who can hold his own in verbal sparring in Congressional debates, process questions from angry citizens at town hall meetings, and go toe-to-toe with high-profile personalities on CNN or Fox News (where he currently hosts a show).

Duffy, a father of nine, is married to Fox & Friends weekend host Rachel Campos-Duffy. He doesn’t have any of the obvious baggage some of Trump’s other nominees are hauling, including Department of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, a Fox News personality who has been accused of a history of drunkenness, disturbing behavior toward women and even sexual assault.

That’s not to say Duffy hasn’t made some outrageous comments. He referred to Madison as a “communist community” in December 2016 when a local recount was conducted after the presidential election that Trump had won, and he responded to criticism by suggesting liberals should obtain the services of a therapy dog to calm their angst – also not well received.

Snarkiness aside, what should be a concern is that Duffy’s resume doesn’t include experience relevant for running an organization as large as the U.S. Department of Transportation, which has with 55,000 employees, or for overseeing the nation’s roads, airfields, rail system and shipping ports.

It is not even trite to say that Duffy has gained just as much or more management experience being a father of nine children than he ever had running a small staff as a district attorney, congressman, K Street lobbyist or as the co-host of his Fox Business show, The Bottom Line with Dagen & Duffy.

There is nothing in Duffy’s background that suggests he would be effective at managing and leading a large organization on the scale of the Department of Transportation. He is not a former high-ranking military officer or chief executive of a large corporation or non-profit who can point to his track record managing thousands of workers.

Of course, one could argue that the current Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, didn’t have enough management experience, either, prior to assuming office. However, as the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a city of over 100,000 with more than 1,000 employees and day-to-day demands that included many transportation-related issues, Buttigieg was placed on a much larger, higher launching pad before taking the helm at D.O.T.  

Duffy has nothing close to Buttigieg’s management experience going into his confirmation hearing for Secretary of Transportation.

When the Senate commences his hearing on Wednesday, there should be many questions about why Duffy believes he can head such a large department without the benefit of management experience.

One of Duffy’s primary qualifications for the nomination appears to be his visibility on Fox News. Trump loves Fox and has picked other agency heads from the Fox lineup, including Hegseth.

The other reason I scratch my head over Trump’s nomination of Duffy for Secretary of Transportation is that while Duffy was in Congress, he very rarely raised any concerns or even showed an interest in transportation infrastructure.

I’ve poured over 90 pages of downloaded news stories, well over a dozen stories I wrote as the local reporter for the Spooner Advocate and the Sawyer County Record while covering Duffy, and I only have one account in all those years when he even mentioned a transportation issue.

In a 2012 interview, while I was a reporter for the Spooner Advocate, Duffy touted working with Minnesota’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar on efforts to ensure the construction of the new St. Croix River bridge between Wisconsin and Minnesota at Stillwater.

That’s it — one mention of a transportation issue.

So, it is surprising that someone who appeared to have little interest in or concern for the nation’s transportation systems would be nominated to head that department.

It would have been less surprising if Trump had nominated Duffy for a secretary or deputy position that addressed health insurance, banking and financial services, immigration and the border or even housing – issues Duffy repeatedly addressed while in Congress.

Even though many constituents told Duffy during  town hall meetings that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) offered them their first chance to get affordable health insurance, Duffy spoke out repeatedly against the ACA. He bragged at one meeting that he had either voted to repeal or amend the ACA 50 times because he found it restricted choice for some consumers and resulted in higher costs for others.

Duffy’s criticism of the ACA is that while it put more people on health insurance it didn’t address the rising cost of health care. He advocated for more health care choices and open pricing so consumers could choose the lowest-cost health care available on the open market.

Although he didn’t know the specifics, Duffy said he looked forward to Republican plans to replace ACA, but those plans never materialized after attempts to repeal ACA failed.

As part of the Tea Party wave of candidates who opposed the bailouts of financial institutions that started with President George W. Bush  and continued under President Barack Obama, Duffy was very much against bailing out banks that were “too big to fail.”

“To capitalize banks that made bad decisions just promotes bad behavior,” he said in 2010. “I think we should have stepped in and capitalized banks that behaved well and let those who performed poorly fail. I don’t believe in the philosophy of too big to fail, and that is what Dave Obey (Wisconsin’s former  Democratic 7th District Congressman) bought into. Now I think when banks make bad decisions, they are going to expect the government to step in and bail them out,” he said.

The “free market,” said Duffy, should be the primary agent in the economy, not the government.

“I believe in free markets,” he said. “I believe they work on the way up, so if you take advantage of the upside of these risky investments, you also better take advantage of the downside when you lose your pants. But the government is stepping in, minimizing the downside risk, and encouraging risky behavior.”

Duffy said he supported “smart regulations” on banks but not legislation that shut down all risk-taking. 

Even after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued fines of $180 million against Wells Fargo for allowing employees to open accounts that were never authorized by the clients who owned them, Duffy was critical of the organization because Duffy charged the CFPB had responded with little urgency to whistleblowers and only acted after an investigation by a Los Angeles District Attorney and coverage by the LA Times.

Another predictable appointment for  Duffy would have been as immigration czar. Duffy has advocated for more scrutiny and security at the borders and not allowing undocumented immigrants to receive government aid. But during his tenure in Congress, Duffy didn’t support mass deportations now championed by Trump. Duffy even advocated for a path to citizenship for those who had been in the country for years and wanted more visas for skilled workers trained in the U.S. to help the economy.

One important local issue Duffy took on while serving in Congress was the alleged misuse of an $800,000 federal grant to the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The tribe was part of his district. Duffy called for a forensic audit of how the tribe used a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant to address mold remediation in tribal housing.

Duffy’s attention resulted in a congressional subcommittee hearing he chaired at the reservation in July 2017 to address issues of housing for Native Americans and particularly how those HUD dollars were used.

Duffy’s intervention was controversial with tribal leadership, who characterized it as impinging on tribal sovereignty, but Duffy justified his actions out of concern for tribal members living in unsafe conditions.

It would have made a lot more sense for Trump to nominate Duffy for a number of other high-level posts in his administration other than transportation, including Secretary of HUD.

It will be interesting to hear Duffy explain to the Senate nominating committee why he should be the next Secretary of Transportation without relevant management experience or a record of interest in transportation issues.

If Duffy can’t make a convincing argument that he should be trusted to lead an agency of 55,000 that addresses the most critical infrastructure issues and sometimes responds to large-scale disasters then he shouldn’t be approved, no matter how bright his star shines on Fox.