A day after the former president of Texas A&M met with Donald Trump to talk about serving as secretary of agriculture, two more Texans are headed to Florida to discuss the possibility of serving in Trump’s Cabinet.
But only one, former Texas agriculture commissioner and comptroller Susan Combs, is meeting with Trump himself today, according to the agriculture news service DTN. She met with Vice President-elect Mike Pence in Washington last week.
Current agriculture commissioner Sid Miller, a vocal Trump supporter during the campaign with a propensity for creating controversy over social media postings, is also headed to Florida today—but he told reporters last week that he would be meeting with senior Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, not Trump himself.
Both are under consideration to serve as agriculture secretary, a position that oversees nearly 300,000 square miles of national forests and grasslands, the safety of food production and the food stamp program for low-income households.
Combs and Miller have openly sparred in the past over Combs’ push to encourage schools in Texas to serve healthy food. One of Miller’s first acts as agriculture commissioner was to grant “amnesty” to a cupcake and allow deep fryers and soda machines in schools.
If Combs, Miller or former Texas A&M president Elsa Murano are chosen as Trump’s agriculture secretary nominee, they would join fellow Texans Rick Perry and Rex Tillerson as Cabinet nominees.
Alex Daugherty: 202-383-6049, @alextdaugherty