When President Obama nominated Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency, he praised the North Carolinian’s experience. “Mel has led efforts to rein in unscrupulous mortgage lenders,” the president said. “He’s helped protect consumers from the kind of reckless risk-taking that led to the financial crisis in the first place. And he’s fought to give more Americans in low-income neighborhoods access to affordable housing.”
The President made the announcement in the same week he introduced Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx to replace Ray LaHood as Transportation Secretary, extending North Carolina’s moment in the political spotlight and allaying criticism that his second-term high level appointments lacked diversity.
However, Watt’s nomination still has to be approved by the Senate. When I spoke with him the day after his White House appearance with the president, he was ready. “I will do what I need to do in the process to complete the information for the United States Senate, show up when they ask me to, meet with the people that I need to meet with,” he said. “The Senate will set that time table.”
Whether that will be enough is something he wouldn’t speculate on. The initial response to his nomination has been both support and criticism from across the ideological spectrum, not unexpected considering the role of housing financing in the country’s economic upheavals.
