Biden taps veteran Gina Ortiz Jones to be Air Force Undersecretary

Gina Ortiz Jones, left, with her mother, who raised her daughter as a single-mom.

After narrowly losing both of her bids for Congress to represent a sprawling district in Texas, Gina Ortiz Jones has landed a new job as Undersecretary for the Air Force.

Her nomination was announced Tuesday by the White House.

If Jones had won her a Congressional seat in 2018 or 2020, she would have been the first Filipina American in Congress and the first openly gay representative from Texas.

Prior to entering the rough-and-tumble world of politics, Jones served for three years as an intelligence officer in the Air Force and served time in Iraq. 

After her military service, she continued to work in intelligence at a private consulting firm and several federal departments, including the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Since her loss in 2020, Jones has remained active on social media with innocuous posts about voter registration or where to get vaccine shots. She has also used social media to denounced the attacks against Filipino Americans and other AAPI communities. 

Some of her tweets criticizing Texas politicians may come back to haunt her in the nomination process. Texas' two right-wing Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn have not announced whether they would vote for Jones' nomination.

Republican senators with thin skins and long memories have used critical social media posts to stall votes for Vanita Gupta for Associate Deputy for the DOJ and Neera Tanden's nomination to direct the Office of Management and Justice. Gupta narrowly won approval in the evenly divided Senate and Tanden withdrew her nomination when it became apparent that she didn't have the votes.

The undersecretary is the No. 2 post for the Air Force and is “responsible for the affairs of the Department of the Air Force, to include organizing, training, equipping and providing for the welfare of approximately 697,000 active duty, Guard, Reserve and civilian Airmen and Guardians and their families worldwide,” according to the Air Forcce.

“From deploying to Iraq to working hard for Texas families, Gina Ortiz Jones’s life of public service has consistently reflected the best of San Antonio," San Antonio Congressman Joaquin Castro wrote in a Facebook post. "I know she’ll continue to make our hometown proud in the United States Air Force leadership."