(Bloomberg) -- Two key Republican senators expressed misgivings on Monday about Stephen Moore’s candidacy for a position on the Federal Reserve Board amid growing criticism of his past comments deriding women and Midwestern cities.
Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa and Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama withheld endorsements of Moore, a Heritage Foundation fellow and a former Trump campaign adviser. If nominated by President Donald Trump, Moore can lose no more than three Republican senators, assuming all of the chamber’s Democrats vote against him.
“I’m not enthused about what he has said in various articles,” Ernst, the Senate’s fourth-ranking Republican, told reporters on Monday while heading into a leadership meeting. “I think it’s ridiculous.”
Later Monday, Shelby, the former chairman of the Banking Committee, said he thought the proposed nomination has “some problems” and is causing concern among Republican senators.
Shelby said “it looks like drip by drip” on Moore’s prospects.
Moore has come under scrutiny for a range of controversial public remarks, including columns he wrote for the National Review more than 15 years ago that disparaged women. He wrote, for example, that women tennis pros wanted “equal pay for inferior work.” Moore has called the columns a “spoof.”
He was also found in contempt of court after he failed to pay his ex-wife about $300,000 in alimony after their 2010 divorce, and the Internal Revenue Service won a judgment against him for about $75,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties in 2018. He has said the tax debt resulted from an accounting error and that he’s contesting it.
“He has to be evaluated,” said Shelby, now the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “But a lot of things have come up about his taxes, about his child support, alimony, about things he’s written about women. All those become issues as part of the confirmation process if he gets nominated.”
The remarks by Ernst and Shelby came hours after President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser said the White House still backs Moore for the job. “We’re still behind him,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said. “No change in our position.”
Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said earlier that the White House was reviewing Moore’s writings and statements but didn’t elaborate. “When we have an update on that front we’ll let you know,” she told reporters at the White House.
The president has drawn criticism for selecting two political loyalists for the Fed board, Moore and former Godfather’s Pizza Inc. chief executive Herman Cain. Cain withdrew after decades-old sexual harassment and infidelity allegations against him began to resurface.
Moore also took heat for having called Cincinnati and Cleveland the “armpits of America” in a 2014 speech, a comment that risks offending voters in Ohio, a key state for Trump in his 2020 re-election bid.
Moore, speaking Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” said that while he’s embarrassed by some of the things he wrote, he’s facing a “smear campaign” that includes having his divorce papers from a decade ago unsealed. The focus should be on his economic views and the role he played in advising Trump on policies that have produced strong economic growth, he said.
Moore said Sunday that Ohio is no longer the “armpit of America.”
