Before his appointment by former president Donald Trump to the EPA position,  Wheeler was a coal industry lobbyist with a reputation for being friendlier to industry than to the environment. Apart from greenlighting fracking in national parks, one of his controversial last decisions was to renew the licenses of three dicamba formulations belonging to BASF, Bayer and Syngenta for five years up to 2025.

The latter decision is currently being reviewed by the agency’s new head, Michael Regan, who was appointed last year by president Joe Biden. Regan is also reviewing the toxicity of the herbicide active ingredient.

In an open letter to Virginia state senators, the former EPA staffers wrote, “As EPA administrator, Mr. Wheeler pursued an extremist approach, methodically weakening EPA’s ability to protect public health and the environment, instead favoring polluters.”

Wheeler,” the letter continues, “also sidelined science at the agency, ignored both agency and outside experts, rolled back rules to cut greenhouse gases and protect the climate, and took steps to hamstring EPA and slow efforts to set the agency back on course after he left office.”

Youngkin’s office defended the appointment, saying that Wheeler is the right person for the job and was selected because he is “incredibly qualified and will deliver for all Virginians.” Democrats in the state legislature are pushing back against the nomination.

As well as the governership, the Republican Party won control of Virginia’s lower legislative chamber, House of Delegates, in the November 2020 election. While Democrats retain a 21-to-19 majority in the state’s Senate, they can only block the appointment if all of their senators vote against the governor’s pick. Scott A. Surovell, vice chairman of the Senate Democratic caucus, told US media it was unclear if the opposition had enough votes.

As an aside, Surovell noted that Virginia governors “tend not to propose people for these positions that are all that polarizing,” adding that, “I can’t think of a nominee in the last 20 years that has had the level of a controversial history as this guy does.”

The Virginia chapter of the venerable conservation advocacy lobby Sierra Club said called Wheeler’s nomination “dangerous and reckless.” Other environmental groups recalled Wheeler’s remarks that climate change “is not the greatest crisis facing the planet”

Under its former administrator, the EPA repeatedly rolled back legislation aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions that was passed under former president Barack Obama. The Biden administration has now reinstated some of these rules and is in the process of reinstating others.

The former EPA leader also sought to impede new anti-pollution regulations by trying to limit the kind of scientific studies the agency could consider when writing them. The limits were thrown out by a federal judge in early 2020. 

While Wheeler as state secretary would not have the power to influence national legislation as he did in his last job, he could hamper a number of efforts to make Virginia’s energy supply greener.  Environmentalists also fear that failing to control pollutants could endanger the recovery of water quality in the state’s Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Wheeler heads a pro-Trump think-tank

In September 2021, Andrew Wheeler was named chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for the Environment, a newly created pro-Trump think-tank. Commenting on the post, Wheeler said, “as we demonstrated during the Trump Administration, it is possible to have a clean environment without imposing government edicts or onerous, job-killing regulations.”

Youngkin won the governorship in part by opposing discussion of racial equality issues in state schools. But in his campaign, the former executive of private equity investor Carlyle Group presented himself as an independent thinker with no connections to the former US president’s controversial policies. In the meantime, he has nominated several energy industry titans to his cabinet.