While every administration sends up some nominees who fail, they usually withdraw.
Matt Gaetz is such a terrible choice for attorney general that the odds are already high, within an hour of his nomination being announced, that he would fail a Senate confirmation vote.
It’s impossible to imagine any Democrat voting for him, so he can afford to lose only three Republicans (even assuming all 53 are there — a vote might have to wait for a replacement for Marco Rubio to be selected and seated, because Rubio will need to be confirmed himself before resigning). It’s not very hard to count to four votes on the Republican side (starting with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins) who will be against him.
Will Trump insist on a vote if the numbers aren’t there? While every administration sends up some nominees who fail, they usually withdraw. The Senate hasn’t actually voted down a Cabinet nominee since John Tower’s failed nomination for secretary of defense in 1989, and such votes have been exceptionally rare. It’s only happened nine times, and four of those were appointments by John Tyler, who had no real party in Congress. One was a nomination by Andrew Johnson, who had the same problem.
Since Johnson left office in 1869, the only nominees voted down have been Tower, Lewis Strauss as commerce secretary in 1959 (the seventh year of the Eisenhower administration, after Democrats made historic gains in the Senate in 1958), and Charles Warren as Calvin Coolidge’s attorney general in the aftermath of the Teapot Dome scandal in 1925. The most lopsided vote was the 29–2 rejection of Caleb Cushing the second time he was nominated in the same day as Tyler’s treasury secretary in March 1843. The initial vote against Cushing had been 27–19. The most thumping first defeat was the 38–3 vote against James Porter as Tyler’s secretary of war in December 1843. Modern votes have been closer: Tower lost 53–47, Strauss 49–46, and Warren 41–39. In fact, Warren’s nomination was considered twice and initially failed 40–40 when vice president Charles Dawes wasn’t able to get to the Senate quickly enough to break the tie.
Both Strauss and Roger Taney, who was voted down by the Senate as treasury secretary after having been attorney general and acting secretary of war, were recess appointees the Senate rejected from jobs they already held. Henry Stanbery resigned as attorney general to serve on Johnson’s defense team at his impeachment trial, and the Senate then voted him down from resuming his post. Taney was the first Cabinet nominee ever voted down and remains the only nominee of a Democratic president to be voted down (unless one counts Tyler or Johnson as a Democrat — neither was elected on a Democratic ticket).
Some of the defeats have had fascinating ripples. Tower’s defeat, driven in large part by concerns about his drinking and womanizing, resulted in George H. W. Bush picking Dick Cheney for the job — a choice that set Cheney on the path to the vice presidency and cleared him out of House Republican leadership, resulting in Newt Gingrich rather than Cheney being next in line to lead the caucus when Bob Michel retired in 1994.
Tower might not have been on the commercial airplane that crashed and killed him in 1991 had he been confirmed. By contrast, some of Tyler’s rejected choices, had they been confirmed, might have been on the USS Princeton in February 1844 when its cannon exploded during a demonstration, killing Tyler’s secretaries of state and the Navy.
Three of the defeated Cabinet picks were also nominated to the Supreme Court. Taney, of course, became the chief justice. Stanbery’s 1866 nomination to the Court, before he was attorney general, was killed when Senate Republicans warring with Johnson abolished the open seat he was picked for. Cushing, after serving as attorney general under Franklin Pierce, was Ulysses S. Grant’s second choice as chief justice, but his nomination to the Court collapsed over his ties to Jefferson Davis (his cabinet colleague during the Pierce years) and other secessionists.
A failed Gaetz nomination, if it goes to a vote and is killed by fellow Republicans, would make him an immediate martyr in some MAGA corners. That could well be a blessing to Gaetz, just in time for a primary fight to either succeed Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida in 2026 or in that fall’s special election (perhaps, against DeSantis or a DeSantis appointee) to fill the remainder of Rubio’s term.