Within four days of Perez’s arrival in San Francisco, the two sides announced a deal.
“Sometimes when you’re in a less formal setting, it’s conducive to letting your guard down a little bit and I had found that to be the case in a number of knotty situations,” Perez said in an interview with CNN.
Perez’s success in quickly ending the standoff has boosted his profile in Washington, where deals of any kind are increasingly hard to come by. He is emerging as a rare star in the president’s second-term Cabinet and a hero among the liberal left, stirring conversation about a possible political future after 2016.
READ: Labor secretary: ‘Damage done’ by port dispute
National union leaders say they have not seen the kind of popularity Perez enjoys among their members in years.
–
“He held Ms. Jones’ hand and told her that he can’t imagine the pain of losing a child,” Crump said. “He also said they’re looking at every part of the case to see if there was anything that they could do.”
Prior to joining the Obama administration in 2009, Perez was Maryland’s secretary of labor under former Gov. Martin O’Malley. He has maintained his Maryland connections since leaving the O’Malley administration — he commutes to Washington from Montgomery County and is in touch with former colleagues in Annapolis.
Political operatives see Perez as a possible Democratic candidate to challenge the state’s new Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in 2018. Perez’s name has cropped up in the mix with Rep. Chris Van Hollen, former Maryland attorney general Douglas Gansler and ex-Howard County Executive Ken Ulman.
But Perez insists there’s currently nothing further from his mind than a possible gubernatorial run — though he didn’t close the door on the possibility.
“My singular focus until the clock strikes midnight in 2017 is going to be how we build the economy that works for everyone,” he said. “I’ve never been a fan of those who have the privilege of doing these jobs expend any iota of time thinking about what they want to do next.”
