May 15, 2013 — Monica Medina, a former top aide to then-NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, for whom she shepherded the controversial catch share fishery management program into policy, her husband Ron Klain and seven other Washington heavy hitters held a big-ticket fund-raiser Tuesday night for Congressman Ed Markey to help fuel his Massachusetts U.S. Senate campaign against Republican Gabriel Gomez.
Medina resigned from NOAA last year to become a special assistant to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, but she also left the Pentagon shortly after Panetta for a position at the Wharton (business) School at the University of Pennsylvania .
Medina’s husband, attorney Ron Klain, was chief of staff for Vice President Joseph Biden and President Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore. He resigned from the White House post in 2011 to become president of Case Holdings, the holding company for the business and philanthropic interests of former AOL chairman Steve Case.
Medina was named by President Obama to head the transition team at NOAA, and despite a bar against interlocked nominations, after she helped pick Lubchenco to head the agency, Lubchenco named her a special assistant in charge of guiding the catch share policy into place. She was later promoted to be principle deputy undersecretary of oceans and atmosphere.
Markey was the only member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation with a district that opens to the sea not to support a catch share cutoff budget amendment jointly sponsored by Rep. John Tierney and then-Rep. Barney Frank. Written by Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, the bill barred spending on new catch share programs in the Atlantic and Gulf regions. It passed the House twice in 2012, but was killed in the Senate.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times