Obama picks Foxx to succeed LaHood at Transportation

APRIL 29, 2012 — President Obama plans to nominate Anthony R. Foxx, the Mayor of Charlotte, N.C., to succeed Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation.

Mayor Foxx (born on April 30, 1971 in Charlotte) was first elected to the Charlotte City Council in 2005 and won election as mayor in 2009. Among his first term accomplishments was bringing the 2012 Democratic National Convention to Charlotte, giving him a speaker spot at the event that helped bring him to national attention.

He graduated from Davidson College, where he was the first African American student body president, with a degree in history, in 1993, and earned a law degree from New York University School of Law in 1996.

After law school, Mr. Foxx returned to Charlotte to work for a short time at the Smith, Helms, Mullis, and Moore law firm, and left to become a clerk for Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. Later he worked for the United States Department of Justice and the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

In 2001, he returned to Charlotte to work as a business litigator for Hunton & Williams, a Richmond, Va., headquartered law firm with an extensive lobbying practice. In 2009, he left Hunton & Williams to join DesignLine Corporation, a hybrid electric bus manufacturer, as its Deputy General Counsel.

Mayor Foxx has run up a record of achievements in Charlotte that include significant improvements to the city’s transportation infrastructure. How well that might translate into overseeing the national infrastructure, including its maritime component, remains to be seen. Still, some in the maritime community will greet Secretary LaHood’s departure with a sigh of relief and with hopes that the U.S. Maritime Administration will no longer be Transportation’s neglected stepchild.