Senate Panel Postpones Vote on Obama’s Labor Nominee

Senate Republicans on Wednesday forced Democrats to postpone a committee vote on the nomination of Thomas E. Perez to lead the Labor Department after the chamber’s top Republican raised doubts about Mr. Perez’s ethics.

With a Democratic majority, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions was set to approve Mr. Perez’s nomination at a meeting Wednesday afternoon after a two-week delay. But the committee chairman, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, postponed the meeting to next week after a Republican on the panel, whom Mr. Harkin did not name, invoked a procedural rule that forbids committees from meeting after the Senate has been in session for two hours.

“This pointless obstructionism is extremely disturbing,” Mr. Harkin said on the Senate floor. He accused Republicans of using “procedural tricks” to delay the vote further after receiving an additional two weeks to consider Mr. Perez’s nomination.

Mr. Harkin rescheduled the vote for Thursday, May 16, at 9:15 a.m.

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, the ranking member on the panel, said in a statement that Republicans were still waiting for Mr. Perez and the White House to provide “all the information some senators are requesting â€" troubling information that is key to the Senate’s constitutional role of advice and consent.”

“Until those documents and answers to questions are received,” Mr. Alexander said, “it is appropriate to delay the committee’s vote on Mr. Perez.”

The postponement came shortly after the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, took to the Senate floor to criticize Mr. Perez, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Pointing to his efforts at the Justice Department on housing discrimination and voting rights, and his work in Maryland as the state’s labor secretary and a member of the Montgomery County Council, Mr. McConnell said Mr. Perez was a “crusading ideologue” who would use the law to assert his own agenda.

“Taken together, all of this paints the picture, for me at least, not of a passionate liberal who sees himself as patiently operating within the system and through the democratic process to advance a particular set of strongly held beliefs, but a crusading ideologue whose conviction about his own rightness on the issues leads him to believe the law does not apply to him,” Mr. McConnell said. “Unbound by the rules that apply to everyone else, Mr. Perez seems to view himself as free to employ whatever means at his disposal, legal or otherwise, to achieve his ideological goal.”

Mr. Harkin said that characterization of Mr. Perez was “grossly unfair” and inconsistent with the endorsements offered by Republican lawmakers and businesses that worked with Mr. Perez in Maryland.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Hispanic lawmakers defended Mr. Perez, the son of Dominican immigrants, against what they said amounted to character assassination. They warned Republicans that blocking his nomination would set back the party’s efforts to improve relations with Hispanic voters.

But Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is one of two Hispanic Republicans in the Senate, said he would still vote against Mr. Perez’s confirmation.

“Many Americans, especially those of us of Hispanic descent, celebrate his success and his personal story as yet another example of all that’s possible in America, no matter where you or your family came from,” Mr. Rubio said. “Unfortunately, intellect and work ethic are not sufficient qualifications for a cabinet secretary.”

He added, “Mr. Perez’s far-left views and troubling record at the Justice Department simply do not qualify him to lead the Labor Department, and I will strongly oppose his confirmation.”

The vote â€" which had been moved to 4 p.m. from 10 a.m. on Wednesday to accommodate the South Korean president’s speech to a joint session of Congress â€" was originally scheduled for April 25, but delayed until Wednesday after Republicans on the panel asked for more time to review Mr. Perez’s nomination. Republicans also said that Democrats were concerned about a whistle-blower testifying against Mr. Perez that day.