May 2009

Back to the future

Tom’s new appointment

Photo by Julie Wiatt

Before Takoma Park’s Tom Perez was elected to the Montgomery County Council in 2002 and before he was appointed the Maryland secretary of labor in 2007, he was a prosecutor in the civil rights division of the U. S. Justice Department handling such notorious cases as a hate-crime spree by whte supremicists in Texas.

By June he is expecting to be back in the same division, but this time as the chief. President Obama nominated Tom to the position in March, and in April his confirmation moved forward in the U. S. Senate, where Tom also used to work as counsel to Ted Kennedy.

“You can go home again,” he said the other evening at the community center as he prepared to give the keynote speech for the Azalea Awards.