Mike Leavitt

Leavitt has described the avian influenza virus as the most serious threat to American security. Secretary Leavitt cited the work of the World Health Organization's Dr. Michael McCoy as the most compelling scientific work into the avian flu threat. This encouraged Secretary Leavitt to mobilize the nation’s pandemic preparedness and led to the reconfiguring of the nation’s medical emergency plans.

In 2013, Leavitt partnered with former Utah First Lady Norma Matheson and businesswoman Gail Miller to launch "Count My Vote", a bipartisan effort to push for state electoral reform. Together, they successfully lobbied for a new law allowing open primary elections in Utah.

In August 2012, Politico reported Leavitt to be "creating a government-in-waiting plan for Mitt Romney" and "a lock for... White House chief of staff or Treasury secretary" in a potential Romney administration.

Leavitt also served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. In August 2007, Leavitt became the first cabinet-level blogger in U.S. history.

In June 2006, Leavitt came under criticism for using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Gulfstream III Emergency Response aircraft to, primarily, promote the newly reformed Medicare plan. Critics argue that Leavitt irresponsibly used the aircraft beginning in January 2006, logging over $700,000 worth of flight time in the 14-seat private jet. Leavitt’s office maintains that the use of the aircraft was necessary and legal since the Senate Appropriations Committee approved his use of the aircraft, and commercial services could not meet the deadlines required by his engagements.

On December 13, 2004, Leavitt was nominated by Bush to succeed Tommy Thompson as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and was confirmed by the Senate by voice vote on January 26, 2005.

On August 11, 2003, President George W. Bush nominated Leavitt as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency at a press conference in Aurora, Colorado. He was confirmed on October 28, 2003 by a vote of 88–8 in the United States Senate. On November 5, having resigned the governorship, Leavitt was sworn in as the 10th Administrator of the EPA.

In 2000, Leavitt became only the second governor in Utah history to be re-elected to a third term. As governor, he held leadership positions in national and regional organizations, such as the Council of State Governments, over which he presided for a year.

Leavitt's family charitable foundation, the Dixie and Anne Leavitt Foundation, was established by the Leavitt family in 2000, and the family has donated nearly $9 million of assets to it since. It has provided them with tax write-offs for the donated assets. About a third of the foundation's assets have been loaned back to family businesses, such as a $332,000 loan to Leavitt Land and Investment Inc., in which Leavitt has an interest. According to a 2006 National Public Radio report, these loans were legal because they were made at market rates. A month following the NPR report, Congress made such transactions illegal.

Leavitt came under strong criticism in 1998, while Governor, when asked why polygamy is not often prosecuted, he stated he was not sure, however "it may fall under religious freedoms." He was later forced to backpedal and claimed that polygamy should be against the law.

Leavitt was re-elected in 1996 with the largest vote total in state history. While Governor, he and Roy Romer of Colorado were the two key founders of Western Governors University in 1997, one of the first exclusively online schools in the nation. In addition to Leavitt and Romer, 17 other governors signed legislation creating the school as a non-profit private university.

A holiday fire shortly before noon on December 15, 1993, destroyed much of the Utah Governor's Mansion, but spared the lives of the first family and staff (Jacalyn Leavitt and some members of the family and staff were in the home at the time of the fire).

Leavitt first ran for governor in 1992. He had tough competition in the Republican Party primary from Richard Eyre who had more delegates vote for him at the state Republican convention. He defeated Independent Party candidate Merrill Cook and Democratic nominee Stewart Hanson in the general election, becoming the 14th Governor of the State of Utah.

In 1976, Leavitt assisted his father, then a Utah state senator, in an unsuccessful campaign for governor. He worked on a number of U.S. Senate campaigns through the 1980s for Jake Garn and Orrin Hatch.

Michael Okerlund Leavitt (born February 11, 1951) is an American politician who served as the 14th Governor of Utah from 1993 to 2003 in the Republican Party, as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2003 to 2005 and as Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2005 to 2009.