An Oregonian with deep ties to state politics is slated to be the head of the federal Indian Health Service.

Mark Cruz, a member of the Klamath Tribes who grew up in Klamath Falls, was confirmed to a four-year term in the job in a 51-47 vote of the U.S. Senate on Friday. Cruz’s nomination was included in a resolution approving nearly 75 nominees of President Donald Trump — one of the Senate’s last items of business before heading into an August recess.

With the vote, Cruz will become the 12th Senate-confirmed leader of the IHS, which provides federal healthcare to American Indians and native Alaskans. That’s not too dissimilar from the job he’s held for the last year, acting as a senior advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on tribal matters.

Cruz has said he plans to keep on as a Kennedy advisor, even as he takes the helm at the IHS, which is under the secretary’s purview. He told a Senate committee during his June 24 confirmation hearing that the expanded role would allow him to advocate “even more ferociously” for tribal interests.

“I see them as very complementary,” Cruz said at the time. “The IHS director is an important advocate for Indian country within the department, and I think that both are achievable and they’re not mutually exclusive.”

Cruz is on his second tour in the Trump administration, having worked on tribal issues within the U.S. Department of the Interior during the president’s first term.

But after Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Cruz returned to Oregon to serve as chief of staff to then-House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby. He continued in the role under Minority Leader Vikki Breese-Iverson when Drazan left the House to run for governor in 2022.

His three-year span in the job included notable dramas between Oregon Republicans and Democrats, including a heated battle over redistricting and the state’s longest-ever Republican boycott of the Capitol.

Cruz left state employment to become a lobbyist in 2023 before being tapped last year to work for Kennedy.

Cruz is one of at least four Oregonians nominated by Trump during his second term — and has reason to hope his experience is better than two of the others.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a former Happy Valley mayor who served one term in the U.S House of Representatives, stepped down as Trump’s labor secretary in April after a checkered year on the job.

That appeared to doom the prospects of another Oregonian, former Senate Minority Leader Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, who’d been nominated by Trump to serve as an assistant labor secretary. Trump rescinded that nomination not long after Chavez-DeRemer resigned.

Another former longtime Oregonian nominated during Trump’s second term, George Glass, serves as ambassador to Japan.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/08/07/oregonian-klamath-tribes-member-mark-cruz-indian-health-service/