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Of all the people Scott Pruitt took with him to Washington and the Environment Protection Agency, Ken Wagner was the one who kept his name out of the news.

He’s also the one who was still working for the EPA right up until this week, when he joined Gov. Kevin Stitt’s administration as the nominee for secretary of energy and environment.

A Tahlequah native who practiced law in Tulsa for two decades, Wagner knows some people may be put off by his association with Pruitt’s brief, controversial tenure as EPA director. The two have known each other since the early 1990s and at one time were investors in Oklahoma City’s minor league baseball team. Pruitt was at one time associated with Wagner’s law firm.

But Wagner says he wasn’t involved in the decisions that hastened Pruitt’s downfall. He says he’s not an ideologue and is committed to one thing: solving problems.

“I didn’t go to the EPA with a policy agenda,” Wagner said in a phone interview last week. “I’m a people person who believed he could bring people together.”