Last week, Saule Omarova was a little-known professor at Cornell University School of Law. Then, she was nominated by President Joe Biden to supervise 1,000 banks at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
After her Senate hearing, she went viral… for her ties to the Soviet Union.
Omarova grew up in Soviet Kazakhstan. She came to the U.S. in 1991 as an exchange student. She found herself stranded here as the Soviet Union dissolved.
The story doesn’t end there. In 2019, she appeared active in a Facebook group called “Marxist Analysis and Policy,” Fox Business News reported.
Omarova’s defenders have dismissed all criticism of her.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, accused the Republicans of “red scare McCarthyism.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., accused one Republican of “sexism, racism, pages straight out of Joe McCarthy’s 1950s Red Scare tactics.”
Omarova herself told the Financial Times last week, “I am an easy target: an immigrant, a woman, a minority.”
In reality, the Wall Street Journal editorial board has criticized Omarova for her record, not her biography.
The Journal took issue with her call for price controls on food, her equivocal statements about the Soviet Union, and her academic thesis called “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital.”
The paper wrote, “Opposition to Ms. Omarova is based on her radical views and concern that she’d abuse her supervisory power as Comptroller,” the Journal wrote.
The Democrats control both the House and the Senate. Plus, it takes only 51 votes to stop a filibuster on a Cabinet nominee, not the usual 60 votes.
In other words, Republicans can’t block Omarova’s confirmation.
However, if Omarova alienates even a single Democrat in the 50-50 Senate, then she will probably not be confirmed.
So far, two of Biden’s Cabinet nominees have failed in the Senate due to a lack of Democratic support.
Political consultant Neera Tanden was nominated as budget director in November 2020, but she withdrew her name after the Senate hearing, amid bipartisan complaints about her old tweets.
David Chipman, a Justice Department agent, was nominated in September to direct the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. His nomination was withdrawn after some Senate Democrats took issue with his stance on gun control.
Despite Democrat control in the Senate, Biden can hardly build a Cabinet.
Flashback: Biden loses control of the Senate with this ATF nominee
The Horn editorial team