Neal McCaleb

Voices of Oklahoma

Neal McCaleb is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and a former George W. Bush administration official. Before his involvement in politics, McCaleb was a civil engineer and businessman. He served on the Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission from 1967 until 1972 when President Nixon appointed him to the National Council on Indian Opportunities. He was also a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1974 to 1982, and later was a presidential appointee on Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Indian Reservation Economics in the 1980s. McCaleb ran for Governor of Oklahoma in 1982 but lost the Republican primary. He was appointed Oklahoma’s first Secretary of Transportation by 1987, and from 1995 to 2001 he was the Director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and Director of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority. In 2001, George Bush appointed McCaleb to be the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs. After serving in the Bush administration, McNeal served as Ambassador at Large for the Chickasaw Nation.