(Bloomberg) -- President Trump named a former assistant attorney general during the George W. Bush administration R. Alexander Acosta as his new nominee for labor secretary.
R. Alexander Acosta replaces Trump’s first nominee for the position, Andy Puzder, who withdrew his name Wednesday amid controversy over his personal life and business background.
As chief of the Labor Department, Acosta would have to contend with a multitude of issues, which could include deciding the fate of the fiduciary rule. Trump recently asked the department to reexamine the regulation and possibly rescind it.
“He’s intense, hardworking, but I think in contrast to Puzder, he’s going to get things done more quietly,” said Tammy McCutcheon, who served as administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department during the Bush administration. “He will be quietly efficient. I don’t think you’ll see a lot of difference in his policy positions from Puzder.”
Acosta, the first Hispanic Trump has chosen for his cabinet, met with the president Wednesday evening, a White House official said. He served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division under President George W. Bush, was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida and is a former National Labor Relations Board member. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito when he was an Appeals Court judge.
Acosta is currently the dean of Florida International University and the chairman of U.S. Century Bank.
Puzder, a fast-food executive who had been scheduled for a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, ran into trouble in the Senate over his admission that he employed an undocumented housekeeper. Also shadowing his nomination were divorce-court proceedings that included a domestic-abuse allegation. Some conservatives had questioned his pro-immigration stance.
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In the 52-48 Senate, three Republican defections would have doomed Puzder if all 48 Democrats voted to deny him, and as many as a dozen GOP senators had indicated they wouldn’t back the nomination.
Trump has already lost one senior member of his administration: He dismissed Mike Flynn as national security adviser on Monday because the administration said he may have misled the president and vice president about his communications with a Russian envoy.
