In opposing the renomination of GOP Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Kristine Svinicki, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) risks handing Republicans an effective counterpunch in the two parties' fight for female votes this November.

Part of Reid's pickle comes from poor timing. Republicans seized on what they long saw as a slow-walking of Svinicki's approval due to resistance from the majority leader -- whose home state would house the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which the commissioner evaluated early in her career -- during a week when the White House and congressional Democrats slammed the GOP as out of touch with women.

That Svinicki has charged NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko with intimidating and harassing female employees could heighten the fallout from what Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway called an "unforced error" by Reid, who has not yet committed to a Senate vote on Svinicki's renomination before her current term expires in June.

"It's ironic, on a day when Democrats were preening around the falsely named Violence Against Women Act, also on the line is this woman's career," Conway said in an interview, charging that Democrats "think women only care about matters from the waist down."

Reid does not stand alone against Svinicki's renomination by the White House, with Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) raising disparate concerns. Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has backed the renomination, however, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) aligned with Bingaman's GOP counterpart, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), in pressing Reid for quick action.

Murkowski did not make Svinicki's gender a direct issue yesterday.

But her decision to take up the banner of a nominee not under her committee's jurisdiction drew a subtle parallel with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's (R-Texas) front-and-center role in crafting a GOP alternative to the Democratic Violence Against Women Act -- despite not serving on the judiciary panel that normally steers the issue.

A Senate Republican aide, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity, echoed Conway in billing the Svinicki flap a problem of Reid's own making.

"He created this storm by pressuring the White House not to send over her renomination," the aide said. "What was the majority leader thinking? Especially at a time when [Democrats] are arguing about women and which party best understands women."

Late yesterday, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) joined Murkowski, McConnell and other Republicans in publicly urging Reid to call up Svinicki's nomination.

"[I]t is unfortunate that the renomination of a member of the Commission has become politicized during this troubling period," Snowe spokesman Chris Averill said via email, adding that his boss "believes that Commissioner Svinicki has demonstrated that she deserves to be considered by the Senate."

Blowing the whistle

Although Reid has insisted that his opposition to Svinicki stems from what he labels lies she told Congress over her handling of the Yucca Mountain license application, Republicans say it has more to do with retaliation for criticizing the agency's chairman, Jaczko.

"Is this an issue over Yucca? Because if it's over Yucca, why was she confirmed unanimously [in 2008]?" said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Murkowski. "The only thing new here is that Svinicki stood up with other commissioners and said Jaczko was harassing and humiliating female staffers at the NRC."

Dillon said the "one thing that stuck in Senator Murkowski's craw, that in the body that just passed whistle-blower protections the majority leader might be punishing a woman commissioner because she blew the whistle."

Republicans say Svinicki is being unfairly targeted for joining her colleagues last year in complaining to the White House about the Democratic chairman's behavior. Svinicki and the other commissioners -- one Republican and two Democrats -- wrote then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, saying that Jaczko's "behavior and management practices have become increasingly problematic and erratic."

In congressional hearings that followed, Democratic Commissioner William Magwood said the chairman berated staffers who disagreed with him, denigrated female employees and forced workers to sneak information to other commissioners "at no small risk." NRC employs about 4,000 people (Greenwire, Dec. 14, 2011).

Magwood said the chairman singled out female staffers who have "succeeded in a male-dominated world," adding that "enduring this type of abuse and being reduced to tears in front of colleagues and subordinates is a profoundly painful experience for them."

Jaczko, a former aide to Reid whose term expires in June 2013, has repeatedly refuted those accusations and told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last year that he was "shocked" and "mortified" by his colleagues accusing him of berating, intimidating and bullying the agency's female staffers (E&ENews PM, Dec. 15, 2011).

A report that Republicans released last year told of a situation in which Jaczko became very agitated in Svinicki's office and the situation got "out of hand" (E&E Daily, Dec. 14, 2011). Svinicki then had to ask her chief of staff to watch over the visit and ask the chairman to leave if necessary, according to the report.

Former Republican NRC Chairman Dale Klein, who served as chairman under President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, said he often witnessed Jaczko yelling at Svinicki when he worked at the agency.

Svinicki and the other commissioners said during congressional hearings last year that they knew of at least three women the chairman verbally abused, but the agency has not yet released any information on those issues.

David Scher, principal of the Employment Law Group law firm in Washington, D.C., said that while Svinicki may be facing political backlash, it is not from the Obama administration.

Scher, who regularly handles whistle-blower cases, applauded the president's decision to renominate Svinicki despite her criticism of the Democratic chairman and said it shows Obama's "commitment to honor and acknowledge whistle-blower activity and really make a public statement that whistle-blowers will be free from retaliation."

Nuclear politics

Despite Republican accusations, Reid and Boxer maintain that they cannot support Svinicki because she lied to Congress during a 2007 hearing about her activities surrounding the controversial and now shuttered nuclear waste dump under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

During a Senate EPW Committee hearing in 2007, Boxer asked Svinicki whether she had worked directly on the licensing of the repository. Svinicki said she did not work on the Yucca Mountain license application but instead focused on Department of Energy waste inventories and transportation issues.

When Boxer questioned Svinicki again last summer, the commissioner said she had not worked directly on the project in the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, but had co-authored a report that was used in the evaluation of the Yucca Mountain repository. Boxer at the hearing said she would "leave it at that" but noted the issue was troubling to her.

A spokeswoman for Boxer said today that the senator "could never support anyone who has misled her, as Ms. Svinicki did at her confirmation hearing in April 2007." Boxer was troubled by Svinicki's testimony that she did not work directly on the proposed repository when she was a DOE employee in the 1990s, the spokeswoman said, and said "she clearly did" work on the project.

The Yucca Mountain site has long been at the center of Congress' political theater. In 2008, DOE submitted an application to develop the dump but pulled the application at Reid's urging.

President Obama made Jaczko NRC chairman in 2009, and the agency has since shut down its review of the project, while Reid has touted the shuttered nuclear waste dump as a top legislative priority. DOE, in the meantime, has been tasked with reviewing alternative ways to store and dispose of the tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste currently parked across the country.

This week, Boxer and Reid have said that line of questioning in 2007 underpins their opposition to Svinicki. Boxer has also joined Reid in questioning Svinicki's dedication to safety over industry concerns in the wake of the nuclear disaster that erupted in Japan last year. Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant experienced three core meltdowns after a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami hit the island country's northeastern coast.

Regardless of whether Reid's opposition to Svinicki proves a distraction from the Democratic courtship of female voters, who back Obama over Republican rival Mitt Romney by double digits in most polls, the issue is already migrating to the House floor and the White House. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) this week slammed Svinicki as a "pusher" of Yucca Mountain on her home state and said she "strongly oppose[d] the renomination," while Obama spokesman Jay Carney fielded questions yesterday about Svinicki's invocation of gender in her charges against Jaczko.

What Reid may not be able to count on is political cover from his home-state GOP counterpart, Sen. Dean Heller, who faces a stiff challenge from Berkley this fall. Reid yesterday pointed to Heller as having qualms of his own about Svinicki, but a spokesman for the Republican declined to specifically oppose her renomination.

Heller would not back "any nominee to the commission that supports moving the Yucca Mountain project forward," spokesman Stewart Bybee said via email. Yet NRC's vote on Yucca was never made public, leaving Svinicki's stance on the issue an unclear matter of much speculation.