Democrats Save Trump's Labor Secretary Nominee In Committee

Lori Chavez-DeRemer faced GOP opposition and wouldn't have made it out of a Senate committee without their votes.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Labor Department, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, advanced out of a Senate committee on Thursday — thanks to Democrats lending their votes to her nomination.

By a vote of 14-9, Chavez-DeRemer cleared the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions panel. The committee has 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats, meaning if every Republican votes yes and every Democrat votes no, a nominee will advance. Typically, senators in the party of the president vote to advance all of the president’s top picks, while senators in the other party oppose some nominees to varying degrees.

But in Chavez-DeRemer’s case, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) bucked Trump and voted no. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) missed the vote, but later requested that she be recorded as a “yes.” If every Democrat had voted no, Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination would have ended in the committee, by a vote of 11-12.

But three Democrats voted to advance her nomination to the Senate floor, meaning they were key to keeping her nomination alive. They were Sens. Maggie Hassan (N.H.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.) and Tim Kaine (Va.).

Their support for Chavez-DeRemer — and the fact that they just saved her nomination — flies in the face of progressive groups that have been urging Democrats to oppose all of Trump’s nominees and use every procedural tool possible to stop the president’s reckless dismantling of the federal government and likely illegal mass firings of civil servants.