With many of his top White House and Cabinet posts filled, Obama now is focusing on fleshing out his natural resources and environment team, and could formally introduce his choices for interior secretary, energy secretary and environmental protection agency chief within weeks if not days.

Two transition officials disclosed Sutley’s selection on the condition of anonymity because Obama had not yet made the announcement.

Sutley supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primary and was a member of her Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender steering committee.

The deputy mayor for energy and environment in Los Angeles and the mayor’s representative on the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Sutley has a long record of working on environmental and natural resources policy.

She previously served on the California State Water Resources Control Board, which is responsible for protecting water quality and resources throughout the state, and was the energy adviser to former Gov. Gray Davis. During President Bill Clinton’s administration, Sutley was an EPA official, including being a special assistant to the EPA administrator in Washington.

Obama has chosen much of his Cabinet, with the most prominent positions – treasury, justice, state and defense – already filled, and he is now turning to other posts. He is expected to officially name former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle as his secretary of health and human services as early as this week.

Officials close to Obama’s transition say former New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection commissioner Lisa Jackson and Mary Nichols, who heads the California Air Resources Board, are in the running for the EPA administrator post. Both women worked at the EPA under Clinton EPA chief Carol Browner, who is leading the energy and environmental policy team for Obama’s transition.

Browner, who ran the agency for 8 years, is expected to be named to a new position in the Obama White House overseeing energy, environment and climate matters. But officials say there was still some discussion over whether Browner would share her duties with Sutley or another adviser on energy and environmental matters.

The position of interior secretary is still in flux.

Support for John Berry, the director of the National Zoo and a former assistant secretary at the department, was growing, officials said. Gay and lesbian advocacy groups backing Berry, who is gay, were expected to meet with the transition team in Washington on Wednesday.

But officials said Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva and California Rep. Mike Thompson were still in the running to lead the agency, depending on how other positions shake out.

The most important thing Barack Obama can do for the LGBT community is to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Sure, there are some gays and lesbians who want to serve openly in the military, and yes there are others who wish to adopt children. There are also many who suffer serious discrimination in the workplace and even more discrimination through hate motivated assaults on the streets.

But what this marriage fight has shown us is that legal distinctions that a) apply to all LGBT people and b) deny basic rights to LGBT people only serve to galvanize the movement. Without marriage, most adoption rights are impossible (states prefer to give babies to married people). Without marriage, property rights aren’t fully protected.

Why do I think that repealing DOMA is more important than hate crime legislation?

Because legislation like that requires enforcement. That means that police officers in the places where these hate crimes are more prevalent have to arrest the perpetrator, prosecutors have to choose to charge them with a hate crime rather than a simple assault and judges have to impose the stricter sentence.

In the kind of national climate where half the population of a liberal state like California doesn’t believe LGBT people should be able to file taxes together, it is difficult to trust all of those law enforcement officials to invest in protecting LGBT rights.

Hopefully we will not have to pick and choose. Obama will make good on all of his promises. Hopefully.

But, though the man inspires so many, he is still President-elect of a country with a failing economy and chances are that LGBT rights won’t be first and foremost on his agenda.

Posted:
November 4, 2008 – 11:02 pm ET

(Washington) Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation’s first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. “Change has come,” he declared to a huge throng of cheering supporters.

The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, the Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his historic triumph by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states – Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Iowa and more.

On a night for Democrats to savor, they not only elected Obama the nation’s 44th president but padded their majorities in the House and Senate, and come January will control both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994.

Obama’s election capped a meteoric rise – from mere state senator to president-elect in four years.

In his first speech as victor, Obama catalogued the challenges ahead. “The greatest of a lifetime,” he said, “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”

He added, “There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.”

McCain called his former rival to concede defeat – and the end of his own 10-year quest for the White House. “The American people have spoken, and spoken clearly,” McCain told disappointed supporters in Arizona.

President Bush added his congratulations from the White House.

In his speech, Obama invoked the words of Lincoln and echoed John F. Kennedy.

“So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder,” he said.

He and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, will take their oaths of office as president and vice president on Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama will move into the Oval Office as leader of a country that is almost certainly in recession, and fighting two long wars, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan.

The popular vote was close – 51.3 percent to 47.5 percent with 73 percent of all U.S. precincts counted – but not the count in the Electoral College, where it mattered most.

There, Obama’s audacious decision to contest McCain in states that hadn’t gone Democratic in years paid rich dividends.

Obama has said his first order of presidential business will be to tackle the economy. He has also pledged to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.

The Associated Press-National Constitution Center poll of views on the Constitution found people wary of governmental authority after years of controversy over the Bush administration’s expansion of executive power, and especially skeptical of increasing the president’s powers.

“There is clearly a concern about executive power and the balance of power that comes out in a couple of different ways,” said Joseph Torsella, president of the Philadelphia-based organization. The nonpartisan center is dedicated to educating the public about the Constitution.

Torsella said he believes the polls reflect long-standing skepticism of presidential power. “I think it’s a basic chord in the American song and it gets louder and stronger depending on what’s happening in the headlines,” he said.

The survey also found Americans are divided over government recognition of gay marriage, but younger people are far more likely to support it.

Also, there is overwhelming opposition to the government’s power to take private property for redevelopment and to amending the Constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to be president.

President Bush and Congress are at record low approval ratings in recent polls, with Congress even less popular than the president. But in the new poll, the public is more reluctant to expand the president’s powers than those of Congress.

Two-thirds of Americans oppose altering the balance of power among the three branches of government to strengthen the presidency, even when they thought that doing so would improve the economy or national security. People were more evenly split over giving Congress more power in the same circumstances.

“The Constitution sets up three branches of government and to increase the power of one at the expense of the others endangers the fundamental structure,” said poll participant James Crowder, 74, of Cockeysville, Md., a Baltimore suburb. “This current president and his vice president have distorted the office of president so much that it will take an enormous amount of time, if ever, for us to recover from that.” Crowder is a Democrat and a retired Episcopal priest.

In one area, the poll found Americans clearly on Congress’ side. They said Congress should have the power to require senior presidential aides to testify before House and Senate committees – a topic currently wending its way through the courts. The administration is trying to prevent former White House counsel Harriet Miers from testifying about the firing of nine U.S. attorneys.

The government’s power to take private property for redevelopment had little support in the poll, not even when owners are paid a fair price and the project creates local jobs.

Participants said they consider private property rights conferred by the Constitution as important as freedom of speech and religion.

The Fifth Amendment allows the government to seize property for public use with just compensation.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that governments may seize people’s homes and businesses – even against their will – for private economic development when there is a corresponding public purpose of bringing more jobs and tax revenue.

In the new poll of people’s views on the Constitution, 75 percent disagreed. Opposition to the government power known as eminent domain was as strong among liberals as conservatives.

Cities, backed by some liberals, generally see the power to seize private property as an important tool for urban renewal projects crucial to revitalizing cities.

Many conservatives – particularly in the West – have called the high court decision a dangerous interpretation of the Constitution that would lead to abuse of individual rights.

Since the ruling, 39 states have enacted legislation or passed ballot measures restricting the government’s power to take property, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The poll also found a split on whether governments should recognize gay marriage. But a majority said same-sex couples should be entitled to the same benefits as married, heterosexual couples.

The answers to these questions revealed a sharp generational split. More than two-thirds of people under 35 favor recognition of gay marriage, compared with less than 40 percent of those 35 and older.

Majorities also favor following the rule of law, even if that sometimes comes at the expense of short-term public safety considerations and protecting the rights of everyone in the face of majority opposition.

The public broadly supports government aid to religious organizations for social service programs. But that support drops sharply when organizations also promote their religious beliefs while providing help to the homeless and other social services.

The AP-National Constitution Center poll involved telephone interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide. The survey was conducted Aug. 22-29 by Abt SRBI Inc. and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

A Zogby Poll found that more than six in 10 U.S. voters say they could support an openly gay candidate for president of the United States.

The poll, conducted for the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute, asked 1,089 likely voters if they would support an openly gay president, U.S. senator, vice president or cabinet-level secretary if they believed the individual was the most qualified person for the job.

Sixty-five percent of survey participants indicated that they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree they could support the presidential candidate.

Seventy-one percent of respondents said they would support the appointment of an openly gay cabinet-level secretary.

“These results prove that most Americans want to be fair to gay people,” said Chuck Wolfe, president of the Leadership Institute.

“Our aspiration is to always see each other as individuals first, and though we may not always succeed at that, our underlying fairness and decency means that one day soon we will. This marks tremendous progress for our community and for the voting public,” Wolfe said.

The Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute ensures that openly LGBT public leaders are equipped with the skills they need to make a difference.  Its nonpartisan training and executive development programs and networking opportunities are utilized by hundreds of elected, appointed, community and non-profit leaders each year.

Earlier this year the Institute, along with a coalition of partners, launched the Presidential Appointments Project earlier this year to serve as a talent bank for openly LGBT professionals seeking appointed positions in the next presidential administration.

The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which helps fund the campaigns of LGBT candidates has endorsed 67 candidates so far for November’s election.

Earlier this week, a Harris Poll found that among LGBT registered voters Democrat Barack Obama has a clear lead – with 68 percent favoring the Illinois Senator.

Ten percent of those surveyed support McCain, while three percent favor Ralph Nader and one percent supports Bob Barr. Three percent chose “other.” Fifteen percent of all LGBT voters still are not sure which candidate to support.