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Although the push to confirm Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau failed, Democrats appear to gaining political ground and successfully portraying Republicans as too tied to Wall Street.
December 8 -
The result sets up the possibility of a recess appointment by President Obama or a series of additional Senate votes on Cordray in 2012.
December 8 -
The battle between Democrats and Republicans over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will come to a head this week when Senate Democrats hold a vote — expected to fail — on the confirmation of the bureau's first director. But observers said the vote, which is likely to be the first of many, plays into a White House strategy of painting Republicans as anti-consumer protection, and friends of Wall Street.
December 5
WASHINGTON — During Thursday's vote on the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Senate largely divided into the blue team and the red team.
Republicans hobnobbed with their fellow GOPers, while Democrats rubbed shoulders with their own party brethren.
And then there was Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe.
Like a party of one, she wandered across the Senate floor, embraced by neither the Democrats nor her fellow Republicans. This seemed appropriate, because Snowe didn't join most Republicans in voting no, or with the Democrats in voting yes. Instead she was the only senator to vote present, placing herself on a political island.
Snowe, of course, has long been known as a moderate Republican. She voted for the Dodd-Frank Act, which created the consumer bureau, and then maintained a good relationship with its primary architect, Elizabeth Warren.
But earlier this year, facing pressure from her right flank, she joined almost all of her Senate Republican colleagues in signing a letter vowing to block any CFPB nominee unless changes were made to the bureau's structure.
Snowe is up for reelection next fall, but she can't be sure yet whether the tougher test will come from a Republican primary challenger or from a Democrat in the general election.
After Thursday's vote, her office issued a statement saying that she voted present because her husband, former Maine Gov. John McKernan, is president of a for-profit education company that earns money from private student lenders.
Given that the CFPB cannot regulate the student lending industry until it has a director, Snowe said that she didn't want to give the perception that she was opposing stricter regulation of her husband's firm.
But none of those facts about her husband's business interests had changed since May, when Snowe signed the letter vowing to block any CFPB nominee.
In short, the CFPB has left Snowe in a political no-man's-land. It's no wonder she found herself all alone on Thursday.
