Rita Merritt, a Boston fisherman's daughter in a family fishing business in North Carolina and a broadly respected two-term member of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, has been dumped by the Obama administration despite overwhelming support for her reappointment up and down the coast.
And the refusal to reappoint Merritt echoes a cycle of purges last year in New England and the Mid-Atlantic regions, when Obama appointees began building boards of ideological allies, who would be voting stamps of approval for policies such as the catch shares regulatory system.
Reaction to the decision to replace Merritt — the preferred candidate of Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue, North Carolina's two U.S. senators, its coastal congressmen, state fisheries' officials and industry groups from as far off away as the Florida Keys — has ranged from incredulous to furious.
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