Wednesday, May 25, 2022: EEOC Commissioner Nominee Failed to Secure U.S. Senate Confirmation: Political Drama About To Unfold
Kalpana Kotagal, nominee for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “failed to report favorably” during her hearing before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. President Biden had hoped that Kotagal, a Democrat, would shift the majority to blue when taking the seat of Commissioner Dhillon (Republican) when her term expires July 1, 2022.
Under an agreement between Republicans and Democrats operating when there is no majority for either party in the United States Senate (as has been the case since early January 2020 following the 2020 Presidential and Senate Elections) the Majority Leader of the Senate comes from the party of the President resident in the White House at the time. (This is why, for example, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is the Senate Majority Leader of a 100 Member U.S. Senate divided evenly between the two parties (48 Democrats and 2 Independents (who caucus with the Democrats) vs 50 Republican Senators).
Another part of the agreement requires Senate Committees to be staffed evenly between Democrats and Republicans, even while being chaired by a Senator from the same party as the Senate Majority Leader. This even-voting pattern thus allows for the phenomenon of equal party-line votes which do not have the requisite majority to pass a Presidential Nominee out of the Committee (as happened with Ms. Kotagal’s nomination).
Yet another part of that same Republican/Democrat agreement allows the Senate Majority Leader the privilege, should he choose to use it, to reach down into Committees and rescue stalled Presidential Nominees, like Ms. Kotagal, to bring them up to the Senate for a full Senate Floor Vote (to thus bring an end to the Senate’s Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 constitutional right of “advice and consent” as to certain Presidential Nominees (like Ms. Kotagal) to serve in the federal government.
Thus far, Senator Schumer has rescued all the President’s Nominees stranded by party-line Committee votes and has brought them up for a full Senate Floor Vote if he thought the Nominee had a chance to pass a full vote on the Senate Floor. (Senator Schumer has also rescued and brought up as well from a stalled Committee vote a few Nominees who eventually failed on the Senate Floor despite the Senator’s pre-vote headcount).
Also, so far, Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have voted with the Democrats on almost all Nominee votes on the Senate Floor, even while routinely breaking with their fellow Democrats on left-wing Democratic policy issues.
Senator Schumer will now “count heads” in the U.S. Senate to see if he can muster at least the fifty votes needed to force a tie-vote and then cause Vice President Kamala Harris to cast the needed tie-breaker vote in favor of Ms. Kotagal’s Nomination. But, if any Democrat or Independent Senator balks at Ms. Kotagal’s Nomination, for whatever reason, and no Republicans “reach across the aisle” to vote in favor of her Nomination, her Nomination will either then languish or the President will withdraw it.
We are thinking that Ms. Kotagal’s Nomination will proceed and she will, eventually, be sworn into office. The President will exert great pressure on his fellow Democrats in the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of Ms. Kotagal. Democrats think the EEOC is an important political platform for them to use to rally their voting base by promising to save Black, Hispanic, and Disabled voters, in particular, from alleged unlawful discrimination at the hands of what party propaganda will describe as money-hungry corporations trampling individual statutory rights.
Also, the White House hopes to woo women to the Democrat party by focusing on the passage of corporate pay reporting obligations into law through the EEOC and using the EEOC to help find women who are victims of unlawful pay discrimination the Democrats hope to remedy and to save them from further inequality. Also, the White House plans to use the EEOC, once in the control of Democrats with its next nominee to the EEOC (which it hopes is Ms. Kotagal), as a messaging platform to the LGBTQ community through continuous EEOC public service announcements reminding the community that the Biden EEOC is protecting LGBTQ rights against corporate employers allegedly unlawfully discriminating against them.
So, a lot “is on the line” as to the Kotagal Nomination in the view of Democrats running the federal government. Should July 1, 2022, come and go, and if the U.S. Senate has not by then voted to confirm a Presidential Nominee to be a Member of the five-Member Commission, Republican Commissioner Janet Dhillon will be able to remain on the Commission even after her five-year term “times out” if she wishes to remain until a Nominee is confirmed or to the end of the calendar year, whichever comes first.