Manufacturers' Top Advocate Tapped to Chair CPSC
The White House announced March 1 that President George W. Bush intends to nominate Michael E. Baroody to be chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission in place of Acting Chairman Nancy A. Nord, a lawyer who also was installed on the commission by Bush and is serving a term that expires in October 2012. Nord was sworn in May 5, 2005.
Baroody is executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers. NAM's biography of him says he oversees all of its advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C., and around the country and also is "a key spokesman" for its policies. Baroody NAM's senior vice president for policy and communications from 1990 to 1993 when he left to become president of the Republican-oriented National Policy Forum, as the biography describes it, before returning to the NAM in August 1994 to boost its public affairs program and its lobbying efforts.
Before he originally joined NAM in 1990, Baroody was assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, Ronald Reagan's deputy assistant to the President and director of public affairs, and research director and director of public affairs at the Republican National Committee. He also worked in Congress on the staffs of two senators, including former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansas.