President Obama on Tuesday nominated two candidates for positions on the Securities and Exchange Commission, including a law professor favored by liberals and a think tank analyst selected by Republicans.
The Democratic candidate, Lisa Fairfax, is a professor at George Washington University Law School.
The other candidate for a spot on the five-member commission, Hester Peirce, is a financial regulatory analyst at the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank at George Mason University. Peirce was previously a Republican staffer for the Senate Banking Committee and has served as a staffer at the commission.
The SEC, which is tasked with protecting investors and regulating financial markets, is required to have at least two commissioners who are not from the majority party.
Having both a Democratic and a Republican nominated at the same time could ease the nominations process. Nevertheless, nominations for top financial posts have been held up by Richard Shelby, the Republican chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
A spokesman for Shelby said that the “nominees will be vetted thoroughly and the Committee will consider them at an appropriate time.”
Sherrod Brown, the Ohio senator who is the top Democrat on the committee, called for the nominations to be processed quickly, saying in a statement that they “deserve thorough, fair, and swift consideration” along with 11 other nominations currently before the committee. Among those are two nominees for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Obama also has yet to name picks for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as well as for the position of vice chairman for supervision at the Fed, a post that could be filled with an existing governor.
If confirmed, the nominees would face the task of finishing some of the rules mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform laws, as well as enforcing existing rules.
“We face a critical juncture at the SEC, with crucial unfinished business ranging from Wall Street reform to crowdfunding rules to corporate political spending disclosure hanging in the balance,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., one of the members of the Banking Committee most in favor of strict rules on financial firms.
