When Indiana’s then-Gov. Mike Pence needed to appoint a new director of his state’s agriculture department back in 2013, he dipped right into the corner offices of the global agrichemical industry. His pick, Ted McKinney, then the director of global corporate affairs for Elanco Animal Health, a division of pharma giant Eli Lilly, had previously been an executive on the government affairs team for seed/pesticide giant Dow AgroSciences.
Now Pence is the vice president-elect for the incoming Trump administration, which sorely needs to appoint a secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, the only open Cabinet slot. And McKinney, recently reappointed as director of Indiana’s agriculture department, has emerged as the latest in a long line of contenders du jour for the job, Politico reports.