Product Safety Nomination In Trouble
By Caroline E. Mayer and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 1, 2001; Page A01
President Bush's choice to oversee federal consumer protection efforts has touched off an unexpectedly fierce Senate confirmation battle, with both sides predicting a committee will reject the nominee on Thursday despite the White House's full-throated defense of her yesterday.
The fight over the relatively obscure post -- Bush is seeking to elevate Mary Sheila Gall to chairman of the three-member Consumer Product Safety Commission, on which she already serves -- has developed into a proxy war with higher stakes. Although Bush endured the withdrawal of Linda Chavez as his choice to head the Labor Department and a bitter confirmation struggle for Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, Gall would be the administration's first nominee to be defeated in the Senate.
The battle has a combination of combustible elements: Democrats eager to portray the Bush administration as indifferent to child safety, a White House offering a spirited defense of Gall and accusing Democrats of rank partisanship, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) leading the opposition.
Democrats opposing Gall see in her a potentially potent campaign issue. Gall has voted against federal efforts to regulate baby walkers, baby bath seats and bunk beds, contending at times that children's injuries were largely due to parental misuse.
The White House and its Republican allies accuse Democrats of opposing Gall for reasons of partisanship, not policy. She was renominated to the commission by President Bill Clinton without Democratic objection in 1999 -- after some of her controversial votes -- and she has the backing of one Democratic commissioner.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush "stands proudly and tall behind Mary Gall's nomination," and portrayed the battle as a test of the Democratic Senate.
"If the Senate were to vote no, it would be a real sign that this Senate, this new Senate, is more interested in partisanship than progress, because after all, they'll all have flip-flopped on the very same person," he said.
While offering their first robust public defense of Gall, White House officials were working privately yesterday to find a way to strip the chairmanship of the agency from Ann Brown without congressional action. Brown is a Democrat and is close to Hillary Clinton, leading Republicans to believe that Democrats' real motive is to keep Brown in charge of the commission.
White House officials said they were surprised by the vehemence of the opposition to Gall. A senior Bush adviser said that while those selecting Gall "understood [Brown's] relationship with Senator Clinton," they nevertheless believed Gall "would once again sail through" the Senate because of her past confirmations.
GOP aides said they expect a party-line vote in the Commerce Committee, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has said he will not seek a full Senate vote if the committee rejects Gall. Republicans yesterday were contemplating procedural maneuvers to force a full Senate vote in the fall.
Bush has other difficulties with his nominees in the Senate. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has held up Kenneth Dam, Bush's choice to be the Treasury Department's No. 2 official, and Democrats have concerns about John D. Negroponte and Otto Reich, Bush's choices for U.N. ambassador and assistant secretary of state, respectively.
Senate rejection of a presidential nominee is unusual. The Democratic Senate has cleared other ideologically controversial Bush nominees, most recently John Graham to be the top regulatory official at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
"There have been more controversial people nominated and people pending who are more controversial," said Paul Light, a Brookings Institution expert on the nominating process. "This is a signal, saying to the administration, 'Be careful who you nominate.' "
In part, that's because Democrats believe they have traction in their battle against Gall, even though Graham was opposed by labor unions, public interest groups and environmentalists. "With Gall, we're dealing with killer toys, which is easier to understand," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).
Gall's supporters have been unable to locate a single Democratic backer of the nominee, Republican Senate aides said, and she has yet to win promises of support from Republicans on the committee such as Peter Fitzgerald (Ill.) in advance of its vote on Thursday.
"She's in trouble," said Fred Smith, head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a supporter of Gall. "She may well be a sacrifice."
The controversy is drawing unusual attention to the 500-employee product-safety commission and Gall's 10-year tenure there.
Gall said last week her record shows "someone committed to consumer protection," noting that she voted with the commission majority more than 90 percent of the time.
However, in 1994, Gall cast the lone vote against regulating baby walkers, which had been linked to thousands of emergency room visits a year. Noting that an equal number of babies who were not in walkers also were injured falling down stairs, Gall said the fault was with parents who failed to close a door or install a gate.
That same year, Gall also voted against banning baby bath seats, arguing that babies had drowned because parents left children unattended. Two months ago, when the commission reconsidered regulating the seats, Gall changed her views, saying new evidence showed some seats tipped over and caused near-drownings even when parents were on hand.
She also cast the only vote against setting new safety standards for bunk beds, saying the industry had already substantially complied in making beds safer.
Republican backers of Gall, while noting that they have a public relations battle in defending her positions -- "crummy," is how one GOP aide described them -- plan to make an issue of Democratic partisanship. They note that during the confirmation hearings the CPSC's former executive director, Pamela Gilbert, appeared on the dais reserved for Senate staff. "It was inappropriate," Republican staff director Mark Buse said.
Gilbert said yesterday that "I wasn't there as a Democrat, but to lend my expertise." She said she was on the dais for only a few minutes, leaving immediately after she realized she wasn't supposed to be there. |
