The Senate on Monday confirmed former GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as President Donald Trump’s labor secretary, with Chavez-DeRemer becoming the final nominee to take their place in Trump’s cabinet.
But even with broad support from Democrats in the final 67-32 vote, the road to confirmation was anything but smooth.
As the first weeks of the Trump administration flew by, Chavez-DeRemer’s support among Democrats seemed to disappear, even as she solidified her status as arguably the most moderate Republican in Trump’s Cabinet.
(Chavez-DeRemer was one of only three House Republicans to cosponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize Act in 2023, a sweeping labor law that would override state right-to-work laws.)
Her pro-labor credentials also became a bit of a problem with some Republicans.
Some GOP senators feared her pro-labor record in the House. Ultimately, however, Sen. Rand Paul, former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Ted Budd were the only Republicans to vote against her.
“With President Trump back in office, we have an opportunity to enact a pro-America agenda at the Department of Labor that puts workers first,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement. “Secretary Chavez-DeRemer is committed to this mission and ready to work with the HELP Committee to secure a better future for all workers.”
Despite one-on-one meetings and calls with Chavez-DeRemer, Paul said he couldn’t support her given his strong belief in right-to-work protections.
“It’s hard for me to favor a candidate who, even if it’s been in the past, has been supportive of preempting state right-for-work laws,” Paul told NOTUS ahead of the vote.
In the end, Paul’s vote hardly mattered, with 18 Democrats more than making up the difference.
And even though many of the questions Democrats had about what Chavez-DeRemer would do at the Department of Labor only got more pressing as Trump and Elon Musk have continued making disruptive cuts to government services, several Democrats told NOTUS that Chavez-DeRemer’s direct appeals to them made the difference.
In many ways, Chavez-DeRemer going last for confirmation made her task more difficult. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy came up for votes — confirmed with 99 votes and 77 votes, respectively — Trump hadn’t paused federal aid and hadn’t begun firing federal workers. He hadn’t shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development and hadn’t cancelled spending that Congress had already approved.
As those moves started happening, confirmation votes for Senate Democrats became no longer just about a nominee’s record.
“I voted for Marco Rubio and I’ve regretted it ever since,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen told NOTUS.
Van Hollen has voted no on every Trump nominee since Rubio, including Chavez-DeRemer.
“It was going to be a wait and see, but Marco Rubio was — it’s wrong to say a rude awakening, because it’s not like I was totally naive about it — but to see the extent of the flip-flop has been disturbing,” Van Hollen said.
“Presidents are entitled to have a good team that supports their vision, I get that, I support that, I understand that,” he said. “But we’ve seen way too much of a ‘dear leader’ complex, and I think that’s a real problem.”
Eight other Democratic senators besides Van Hollen have voted against every nomination since Rubio: Sens. Tammy Duckworth, Mazie Hirono, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Patty Murray, Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden.
A host of other Democratic senators backed some of Trump’s first nominees, and then few to none that have come up for a vote in the last month. Sen. Ruben Gallego, for instance, supported all of Trump’s nominees in the first two weeks of his presidency, except for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Since Feb. 4, Gallego has voted against every Trump nominee except for two: Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll.
“These days, there’s such division that any time a Democrat supports almost any nomination, you’re going to get some heat,” Sen. John Hickenlooper said.
Hickenlooper backed Chavez-DeRemer in her confirmation hearing and on Monday night. He said he spent “a lot of time” going back and forth on whether he’d support her.
His dilemma was largely around the PRO Act. Her walk back of support for it in her confirmation hearing got wary Republicans on board, but left Democrats on edge.
In the lead up to her committee vote, Chavez-DeRemer met again with some Democrats to drum up support.
She talked with Hickenlooper the afternoon before her committee vote, and her argument she made to him in the meeting put the Colorado senator fully on board.
“I talked to her that day, and she made a pretty compelling argument that she really did care about workers and their compensation,” Hickenlooper said.
“I think she’s going to do as good a job as we could hope for,” he said.
Sen. Tim Kaine, who also serves on the HELP Committee, likewise said it was Chavez-DeRemer’s personal meeting with him that helped swing him in favor.
“I had her in my office and talked to her at some length about a number of issues where I found her to be cooperative and productive,” Kaine said.
When he had follow-up questions for her after the nomination hearing, Kaine talked again with Chavez-DeRemer on the phone, noting that they had “a good discussion.”
Just like Hickenlooper, Kaine said Chavez-DeRemer’s comments on the PRO Act were “the negative on the scale” for him. Ultimately, Kaine said he decided to support her because he believed her labor background would enable her to do a “solid job.”
“I could not imagine, under any circumstance, Donald Trump nominating anybody else who would be as good as she is, and that is also a factor,” Kaine said.
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.