Yahoo Finance Trump set to make 80-year-old billionaire US ambassador to Ireland
Donald Trump’s administration is set to announce the nomination of Edward F. Crawford, an 80-year-old billionaire from Ohio, as the new US ambassador to Ireland, according to Irish media reports. The post has been vacant since the US president took office in January 2017.
The nomination, which Irish state broadcaster RTÉ said was approved by Ireland’s cabinet on 12 September, will be seen as a boost to US–Irish relations, following the abrupt cancellation of Trump’s planned November 2018 visit to Ireland earlier this week.
US presidents typically reward supporters with ambassadorial posts, and this one is no different. Crawford, a self-styled “serial entrepreneur,” led Trump’s fundraising efforts in Ohio in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and called the candidate a “positive leader” who was going to help the country make the changes necessary to put the country “back on track.”
Up until earlier this year, he was chairman and CEO of Park Ohio Holdings (PKOH) , a supply chain management outsourcing company with annual sales in excess of $1.4 billion (£1 billion).
Like most US ambassadors to Ireland, Crawford has Irish roots: two grandparents emigrated from County Cork. Upon receiving the 2014 ‘Person of the Year’ award from the Mayo Society of Greater Cleveland, he was described as someone committed to a “balanced life of commercial activity, civic responsibility, and political action” and as “a man who knows what to do with his time and money.”
In Cleveland, he was intimately involved in a project that saw the restoration of the city’s Irish cultural garden, which celebrates the city’s cultural heritage and includes a replica of a fountain Crawford saw in a park near Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral on a business trip.
Reece Smyth, a Texan diplomat, has served as the US embassy in Ireland’s most senior official since the post of ambassador was vacated. In 2017, it was reported that Brian P. Burns, an 82-year-old Irish-American philanthropist, would be appointed ambassador. Ill health, however, forced him to withdraw his name from consideration.
The long period of vacancy of the post was cited as a key issue for Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar to raise when he met Trump in Washington for St Patrick’s Day in March. Under president Barack Obama, both the late Dan Rooney, the former chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and lawyer Kevin O’Malley served in the post.
After Trump makes the nomination, Crawford will appear before the US senate’s foreign relations committee for a confirmation hearing. If approved there, a full vote on his nomination will happen on the floor of the full senate.
