Media reported this week that the White House did not plan to renominate Jeffrey Baran for another term as a commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Baran’s nomination was returned Jan. 3 to the White House, like all nominations that did not get a floor vote during the first of two year-long sessions of the 118th Congress. Citing sources, first the Huffington Post and then Politico reported Wednesday that Baran would not be renominated.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which among other things advises the president on NRC nominees, has not responded to repeated requests for comment about whether Biden (D) would renominate the former commissioner.
The reports arrived with only a few months left on NRC Chairman Christopher Hanson’s term, setting the NRC on a course toward Republican control for the final six months of President Joe Biden’s (D) first term. To keep a partisan balance, Biden and Senate Democrats, who have only a razor-thin majority in the upper chamber, would have to get Hanson through the Senate again in an election year.
Baran struggled to get support in the Senate last year. He was opposed by all Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee. The committee put off its first vote on Baran’s nomination, citing a scheduling issue that committee spokespersons did not further characterize, and in June, with only Democratic votes, managed to get his nomination to the Senate floor.
There it lingered until it was returned to the White House, as Senate rules require. Sen. Shelley Capito (R-WVa.), who led opposition to Baran’s renomination, had a hold on his confirmation vote until the end, according to someone familiar with the process. Unless the leader of the Senate agrees to hold a roll call vote on an executive nomination, it must pass through the Senate by unanimous consent.
Baran did not have consent, and though in a floor vote he would have needed only a simple majority to return to the NRC, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) never held a roll-call, which a unified Democratic caucus would have won.
Meanwhile, unless Hanson gets renominated before June 30, the NRC will drop to its bare-bones quorum of three commissioners.
If Hanson does not get another term, Bradley Crowell would be the only Democrat on the commission and in line for the chair. Even so, Crowell would have one vote against the two Republican commissioners Annie Caputo and David Wright.
And by June 30, the 2024 presidential election will be only about four months away, potentially sapping the Senate’s willingness to consider executive nominees until the contest shakes out.
