Conservative policy groups are pressuring centrist-leaning Senate Democrats to nix the nomination of Xavier Becerra to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Sens. Mark Kelly, Kyrsten Sinema, and Joe Manchin are critical senators in opposing the extreme agenda of Biden’s HHS nominee,” said Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action for America. “Mr. Becerra has spent his entire career fighting for socialized healthcare, catering to the abortion industry, and trampling on Americans’ religious freedom.”
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Heritage Action, the political arm of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, announced Wednesday it had invested $500,000 into an ad blitz targeted at Manchin of West Virginia, as well as Sinema and Kelly of Arizona.
“As these ads highlight, [Becerra] has pushed to open our borders during a global pandemic and declared guns are a ‘public health crisis.’ He is the wrong nominee to lead HHS and should not be supported by senators from the great states of Arizona, West Virginia, or the rest of the country.”
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Becerra has been the subject of conservative attacks since his nomination was announced in December. As California attorney general for four years, Becerra has earned a reputation among Republicans as a liberal culture warrior, having filed over 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration, including those aimed at strengthening Obamacare and broadening access to contraception.
“We are putting pressure on every senator to vote no on Becerra,” said Mallory Quigley, vice president of communications for the conservative anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List. The group hopes that Manchin, particularly, “will see that he’s too extreme.”
Anti-abortion advocates have attacked Becerra’s record of fighting a Trump policy aimed at loosening coverage requirements for health plans purchased for employees of faith-based ministries. Becerra filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in 2017 to reject a new policy that would allow religiously affiliated groups to opt out of the Obamacare mandate that insurance plans cover contraception and medication abortion costs. A faith-based ministry operated by the religious order Little Sisters of the Poor intervened in the case in support of the Trump policy, but it was never a defendant in the case.
With the Senate split 50-50, Republicans will need one centrist Democrat to break ranks and vote against Becerra. Manchin was the linchpin for Neera Tanden’s nomination as director of the Office of Management and Budget and could be the GOP’s crucial swing vote this time, too.
The Senate Finance Committee advanced Becerra’s nomination on Wednesday with a split vote along party lines. Under rules for the split Senate, the nomination will now need four hours of debate followed by a majority vote in the Senate to be brought for a final vote.
