The former presidential candidate said that the position would mean a loss of influence – and a significant pay cut
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Former presidential candidate and pizza magnate Herman Cain has pulled his name from consideration from a seat on the Federal Reserve Board after facing blowback from his own party.
Cain, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in 2012, was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill the seat. However, four Republican senators have expressed doubts about Cain’s qualifications – making it unlikely he could be confirmed by the Senate, according to a Reuters report.
Economists have also expressed concerns that Trump is installing people personally loyal to him on the purportedly nonpartisan board, Reuters reported.
Cain said that he had been planning to defend his nomination, but had decided to withdraw because he felt the job would limit his influence – and mean a considerable pay cut.
“(T)he cost of doing this started weighing on me over the weekend,” Cain wrote on the conservative website Western Journal. “I also started wondering if I’d be giving up too much influence to get a little bit of policy impact.”
A job with the Federal Reserve would bar Cain from his current gig on a conservative radio show – and from giving frequent paid speeches.
“Without getting too specific about how big a pay cut this would be, let’s just say I’m pretty confident that if your boss told you to take a similar pay cut, you’d tell him where to go,” Cain said.
Cain, the former head of Godfather’s Pizza, served as chair of the Kansas City Fed’s board in the mid-1990s, according to Reuters. However, critics painted the one-time presidential candidate as unqualified to hold a seat on the national board.
Cain claimed that his nomination came under attack merely because he was conservative.
