Tanden withdraws as Biden’s pick to head budget office
Was the first lawyer to head the Urban League
WASHINGTON – Neera Tanden, President Joe Biden’s controversial pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, withdrew from consideration Tuesday after her confirmation collapsed last week, dealing Biden his first major blow in his nominations to the Cabinet.
Biden in a statement said Tanden had withdrawn her nomination and said he still “look(ed) forward to hav
ing her serve in a role in my Administration.”
Tanden led the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress for a decade, during which she gained a reputation as a partisan warrior who frequently targeted Republican lawmakers on Twitter and feuded with progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Tanden, a seasoned Democratic operative, gained an outpouring of support for her nomination from outside groups, including the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce and labor groups, but her trail of abrasive tweets targeted at members of both parties may have torpedoed her confirmation.
In a letter from Tanden withdrawing her nomination sent out by the White House, she said “it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation.”
As OMB director, Tanden would have become the first woman of color and first South Asian person to lead the powerful executive office and had an outsized role in shaping the Biden’s administration’s domestic policy.
Her nomination began to unravel after Sen. Joe Manchin, a key moderate Democrat, said he would not support her nomination, triggering a string of Republicans to announce they would also vote against her.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Senate panels tasked with vetting her candidacy, last week postponed their planned votes saying senators needed more time to consider her nomination amid bipartisan conversations between lawmakers.
Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio, John Cornyn of Texas, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, announced they would oppose her confirmation, citing her previous partisan statements. Collins and Romney were considered among a group of Republicans who might throw their support behind Tanden.
Although a final Senate vote on her nomination had not been scheduled, Tanden needed at least one Republican senator to break in her favor due to the upper chamber’s 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats. Vice President Kamala Harris would have cast a potential tie-breaking vote to secure the simple majority needed for confirmation.
Tanden, who burnished her reputation as a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton and later played a key role in the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, faced a bruising confirmation process in which she was forced to repeatedly apologize after Republicans skewered her over previous statements about their colleagues.
She also acknowledged she removed more than 1,000 tweets from her account before she was nominated as OMB director, a decision Collins said “raises concerns about her commitment to transparency.”
Democrats have pointed out that Republicans outraged by Tanden’s confrontational tweets have gone out of their way to sidestep Twitter attacks by former President Donald Trump.
Tanden has also draw ire from the left, where her strained relationship with Sanders led some progressives to question her nomination. Sanders, who chairs the Senate Budget committee, one of two panels tasked with overseeing her confirmation, pointedly grilled Tanden about past “vicious attacks” made against him and and other progressives.
ATLANTA – Vernon Jordan, who rose from humble beginnings in the segregated South to become a champion of civil rights before reinventing himself as a Washington insider and corporate influencer, died Monday night, relatives said Tuesday. He was 85 years old.
After serving as field secretary for the Georgia NAACP and executive director of the United Negro College Fund, he headed the National Urban League, becoming the face of Black America’s modern struggle for jobs and justice for more than a decade. He was nearly killed by a racist’s bullet in 1980 before transitioning to business and politics.
His friendship with Bill Clinton took them both to the White House. Jordan was an unofficial aide to Clinton, drawing him into controversy during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Jordan “never gave up on his friends or his country,” Clinton said Tuesday.
Jordan “brought his big brain and strong heart to everything and everybody he touched. And he made them better,” Clinton and his wife, Hillary, said in a statement.
Former President Barack Obama said that “like so many others, Michelle and I benefited from Vernon Jordan’s wise counsel and warm friendship – and deeply admired his tireless fight for civil rights.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday on Twitter that “Jordan’s
leadership took our nation closer to its Founding promise: all are created equal.”
Jordan’s death comes months after the deaths of civil rights icons U.S. Rep. John Lewis and C.T. Vivian.
After growing up in the Jim Crow South and living much of his life in a segregated America, Jordan took a strategic view of race issues.
“My view on all this business about race is never to get angry, no, but to get even,” Jordan said in a New York Times interview in 2000. “You don’t take it out in anger; you take it out in achievement.”
Jordan was the first lawyer to head the Urban League, which had traditionally been led by social workers. Under his leadership, the Urban League added 17 more chapters, and its budget swelled to more than $100 million. The organization also broadened its focus to include
voter registration drives and conflict resolution between Blacks and law enforcement.
He resigned from the Urban League in 1982 to become a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld.
His friendship with Clinton, which began in the 1970s, evolved into a partnership and political alliance. He met Clinton as a young politician in Arkansas, and the two connected over their Southern roots and poor upbringings.
Although Jordan held no official role in the Clinton White House, he was highly influential and had such labels as the “first friend.” He approached Colin Powell about becoming secretary of state and encouraged Clinton to approve the NAFTA agreement in 1993. Jordan also secured a job at Revlon for Lewinsky, a White House intern whose sexual encounters with the president spawned a scandal.