Despite opposition from most Republican members, a Senate panel voted Tuesday to endorse President Joe Biden’s nomination of the former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore Jr. for one of the open seats on the governing board for the Tennessee Valley Authority.
By an 11-9 vote, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee endorsed Biden’s appointment to the TVA board of Beth Prichard Geer, a Nashville environmental activist and former aide to Gore.
Geer was blasted by GOP lawmakers for a single-word tweet in 2015 that criticized the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union by U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst as “hideous.” Ernst, a member of the Senate panel, is a lieutenant colonel for the Iowa Army National Guard who delivered her address from the Senate Armed Services Committee room wearing camouflage-print heels and stood in front of four military flags. In her speech, she urged support for the Keystone XL pipeline, which she called the “Keystone jobs bill,” even though environmentalists such as Geer have questioned such investments.
“I’m not sure if you have made it a habit of calling women that you disagree with hideous,” Ernst told Geer during a Senate confirmation hearing in April. “But this is not Iowa nice, and I’m calling you out.”
Geer apologized for the tweet during her confirmation hearing, insisting the tweet was not a reflection on Ernst’s appearance.