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March
29, 2002 2:15 p.m. |
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resident
Bush ended months of Senate inaction this morning by giving Gerald
Reynolds a recess appointment to become head of the Department of
Education's civil-rights office, NRO has learned.
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Last July, Bush announced his intention to nominate Reynolds for the post, but it wasn't until last month that Reynolds actually received a hearing before a committee headed by Sen. Ted Kennedy. Since then, no vote has been scheduled to confirm Reynolds.
"There was no vote on the horizon, either," says an administration official.
If a vote were scheduled, Reynolds would be approved, assuming the likeliest scenario — every Republican backing him, along with independent Sen. Jim Jeffords — held true.
The recess appointment puts Reynolds in office at least until the end of 2003. "After the vote on Judge Pickering, the president wasn't prepared to lose another nominee he cares about," says the source.
Reynolds has been the object of controversy because of his affiliation with conservative organizations such as the Center for New Black Leadership and the Center for Equal Opportunity. All the usual left-wing groups opposed his nomination, but Senate Democrats never engaged his nomination with the vigor they applied to Eugene Scalia, a labor-department official who was made a recess appointment a few months ago. There was an initial effort to paint Reynolds as an enemy of Title IX — a cause dear to feminists — until it was learned that Reynolds in fact had never publicly stated any kind of opinion on the matter.
In the end, Kennedy appeared willing to let Reynolds languish without a confirmation vote. Bush understandably recognized this as an abuse of the Senate's "advise and consent" duty, and decided it was long past time to put his nominee in place.
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