CPSC chairman nominee voted down.

The Senate Commerce Committee, by a strict party line vote of 12-11 on Aug. 2, rejected President Bush's nomination of Commissioner Mary Gall as chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

Sen. John McCain, ranking minority member of the Committee and a Gall supporter, called the committee Democrats "... a group of Senators with rope in their hands. For partisan reasons, Ms. Gall was going to be hanged regardless of what she said."

About two weeks later, amid media reports that she had been a major player in the effort to defeat Gall, current CPSC chairman Ann Brown announced that she would resign effective Nov. 1 or sooner if the President submitted a nominee who would be confirmed before then--an unlikely scenario.

Commissioner Gall, who has served on the Commission since 1991, and whose last confirmation to her second term in 1999 was unanimous, has said she will stay on at the Commission.

In the Senate, the surprise rejection of Gall by members of the Commerce Committee was considered a deliberate slap at President Bush, and seen as a "muscle-flexing" demonstration by Hill Democrats that they can and will torpedo Bush nominees on ideological grounds.

It is not known what plans the White House has either for re-nominating Gall or for naming another candidate for chairman.

The firestorm of media coverage sparked by the committee's action on Gall focused mainly on the impact of New York Democrat freshman Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had engaged Gall in battle months prior to the actual hearing date. Indeed, Clinton did play a major role and it was her staff who arranged the press conference for Gall opponents on the same day the Senate held its hearing on her confirmation. Clinton herself attended the press conference accompanied by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.), Sen. Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.), and Ron Wyden (D.Ore.). Another press conference featured Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and spokesmen for Consumers' Union and the U.S. PIRG, groups that fought the Gall confirmation.

Others have singled out the backroom efforts of CPSC chairman Ann Brown and others close to Brown as the real culprits.

Brown's former executive director at the CPSC, Pamela Gilbert, was observed counseling members of the Senate Commerce Committee--on the dais where Senate staffers sit--during Gall's hearing. Gilbert later attacked Gall in a letter to the Washington Post on Aug. 13 and commented that she agrees with Gall's critics that she has a "seriously flawed record."

Should the White House choose to demote Brown before her designated Nov. 1 resignation date, Commissioner Thomas Moore, current Vice Chairman, would become acting chairman.

Under the statute governing CPSC, the Commission can operate with only two members for as long as six months. That gives the White House plenty of time to either renominate Mary Gall and push harder for her confirmation this time, or find an other candidate. In either case, the White House will have to focus on a third commissioner for CPSC.

The forces that combined to defeat Commissioner Gall's confirmation in committee are not going to go away. But consumers should be aware that they might be pawns in a tremendous consumer "protection'" con game whose players advocate more regulation, less consumer choice, and in general, higher prices for consumers in the name of safety. Since consumers can only lose at this game, the winners are the so-called "safety advocates" who get more free publicity, raise more money for their organizations, and stay in control of the safety game in Washington.

(By Carol Dawson, Consumer Alert Board Member. Adapted from an article in the CPSC Monitor, edited by Dawson and published by Consumer Alert.)