Shin Inouye
Shin Inouye, the White House press secretary whose portfolio has included agriculture and rural America, left that position Friday to become the press secretary and adviser for intergovernmental and external affairs at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security.

“I am sad to leave my wonderful colleagues at the White House, but I’m excited to take on this new challenge,” Inouye said in a note to reporters with whom he has worked.

Inouye’s involvement with agriculture and rural America began when he was a communications officer on the 2008 Obama for America campaign.

While rural America is viewed in political circles as largely Republican, the Barack Obama campaign decided that the opposition of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to both ethanol and the farm program, gave Obama an opening with those voters.

During the campaign, Inouye became the contact person for the agricultural and rural press while the McCain campaign grouped its farm effort with its support for gun owners, and was often difficult to reach. Exit polls showed that Obama got about 50 percent of the rural vote, which is relatively high for Democratic presidential candidates.

When Obama won the election and Inouye became the director of specialty media in the White House, he decided to make the agricultural and rural press part of his mandate.

As the first White House press secretary in memory with a direct responsibility to rural America, Inouye has kept agricultural and rural reporters informed about agricultural matters within the White House and also in agencies besides the Agriculture Department.

He has also arranged for members of the North American Agricultural Journalists to visit the White House, including tours of First Lady Michelle Obama’s kitchen garden and sessions with Sam Kass, the White House nutrition adviser, and other White House officials. Inouye also took time from his schedule to attend the annual North American Agricultural Journalists awards dinner.

Inouye’s mandate has not been limited to agriculture and rural America. He has also been responsible for White House contact with the gay and lesbian press, the Native American and Pacific Islander press, and publications devoted to veterans and military families and youth, college and faith issues.

Before Inouye joined the 2008 Obama campaign, he was the communications director for Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and the senior legislative communications associate at the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. He worked on the ACLU website and played a role in the ACLU’s Keep America Safe and Free campaign.

A native of Valley Stream, N.Y., Inouye is of Japanese heritage and lived in Tokyo for six years, moving there when he was 12 and attending a public Japanese middle school and an international high school. He is fluent in conversational Japanese and has written on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

He graduated with departmental honors from the Johns Hopkins University, with a degree in political science. While at Johns Hopkins, he co-founded the ACLU college chapter, was active in the campus gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender group and the campus labor movement.

Inouye is a past board member of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Japanese-American Citizens League and the Washington, D.C., chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, and was the at-large board member of AQUA (Asian/Pacific Islander Queers United for Action).

Inouye also held summer internships with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and with the Economist Group, Asia/Pacific Ltd. He now resides in Montgomery County, Md.