In the wake of Monday night’s resignation by national security adviser Mike Flynn, liberal groups are focusing their energies on taking down Andrew Puzder, President Trump’s controversial nominee to head the Labor Department.
Puzder is scheduled to have his first Senate hearing Thursday morning, and groups are planning protests against him. One group is even attempting to unseal the nominee’s divorce records.
“Here’s our next target,” said Robert Cruickshank, senior campaign manager for the Howard Dean-founded group Democracy for America. “The resignation of Islamophobe and Putin ally Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser is the first defeat of a member of Trump’s Cabinet. But it won’t be the last. Andrew Puzder is the wealthy CEO who Trump picked for labor secretary … Puzder’s nomination is in trouble. Democrats are lining up to oppose him. And even some Republicans are considering opposing him. If so, he’ll go down to defeat.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., the chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee and a Puzder ally, said the effort was “an indication of how frightened the Left is of a person like Puzder… They’d like to claim a scalp, so I think the intensity will get worse.”
No Senate Republicans have come out against Puzder’s nomination, though Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins, South Carolina’s Tim Scott and Georgia’s Johnny Isakson have been non-committal about supporting him. The liberal National Employment Law Project released a poll Tuesday claiming that voters in Alaska and Maine want Puzder rejected. Puzder spokesman George Thompson called it “union-sponsored junk data.”
A coalition of unions and advocacy organizations said Tuesday that federal contract workers will go on strike Thursday and appear at the Senate to protest the nomination. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., chairman of the House progressive caucus, is scheduled to speak at an event featuring them.
The liberal nonprofit group Campaign for Accountability appeared in a Missouri Court Tuesday to argue for a petition to unseal records from Puzder’s 1989 divorce in the hopes of finding damaging information in them. Puzder’s then-wife, Lisa Fierstein, said at the time that she had been the victim of domestic violence but has since retracted the claim on numerous occasions, saying she did it to gain leverage in the divorce.
“My privacy has been invaded, my family has been hurt, my children are suffering and I have become the victim of the media’s malice and determination to find ugliness where only kindness and love exists. And now, I have learned of an official request to unseal our divorce court documents. I am disgusted, hurt, angry and vehemently opposed to this unfair invasion of my personal life,” Fierstein said in a statement earlier this month.
Another liberal group called Allied Progress called on Oprah Winfrey to release a tape of Fierstein appearing on her program in a late 1980s episode devoted to domestic violence in the late 1980s. Fierstein has said that she appeared anonymously on the show, stating that she was “caught up in the notion of a free trip to Chicago and being a champion of women’s issues.”
“For the good of our country and to assure an open and deliberative confirmation process, Oprah Winfrey must release this tape that only senators have been allowed to view in private since its existence was first reported on last month. Time is of the essence,” said Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress.
Puzder is chief executive of CKE Restaurants, which owns the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. franchises. He was an outspoken supporter of Trump during the campaign and a staunch critic of former President Barack Obama’s efforts to extend the regulatory powers of the Labor Department and other federal agencies. Liberal groups, particularly organized labor, have made stopping his nomination a crusade.
Puzder’s first Senate hearing was delayed at least four times due to committee Democrats raising questions about how he has divested his personal investments. His nomination took another hit when he acknowledged hiring an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper although he said he fired her and paid back taxes when he learned of her status. The delays have sparked rumors that Puzder was reconsidering joining Trump’s Cabinet. Sources close to the nominee, however, have told the Washingtion Examiner that Puzder never requested any of the delays and remains eager to be secretary.
On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released a 28-page questionnaire for Puzder, illustrating much of the Democrats’ case against the nominee. Critics have argued that workers at Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. restaurants regularly encounter abusive conditions. But an examination of data from the Labor Department’s Wage & Hour Division shows that those two franchises have some of the lowest rates of investigations and fines for labor violations in the fast-food industry.
