Mary Jo White easily cleared the first of two low hurdles today to becoming the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, while Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray moved toward a Congressional roadblock.
The Senate Banking Committee sent White’s nomination as a commissioner to the Senate on a near unanimous vote, with no Republican opposition for the remainder of former SEC Commissioner and Chairman Mary Schapiro’s term, which expires in June 2014.
President Obama has said he will elevate White, a former private securities lawyer and one-time U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to the SEC chairman once she is confirmed as a commissioner by the Senate.
The only senator who voted against her nomination, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, said he did it because there is too much Wall Street bias in the Obama administration.
Cordray was approved by the Banking Committee for a five-year term as CFPB head on a party-line vote. He now moves to a certain hold on the nomination in the full Senate by Republicans who are demanding that Congress be given authority to approve the budget of the regulator and have its governance led by a board before they will give the necessary votes to approve a director.
Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker said there have not been negotiations between the White House and Republicans to change the structure of the consumer bureau. While Corker voted against Cordray’s nomination, he was one of only a handful of Senate Republicans who did not sign a manifesto calling for changes in the agency before a director would be approved.
Cordray was appointed in January 2012 as CFPB head without Senate confirmation, but his appointment expired this January with the end of the past Senate term. An appellate court decision has challenged the constitutionality of Obama’s recess appointment of the former Ohio attorney general.
By the end of the year, the SEC should have a majority of new members with the addition of White and a successor to Republican, the SEC Troy Parades whose term is expiring this summer. The interim chairman, Democrat Elisse Walter has said she will leave the agency by the end of the year.