McCain Would Make Cuomo Head of SEC

Senator McCain dropped a surprising name last night when he was asked whom he would want to replace Christopher Cox as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission: Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York. “I think he is somebody who could restore some credibility, lend some bipartisanship, to this effort,” Mr. McCain said on “60 Minutes,” adding that he admired Mr. Cuomo’s work in New York. He said Mr. Cuomo had “respect” and “prestige,” praising his tenure as secretary of housing and urban development in the Clinton administration. The Republican presidential nominee said last week that he would have fired Mr. Cox for betraying the public trust in providing what he characterized as shoddy regulatory oversight of the financial markets. He acknowledged last night that the president technically does not have the authority to fire the SEC chief, but he said that if he wanted a government official to resign, “they would resign.” Mr. Cuomo became state attorney general in 2007, taking over for Eliot Spitzer. He is the son of Mario Cuomo, who served three terms as governor of New York.