Perez supporters are still pushing ahead for his nomination. Latinos, labor: Pick Perez for AG

Hispanic lawmakers, immigration advocates and labor allies are lining up to lobby President Barack Obama to nominate Labor Secretary Tom Perez as attorney general.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus want to endorse Perez to be Eric Holder’s replacement even before they return to Washington next month. The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda urged Obama in a letter this week to nominate Perez. Immigrant activists say they couldn’t ask for a better friend. And liberal groups view him as the best on the shortlist to tackle race issues.


But to the one constituency that matters the most — the president — former White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler appears to retain the edge on the nomination. She’s personally close to the president and worked extensively on national security issues, which are expected to dominate the remainder of Obama’s term.

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Perez supporters are still pushing ahead, capitalizing on a delay in the president’s announcement until after Election Day to make the case for his nomination.

Pressuring Obama on personnel matters can be risky — he loathes political interference on decisions that he believes should be his alone. But the show of progressive support could matter at the margins as the White House weighs its strategy for pushing a nominee through the lame-duck Senate, and for helping shape the dynamic with the base for his final two years.

“You will see him with a strong core of supporters among members of Congress,” Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas) said in an interview. “He is knowledgeable, he is fair and he has had experience on the pressing issues of the Justice Department.”

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Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who hired Perez as the state labor secretary for his first cabinet, said that in discussions he’s been having both at home and with progressives he’s met around the country as he promotes his own prospective presidential campaign, “there’s a lot of excitement for his nomination.”

That’s not to say Ruemmler or Solicitor General Don Verrilli, a man seen as a master legal strategist who’s also under consideration as a replacement for Eric Holder, would necessarily be objectionable to progressives. They’re very familiar to people within the White House and DOJ, but the base just doesn’t have the personal connections to them as they do to Perez, a child of Dominican immigrants with a long background in activism and out in the field before returning to the Justice Department in Obama’s first term to rebuild the Civil Rights division.

“Being around him makes me a little bit giddy,” Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) said. “He cares about the stuff that I care about, and he’s so articulate about it.”

Perez would be the second-ever Latino attorney general. Ruemmler would be the second-ever female attorney general. But so far, women’s groups have not mobilized in support of Ruemmler the way that Latinos have for Perez.

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An email circulated Thursday to key staffers from the CHC by Rep. Ben Luján (D-N.M.), who leads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus diversity task force, wanted to gauge support for a formal Perez endorsement. It’s “possible” Obama will nominate someone before they’re back in town Nov. 12 for the lame-duck session, the email reads, “so we’re hoping to act on this in advance of that.”

Perez has “the qualifications, the understanding and the heart we need in an attorney general,” said CHC Chairman Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas).

“Tom Perez is my choice for attorney general,” said Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.). “I don’t get to nominate him. But he’s my choice.”

California Rep. Xavier Becerra, the fourth-ranking House Democrat and the highest-ranking Latino on Capitol Hill, has endorsed Perez as well.

CHC members speak of the important symbolism of having a Latino in the job, especially as the administration prepares to release its executive actions on immigration reform. But having one of their own as attorney general would be an important recognition of the growing political prominence of Latinos, Sánchez said.

“He’s the quintessential Latino American dream story in this country,” she said. “It’s the story that you want to tell young Latino kids to inspire them to push themselves to be all that they could be.”

Perez would also be coming in with support within DOJ itself, having worked there under every president going back to Ronald Reagan, with the exception of George W. Bush. He’s worked with people inside the building at Main Justice and out in the field through his work with United States attorneys around the country.

Though there are some concerns about her being too close to the president as his former counsel, Ruemmler is seen as a formidable lawyer and former prosecutor, Verrilli as a top tactician but more of an appellate lawyer, whereas Perez is seen more as one who’d take an vigorous approach to prosecution.

“He does have a track record of the willingness to take on big interests, like big banks,” Cárdenas said.

But that hits on one of the factors that even his strong supporters say might stand in his way: an activist with an activist background, Perez could prove much harder to get confirmed, whether that’s in a slimmed Democratic majority (or a lame-duck session), or under a Republican majority.

Progressives are urging Obama not to shy away from that fight.

“For people want to see us make greater progress as a nation on equal rights, on immigration, on voting reform, on marriage quality,” O’Malley said, “Tom’s nomination would be particularly heartening.”

Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairman Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) agreed.

“I think it’s important to have an attorney general who understands what working Americans are going through every day,” Ellison said. “We have that in Eric Holder now, and we would have that in Tom Perez if he’s nominated.”

That’s even begun to penetrate to the grass roots. Democracy for America spokesman Neil Sroka said that though most of the focus among people he’s talking to has been on the midterms, the attorney general decision has continued to come up, and Perez’s name is the only one that he’s heard — and he’s heard it a lot.

“He is exactly the kind of candidate that progressives are interested in: coming out of the events in Ferguson this summer who can go as far if not farther than Attorney General Holder on confronting both police militarization and racial profiling that exists throughout this country,” Sroka said.

Sroka said people he’s talking to also see Perez as a person who would use his labor background to prioritize issues like wage theft prosecutions, and take the harder line on Wall Street prosecutions that progressives have spent the past six years pining for the Obama administration to pursue.

Perez led the administration’s fight against restrictive immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama, at one point making a surprise visit to Birmingham to encourage residents to report civil rights abuses. Those efforts have made him a sentimental favorite of immigrant rights advocates.

“This is the guy that has really put his money where his mouth is,” said Marshall Fitz, the director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress.