“Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person has decided to withdraw from the Fed process,” tweeted President Donald Trump after Stephen Moore withdrew his name from consideration to be on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Stephen Moore, the Founding President of the Club for Growth and the Chief Economist at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, has been in the public eye for almost 30 years and is very controversial. Advocating supply-side economic policies, Moore is a critic of the Federal Reserve and is a strong supporter of tax cuts.

In March of 2019, President Trump announced that Moore would be nominated to serve as a governor of the Federal Reserve.

“At the beginning of the process it appeared that Moore had it in the bag,” said Tim Tierney, a finance major at Pennsylvania State University. But as the vetting process continued, the media discovered many skeletons in Moore’s closet.

In April 2019, CNN and The New York Times reported on several articles Moore had written in the National Review in the early 2000s that denigrated women, which Moore dismissed as spoofs or jokes.

The Times reported, “Congressional Republicans say [Moore’s views on interest rates and the gold standard] are less likely to impede Mr. Moore’s confirmation prospects than concerns over his personal life and past statements.”

In late April many Republican Senators, such as Joni Ernst (R-IA), announced their opposition to Moore due to his past comments about women and whether he would be independent from the White House.

On May 2, Moore withdrew his name from consideration, saying “The unrelenting attacks on my character have become untenable for me and my family and 3 more months of this would be too hard on us.” Some Senate Republicans expressed relief that they would not have to cast a vote for or against him, because of his history of remarks deprecating women as well as a concern that he would not be independent from the White House.

President Trump still has two seats to fill on the board, and the move likely fuels his anger that the Fed’s four interest rate hikes in 2018 were keeping the U.S. economy from even faster growth.

“Disagreements in the subject of economics can be messy and are sometimes never resolved,” said Tierney. Stephen Moore maintains that left wing politicians orchestrated a character assassination on him because “they couldn’t beat him on his economic ideas.” Moore’s future is in question now and we will have to see what he does next in the corridors of power in Washington.

Moore grew up in New Tier Township, Illinois and graduated from New Tier High School in 1978. He received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and his Master of Arts in economics at George Mason University. After college, Moore worked many jobs at the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. Congress, the Club for Growth, and the Wall Street Journal. In 2016, Moore served as an informal adviser to then presidential candidate Donald Trump and continued to serve as an informal adviser to the president during the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.