WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. –A Saint Mary’s University grad, Sean Duffy, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be secretary of transportation. Duffy, age 53, is known mostly as a cast member of the Real World television reality show in the 1990s. He also served five terms in Congress from northern Wisconsin. At Saint Mary’s he majored in marketing. Duffy holds a law degree from the former William Mitchell Law School in St. Paul.
Trump and vettting
The Trump news release posed questions anew about Trump’s process for choosing cabinet members. Critics have quoted insiders that it’s more a Central Casting call than substantive interviewing and careful vetting. The news release is light on Duffy’s transportation-related credentials and larded with show-biz detail and gratuitous family references. The release notes that Duffy has been a co-host on the Fox Business channel and a weekender on the Fox News Channel. Duffy’s wife Rachel Campos-Duffy is mentioned as a Fox news host, but her relevance to his being the U.S. transportation secretary is unclear. There is a passing reference, also of seeming irrelevance, to their “wonderful children.” The news release refers to Duffy as a transportation champion in Minnesota. Minnesota? To all appearances the Trump vetting staff got the wrong state. Aside from his time in Minnesota back in college, Duffy has only the slimmest Minnesota connections, although, to be sure, he once supported a bridge project connecting the two states.
Duffy biography
Duffy. At Congressional hearing. In Congress 2011 to 2019 from WI-8. His home is Ashland, a once-thriving ore shipping port on Lake Superior.
Duffy has a long record of being in the public eye.Duffy started log rolling at age 5 and speed-climbing up 60-foot and 90-foot poles at 13. He holds two speed-climbing titles. Oddly he doesn’t appear on the Saint Mary’s list of 122 distinguished alumni. Duffy appeared every so often on the MTV reality show “Real World” in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008. Duffy was an ESPN color commentator in 2003. He appeared as both a competitor and commentator on ESPN’s “Great Outdoor Games.” In 2022 was named a co-host of the Fox Business channel’s “The Bottom Line.”
Law and politics
Duffy grew up in Hayward, Wisconsin, and took up residence in Ashland, 60 miles away, after college. He worked in his father’s law office. He was appointed the Ashland County district attorney in 2002 amd was elected unopposed in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008. He resigned to run successfully for the WI-8 seat in Congress in 2010 and served 10 years. None of his House committee assignments related to transportation. His was considered a reliable vote on Republican-sponsored legislation, but he never especially distinguished himself. He gained unwanted attention in 2011 at a Polk County Republican town hall for favoring a salary freeze for Wisconsin state employees. Asked whether he would be willing to cut his own $174,000 Congressial salary Duffy waffled that that he was “struggling” to get by as it was . He has 11 children.