Credit: The Colorado Observer

They say in politics that if you’re getting criticized by both sides, you must be doing something right. In the case of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, that piece of political wisdom doesn’t quite apply. The least popular Cabinet member — remember Ben Nighthorse Campbell told the Colorado Statesman that Salazar had a 16% approval rating — is taking incoming fire from both sides of the aisle for his ham-handed leadership of the Interior Department.

The right’s distaste for Salazar has been well documented on this site. But what’s newer, and growing, is a liberal campaign demanding Salazar’s resignation.

Last week, former Howard Dean campaign manager and Democratic consultant, Joe Trippi, tweeted out a link to a petition demanding Salazar’s resignation due to his incompetent management of the BLM’s wild horse program.

Per the petition, which has almost 20,000 signatures at the time of writing:

25,130 Americans asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to take responsibility and halt his Bureau of Land Management’s out of control wild horse program. He didn’t respond and now we’re calling on him to resign….

Ken Salazar has been a disappointment throughout his tenure as Interior Secretary, but his recent failure to adequately address allegations that his Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was complicit in the sale of 1,700 federally protected wild horses to a known kill buyer is unacceptable.

In September, a ProPublica report exposed Salazar’s BLM for selling “truckload upon truckload” of captured wild horses to the kill buyer, Tom Davis, who purchases U.S. horses and sells them to slaughterhouses in Mexico. Davis just happens to be a neighbor and business associate of Secretary Salazar and his ranching family in Colorado….

Even the White House responds to petitions with 25,000 or more signatures, but Secretary Salazar couldn’t manage to respond to our letter signed by 25,130 Americans in a reasonable amount of time.

As The Colorado Observer has detailed extensively, Salazar and the horse buyer, Tom Davis, go way back together, with them both going to the same small-town high school and Davis having done work on Salazar’s family farm.

The horse buying controversy was the same issue that caused Salazar to threaten to “punch out” a Colorado reporter a few weeks ago. Now we know why he was so hot and bothered by it — it could spell the end of his cabinet career.

Salazar has yet to detail his business and personal relationship with Tom Davis — a man under federal investigation. It looks like that’s not acceptable to a great many liberals.

With Salazar taking fire from both sides, how much longer can he last?