List of United States political appointments across party lines

United States presidents typically fill their Cabinets and other appointive positions with people from their own political party. The first Cabinet formed by the first President, George Washington, included some of Washington's political opponents, but later presidents adopted the practice of filling their Cabinets with members of the President's party.^[1]

Appointments across party lines are uncommon. Presidents may appoint members of a different party to high-level positions in order to reduce partisanship or improve cooperation between the political parties.^[2] Also Presidents often appoint members of a different party because they need Senate confirmation for many of these positions, and at the time of appointment the Senate was controlled by the opposition party of the President.^[2] Many of the cross-partisan nominees are often moderates within their own parties.^[2]

This is a list of people appointed to high-level positions in the United States federal government by a President whose political party affiliation was different from that of the appointee. The list includes executive branch appointees and independent agency appointees. Independent or nonpartisan appointees, nominally apolitical appointments (such as Article III judges and military officers), and members of explicitly bipartisan commissions are not included.

List of appointees

Ɨ Person was an appointee of the previous administration and was reappointed or retained by the President.

Other notable appointments that crossed party lines

• President Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, asked Charles Lee, a Federalist, to be appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, appointed Stephen Field, a Democrat, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, appointed Howell Edmunds Jackson, a Democrat, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President William Howard Taft, a Republican, appointed Edward Douglass White, a Democrat, as Chief Justice of the United States.
• President Warren G. Harding, a Republican, appointed Pierce Butler, a Democrat, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President Herbert Hoover, a Republican, appointed Benjamin N. Cardozo, a prominent Democrat, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, appointed Harlan F. Stone, a Republican, as Chief Justice of the United States.
• President Harry S. Truman, a Democrat, appointed Senator Harold Hitz Burton, a Republican, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, appointed William J. Brennan, Jr., a Democrat, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President Richard Nixon, a Republican, appointed Walter Minnick as a staff assistant and deputy assistant director for the Office of Management and Budget before he was elected to Congress as a Democrat.
• President Richard Nixon, a Republican, appointed Donald S. Russell, a former U.S. Senator and Democrat, as judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
• President Richard Nixon, a Republican, nominated Clement Haynsworth, a Democrat, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President Richard Nixon, a Republican, appointed Lewis F. Powell Jr., a lifelong Democrat, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, nominated Frank Minis Johnson, a Republican, as a Fifth Circuit appellate court judge.
• President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, nominated Patrick Lucey, a Democrat, as United States Ambassador to Mexico; Lucey was later an independent vice-presidential candidate during the 1980 presidential election against Jimmy Carter.
• President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, appointed Kimba Wood, a Democrat, as Judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York; she was later an unsuccessful nominee of President Clinton to be United States Attorney General.
• President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, appointed Maryanne Trump Barry, a Republican, as judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
• President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, nominated Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a Republican, as Secretary of Defense.
• President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, nominated Governor of Massachusetts William Weld, a Republican, as United States Ambassador to Mexico.
• U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, a Democrat, appointed John Danforth, a Republican, to lead an investigation into the FBI's role in the 1993 Waco Siege.
• President George W. Bush, a Republican, appointed Philip Ray Martinez, a Democrat, as a U.S. federal judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.^[17]
• President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated U.S. Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican, as United States Secretary of Commerce.

References

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