Sanborn nomination is adrift

Sanborn nomination is adrift    The nomination of David Sanborn to lead the Transportation Department’s Maritime Administration will likely not move forward until Congress resolves the question about whether to allow state-owned Dubai Ports World to own domestic terminal facilities.
   On Tuesday, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said he hoped Sanborn would appear at an encore hearing into his nomination to see if there was any conflict of interest between his role as a Dubai Ports World executive and maritime administrator with oversight responsibility over his previous employer.
   Sanborn, DP World’s director of operations in Europe and Latin America, spoke to the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Feb. 7, before the brouhaha over Dubai’s port investment erupted.
   Nelson is one of three Democratic senators that have placed a hold on Sanborn’s nomination. The others are Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts. The delay, endorsed by Republican leaders, originally was used as leverage to get the Bush administration to agree to a 45-day investigation of the DP World sale, but now that DP World has agreed to extra scrutiny, senators say they will wait for their concerns about the port deal to be addressed before voting on Sanborn’s nomination.
   Meanwhile, Boxer said at a hearing on the port sale that Treasury Secretary John Snow’s indirect tie to DP World through his former company, CSX Corp., “raises serious ethical questions” about his participation as head of the committee that reviews foreign investment for security implications, notwithstanding the fact the Snow said he didn’t know about the sale until the story hit the press two weeks ago or participate in the deliberations by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
   CSX, which operates the largest railroad on the East Coast, sold its international terminals to DP World in early 2005.
   Boxer also suggested the administration was predisposed to favor the sheikdom’s application because President Bush’s family has close ties to the United Arab Emirates.
   Those ties include the Carlyle Group, a private equity group whose payroll includes former president George Bush.