A key Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee shared concerns about CDC director nominee Dave Weldon’s vaccine views with the White House before his nomination was pulled Thursday morning.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters on Capitol Hill that she was so troubled about Weldon’s vaccines stance that she shared her concerns with the White House, and she was not surprised that his nomination had been pulled.
Weldon, a Florida representative from 1995 until 2009, has been critical of the federal government’s oversight of vaccine safety. While in the House, he sponsored a bill that would have taken vaccine safety oversight from the CDC and created a separate “Agency for Vaccine Safety Evaluation” under HHS, and as recently as 2019 repeated the disproved claim that “some children can get an autism spectrum disorder from a vaccine” in an interview.
Murkowski’s vote could have been the deciding factor in whether Weldon’s nomination would have made it out of committee with a favorable recommendation if Democrats opposed him in unison. The committee is split 12-11, so losing only one Republican vote could have killed his chances.
Her comments to reporters came just hours after the White House pulled Weldon’s nomination, which Senate HELP was to consider on Thursday morning.
Immediately after a committee vote on two Trump administration health nominees to head the FDA and NIH, HELP Chair Bill Cassidy told reporters “there were not the votes” to advance Weldon’s nomination. Axios first reported that Weldon’s nomination was being withdrawn.
Cassidy declined to say whether he agreed with the White House’s decision.
Spokespeople for HHS and the White House didn’t immediately comment.
Weldon did not respond to a request for comment, but in a lengthy statement to The New York Times, he said he received a phone call 12 hours before the hearing was scheduled at 10 a.m., informing him that his nomination was being pulled because “there were not enough votes to get me confirmed.”
Weldon also wrote that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. then called him, and that the HHS secretary was “very upset.”
“He was told the same thing and that he had been looking forward to working with me at CDC. He said I was the perfect person for the job,” Weldon wrote.
Weldon’s statement also said that Kennedy said he had breakfast with HELP member Susan Collins (R-Maine), who told Kennedy that she was considering voting “no.” Weldon also said he believed Cassidy would oppose him. Weldon went on to suggest that the pharmaceutical industry could have been involved in killing his nomination.
A spokesperson for industry group PhRMA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cassidy, Collins and Murkowski previously voted to confirm Kennedy, the longtime leader of Children’s Health Defense, a group that has argued the rise in autism rates is caused by vaccines. Like Weldon, Kennedy has linked vaccines with rising autism cases, though he said during his confirmation process that he was not anti-vaccine.
Some Republicans, including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who is a member of a newly formed working group to reform the CDC, had been enthusiastic about the Weldon pick.
“I thought what Congressman Weldon brought to the table was what you actually want in science, which is skepticism,” he told POLITICO. “And I would like to find somebody else who’s skeptical of the process and the agency.”
The decision to pull Weldon’s nomination appears to have been closely held until Thursday morning.
“It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to him,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Mary Holland, president and general counsel for Children’s Health Defense, told POLITICO outside the hearing room Thursday she was “very disappointed” in the withdrawal. Kennedy founded the anti-vaccine group and led it until stepping down last year.
“He was a critical part of the team,” she said of Weldon.
Democrats, however, largely celebrated the news.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who had been critical of Weldon after the two met on Feb. 20, told reporters that his views on vaccines had been “dangerous.” She told Bloomberg earlier this week that she was “deeply disturbed” to hear Weldon “repeat” the scientifically rejected link between vaccines and autism — a statement her office reissued Thursday.
“Dave Weldon is anti-vaccine, anti-woman and anti-science. He was not qualified to serve as CDC director,” said Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee in the House.
Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine said he had a “productive” meeting with Weldon in which the then-nominee disavowed his previous belief in a link between vaccines and autism. Kaine’s office confirmed the HELP Committee member met with Weldon on Feb. 26, nearly a week after Weldon’s meeting with Murray.
“He said that’s not the case,” Kaine said. “He said there was original research on that that caused questions in his mind, but he basically said that has definitively been debunked, and he believes the science that it is not linked.”
“Apparently he was saying things that the White House didn’t like, and that’s my understanding for why that got pulled back,” he said of Weldon’s nomination.
