Thursday, July 13, 2023: Julie Su Nomination Is Now Dead
However, White House is Actively Attempting Defibrillation to Revive the Nomination
Three things happened in quick succession last Thursday.
FIRST, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) issued a statement explicitly announcing that he will NOT support President Biden’s nomination of Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su to become the next U.S. Secretary of Labor. Senator Manchin’s announcement then immediately placed the nomination in extreme peril.
As a result of Senator Manchin’s announcement, the informal vote tally then sat at:
- 47-Yea
- 50-Nay (all 49 Republicans + Manchin),
- 2 Independents (Krysten Sinema and Angus King) not voting; and
- 1 Democrat not voting
Ms. Su needs, of course, a majority of U.S. Senators present and voting for her Nomination to be Confirmed. However, if Senator Schumer could “twist the arms” of the three “fence sitters” to vote for Ms. Su, he would arrive at a 50-50 tie. If so, Senator Schumer could then summons Vice President Harris to arrive in the Senate Chamber to exercise her right (wearing her other hat as the President of the U.S. Senate) to cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of President Biden’s Cabinet nominee.
For the record, here is Senator Manchin’s stated rationale for opposing Julie Su’s nomination:
“‘I believe the person leading the U.S. Department of Labor should have the experience to collaboratively lead both labor and industry to forge compromises acceptable to both parties,’” Manchin said.
“‘While her credentials and qualifications are impressive, I have genuine concerns that Julie Su’s more progressive background prevents her from doing this and for that reason[,] I cannot support her nomination to serve as Secretary of Labor.’”
Second, (and this is the real news) in response to the Manchin announcement, The White House announced that Senator Sinema (I-AZ) (a former Democrat until December of last year…important to the story), was also opposed to Julie Su’s Nomination. That was NOT previously known as Senator Sinema was on the public record of having not decided and has a policy, her spokesperson explained, of not revealing her position before a Senate vote. If the White House’s announcement of Senator Sinema’s opposition is true, as the passage of time has now confirmed it to be, the Manchin/Sinema announcements together just killed Julie Su’s nomination with an informal vote count that would look like this:
- 47-Yea
- 51-Nay (all 49 Republicans + Manchin (term ends in 2024, but has not announced his plans to run or retire) + Sinema (up for re-election in 2024)),
- 1 Independent [King (I-ME)] vote undeclared (up for re-election in 2024); and
- 1 Democrat [Jon Tester (D-MT)] vote undeclared (up for re-election in 2024]
Here is what happened with the Sinema outing. Following Manchin’s announcement, Politico reporters reached out to the White House for comment. The White House let the “cat out of the bag” that Senator Sinema was opposed to Julie Su’s nomination. That was not known until the White House reported Senator Sinema’s position since the Senator had not publicly reported her position. According to Politico:
“A White House official on Thursday said President Joe Biden would continue to fight for Su’s confirmation, calling his support for her “unwavering.” ‘We hope,’ the official added, ‘Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema reconsider their position.’”
The official’s comments came just minutes after Senator Manchin announced he would oppose Ms. Su’s nomination, suggesting the White House knew that Senator Manchin’s announcement was coming and that it had carefully prepared a response.
Note 1: Note the verb in the last sentence from the White House comment to Politico: “reconsider.”
Note 2: As of this writing, updated through Noon Monday EASTERN time (the WIR’s last, last deadline), Senator Sinema has NOT corrected the White House’s statement despite the passage of time since Thursday afternoon, all day Friday, the two-day weekend, and half of today (Monday) for the Senator to have done so.
Note 3: The White House has NOT retracted its statement to Politico.
So, here’s the picture to summarize where we are at with the Su Nomination:
The White House “Took the Gloves Off” and Purposely “Outed” Senator Sinema
Senator Sinema has been publicly undeclared on the Julie Su vote until the White House announcement last Thursday of the Senator’s position. The White House publicly announced Senator Sinema’s opposition obviously as a “controlled leak.” Such “outings” are not uncommon in Washington D.C. political wars. Such outings occur when the leaker’s back is against the wall on a policy issue and the leaker feels that public opinion may offer the leaker better momentum and a last-minute surge opportunity to reverse its currently losing position. So, let’s see what happened next as the THIRD Thursday event in this “inside the beltway” political drama.
Third, Politico reported that Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said in an interview on Thursday that he will support the Julie Su nomination. Senator Kelly had previously also been mum on his support of Julie Su until last Thursday. Do you now see the orchestration around this confirmation vote? You can now expect that The White House will work through Senator Kelly to bring pressure within Arizona political channels on Senator Sinema to flip her position and support Julie Su at long last. The White House is not giving up despite the fact that the score is against it and regulation time has expired. The White House has nonetheless self-declared an “overtime.” So, the drama continues.
Meanwhile, the other “fence sitters” [Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Angus King (I-ME)], have still not indicated publicly how they would vote. Now, they do not need to do so: there is no vote on the Senate Floor, nor is one likely absent a Republican defection or a Manchin or Sinema about-face.
So Why All the Political Fuss and White House Drama Over Julie Su?
After all, few outside of California ever heard of Julie Su before President Biden nominated her earlier this year to be the next Secretary of Labor to replace Marty Walsh who resigned spur-of the-moment in anger at the White House? Julie Su had earlier very begrudgingly become Secretary Walsh’s Deputy at the U.S. Department of Labor only after she had waged a long, fierce and unsuccessful battle to beat Marty Walsh to the Secretary of Labor appointment. In the process, Julie Su rallied all of the nationwide Asian-American civil rights groups on her behalf pitting them noisily against the unions supporting Marty Walsh: a Democrat President’s nightmare.
If the White House’s outing of Senator Sinema was deliberate–as it very much appears was the case, even at the risk of further offending Senator Sinema and estranging her further from Democrats—it very much shows:
(a) the desperation of an exasperated White House to confirm no less than a Cabinet Member to the President’s staff, and
(b) that 2024 election positioning is already playing out in Washington D.C. and affecting even major White House policy initiatives. NOTE: The White House backs Julie Su primarily because she is the face of its political strategy to woo Asian-Americans to the Democrat Party. Also, there are two very delicate timing problems for the White House in all of this.
First, the White House is preparing to unleash a political strategy for its 2024 Presidential and Democrat party platform focusing again on racial/national origin/gender “identity politics” …with a major sub-focus on Asian-Americans (and women, of course…especially given the Roe reversal).
Second, The White House’s interest in Julie Su is also particularly important at this moment in history in the minds of White House political strategists. This is because of the Democrat’s decision to support racial and national origin “quotas” in response to the Harvard/UNC SCOTUS case decision. However, a very broad base of Asian-Americans fiercely oppose quotas, were a driving legal, political and monetary source of support for the lawsuits against Harvard and UNC, and unconditionally support merit decision-making.
The vast majority of Asian-Americans are strongly culturally and politically opposed to race and national-origin based government decision-making. After all, there are tens of thousands of Asian-Americans still alive today who were among the 120,000+ Japanese Americans on the West Coast the federal government declared to be “enemy-aliens,” including U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, only because of their Japanese ancestry. The U.S. Department of the Army interned all West-Coast persons of Japanese Ancestry (although not Germans or Italians), without hearings or trials, from early 1942 by Executive Order 9066. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Order on February 19, 1942.
And Chinese Americans fared little better if not worse since Chinese immigrants lived through a century of violent racist attacks, lawful killings from Seattle to San Diego, intolerable working conditions, forced relocations and forced segregation in all facets of society. See the Library of Congress’ report titled “Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History”, for example. (The Chinatowns in many major inner cities in the U.S. are living memorials to that segregation…including a majestic Chinatown in downtown Washington D.C. within sight of both The White House and the U.S. Capitol).
So, the Biden White House is trying to salvage at least the statement to the Asian- American Community that it had “pulled out every stop” in its power to get an Asian-American appointed to a Cabinet position in the Biden Administration. The outing of Senator Sinema’s opposition to Julie Su’s nomination is thus the second to the “last ditch effort” to get Julie Su nominated by letting Senator Sinema’s Arizona liberal constituents know that the Senator was opposed to Julie Su.
You do not need to be a student of political science to know that the “very last-ditch effort” the White House will unleash to salvage the Julie Su nomination is to increase the political pressure on Senator Sinema. The White House will not stop until either: (a) Senator Sinema breaks and changes her mind, or (b) the White House can say to Asian-American leaders that it is beyond cavil that President Biden never gave up in his quest on behalf of Asian-Americans and did everything possible to resuscitate Julie Su’s nomination.
Ms. Su Remains Acting Secretary for Foreseeable Future
Last week, we reported that House Education & Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) sought a formal opinion from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) as to how long Ms. Su may legally serve as Acting Secretary of Labor. Ms. Su has been the Acting Secretary of Labor since former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh left the Department of Labor on March 11, 2023. Earlier, she had become the Deputy Secretary of Labor following her Senate confirmation for that role on July 13, 2021.
Prior to last week, we most recently wrote about the continuing Su nomination drama here on June 12, 2023. (For further, recent discussion on this nomination and other pending nominations, see our story here.)