Ken Salazar Nominated to Serve as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico

U.S. – U.S. President Joe Biden nominated former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to be the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. The nomination still needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Salazar, 66, is currently an attorney at the law firm WilmerHale, and helped found the firm’s Denver office.

Salazar served as Gov. Roy Romer’s chief counsel from 1986-90, then as executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources from 1990-94. He was the first Latino elected to statewide office when he was elected as attorney general in 1998. He was re-elected in 2002.

He beat Pete Coors to win one of Colorado’s U.S. Senate seats in 2004, and served from 2005 until 2009, when he was nominated by Obama and confirmed by the Senate as the next secretary of the Department of the Interior.

“Ken Salazar is an exceptional leader who has served Colorado and our country at the highest levels,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper in a statement. “As ambassador to Mexico, he will revitalize the relationship with a neighbor, ally, and one of our biggest trading partners.”

Salazar was born in Alamosa and raised in the San Luis Valley. He is a native Spanish speaker and got his undergraduate degree from Colorado College and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School.

During the 2020 presidential race, Salazar chaired Biden’s Latino Leadership Committee and served as an honorary co-chair of the Biden campaign’s Colorado Latino Leadership Council.

If Salazar is confirmed, as expected, he will have a difficult task ahead of him, helping to repair a U.S.-Mexico relationship that has become deeply frayed in recent years.

After the nomination, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called Salazar “a man of great integrity and capability who will represent our country with honor.”

“A strong relationship between the United States and Mexico is critical for jobs, trade, security, and fighting crime,” Polis said. “I commend President Biden for nominating Ken and urge the U.S. Senate to quickly confirm him in this role.”