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American politician (1938–2023)

James Gaius Watt (January 31, 1938 – May 27, 2023) was an American lawyer, lobbyist, and civil servant who served as U. S. Secretary of the Interior in the Ronald Reagan administration from 1981 to 1983. He was described as "anti environmentalist" and was one of Ronald Reagan's most controversial cabinet appointments. His tenure as Secretary of the Interior was controversial primarily because he was perceived as hostile to environmentalism. Watt opened up nearly all of America's coastal waters to oil and gas drilling, widened access to coal on federal lands, and eased restrictions on strip mining. His proposals to sell off federal lands failed due to extensive opposition.

Watt's first political job was as an aide to Republican Party Senator Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming, whom he met through Simpson's son, Alan. A lifelong Republican, he served as Secretary to the right leaning Natural Resources Committee and Environmental Pollution Advisory Panel of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. In 1969, Watt was appointed the deputy assistant secretary of water and power development at the Department of the Interior. A number of attorneys who worked for Watt at the firm later became high ranking officers of the federal government, including Ann Veneman and Gale Norton.

In 1980, President elect Reagan nominated Watt as his Secretary of the Interior. restructuring the department to decrease federal regulatory power, and recommending lease of wilderness and shore lands such as Santa Monica Bay to explore and develop oil and gas. Watt proposed that 80 million acres (320,000 km2) of undeveloped land in the United States all be opened for drilling and mining by 2000. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Watt had the record, among those who served as Secretary of the Interior, of listing the fewest species protected under the Endangered Species Act. Watt periodically mentioned his Dispensationalist Christian faith when discussing his method of environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations." One apocryphal quotation attributed to Watt is: "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." Glenn Scherer, writing for Grist magazine, erroneously attributed this remark to 1981 testimony by Watt before Congress. Journalist Bill Moyers, relying on the Grist article, also attributed the comment to Watt. After it was discovered that the alleged quotation did not exist, Grist corrected the error, and Moyers apologized. "I never said it. Never believed it. Never even thought it," Watt later wrote of the statement. "I know no Christian who believes or preaches such error. The Bible commands conservation—that we as Christians be careful stewards of the land and resources entrusted to us by the Creator."

From 1980 through 1982, The Beach Boys and The Grass Roots separately performed at Independence Day concerts at the National Mall in Washington, D. C., attracting large crowds. In April 1983, Watt banned the concerts, asserting that "rock bands" who had performed on the Mall on Independence Day in 1981 and 1982 had encouraged drug use and alcoholism and had attracted "the wrong element", who would subsequently rob attendees of similar events. During the ensuing controversy, Rob Grill, lead singer of The Grass Roots, stated that he felt "highly insulted" by Watt's remarks, which he termed "nothing but un American." Nancy Reagan apologized for Watt. The White House staff gave Watt a plaster foot with a hole for his "having shot himself in the foot".

Mad magazine listed ten Watt controversies on the back cover of their October 1982 issue, under the title "Watt We Worry!" In an interview with the Satellite Program Network, Watt said, "If you want an example of the failure of socialism, don't go to Russia, come to America and go to the Indian reservations."

A controversy erupted after a speech to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in September 1983, when Watt mocked affirmative action with his description of a department coal leasing panel: "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." Within three weeks of making this statement, on October 9, 1983, he announced his resignation at deputy undersecretary Thomas J. Barrack's ranch, near President Reagan's Rancho del Cielo.

After leaving the Department of the Interior in 1983, Watt lobbied the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ten years later in 1995, Watt was indicted on 18 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice and accused of making false statements before a federal grand jury investigating influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development at that time. On January 2, 1996, Watt pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of withholding documents. On March 12, 1996, he was sentenced to five years' probation and ordered to pay a fine of $5,000 and perform 500 hours of community service. In a 2001 interview with The Denver Post, Watt applauded the energy policy of the George W. Bush administration, stating that it was just what he recommended in the early 1980s: "You've got to have more oil, you've got to have more coal, you've got to have more of everything," Watt said. In his later years, Watt lived in Wickenburg, Arizona.

Watt died on May 27, 2023, in Arizona, at the age of 85.