A couple of weeks after announcing his retirement from Gov. Roy Cooper’s Cabinet, Erik Hooks is in line for a top federal emergency management post.
President Biden nominated Hooks Tuesday to serve as deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That’s FEMA’s No. 2 job. It requires Senate confirmation.
Hooks announced earlier this month that he would retire Aug. 1 from his state job as secretary of the Department of Public Safety. Hooks also had served as the state’s homeland security adviser.
As head of DPS, he helped oversee North Carolina’s response to hurricanes, violence in understaffed prisons, mob teardowns of Confederate statues on public property, last summer’s riots and protests, and the COVID pandemic.