Donald Paul Hodel

Donald Paul Hodel has served as president of the conservative Focus on the Family since April 2003.

A graduate of Harvard College and the University of Oregon Law School, Hodel has spent many years in a variety of high visibility government positions in the Reagan Administration. From 1981 to 1982 he served as Under Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior; from 1982 to 1985 he served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy; and from 1985 to 1989 he served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. He's also a member of the Council for National Policy Executive Committee and Board of Governors, and is a former president of the Christian Coalition.

Hodel previously served on Focus on the Family's Executive Board until 1998; former chairman, Independence Institute; founder and a Managing Director of Summit Group International, Ltd, including Summit Power Group; and was listed as Science Advisor for the global warming skeptic group Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.

He has served on many other energy company and public interest boards, including the Board of Directors of the Electric Power Research Institute and later its Advisory Council, American Electric Power, Columbia Gas (later Columbia Energy Group), MAPCO, Taylor Energy Company, and Texon Corporation with James Watt. Mr. Hodel has also served as Deputy Administrator and Administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration and as President of the National (now North American) Electric Reliability Council.

In 1995 joined the board of directors of the conservative publishing house Eagle Publishing, the parent company of Regnery Publishing.

He wrote a book called Crisis in the Oil Patch with Dallas-based business reporter Robert Deitz about how there should be less regulation of American oil companies.

Hodel and Christian Coalition spokesman Jeffrey Peyton purchased a liberal Virginia weekly newspaper in March 2000, The Charlottesville & Albemarle Observer, and revamped the paper to espouse a shrill, hard-right viewpoint. Circulation plummeted, and the Observer ceased publishing in August 2004. 

Books

 * Donald Paul Hodel and Robert Deitz, Crisis in the Oil Patch: How America's Energy Industry Is Being Destroyed and What Must Be Done to Save It, Regnery Publishing, March 1994. ISBN: 0895265028

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Banana Republicans
 * Banana Republicans: The Echo Chamber
 * Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (Hodel was listed as a Science Advisor)
 * Christian Coalition
 * Council for National Policy
 * Eagle Publishing
 * Focus on the Family
 * Independence Institute
 * National Wilderness Institute (Wise Use; on advisory board)
 * Salem Communications (director)

External resources

 * "Eagle Management Corporate Management" accessed October 2004.