WASHINGTON — Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren plans to oppose President Obama’s pick for a top Treasury post, a move that signals a disconnection with party establishment even as she takes a role within Democratic leadership.
A Warren aide said Friday the senator will not support Antonio Weiss, a Harvard-educated Wall Street investment banker the president nominated earlier this week for Treasury undersecretary of domestic finance. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because Warren has not made the decision public. Her opposition was first reported by Politico.
The Treasury Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Her opposition puts her at odds with the White House, which defended Weiss and other nominees as “hard-working individuals [who] will help us tackle the important challenge facing America.”
Warren was selected on Thursday for a newly created spot in the Senate Democratic leadership as a strategic policy adviser, a position that will include outreach to liberal groups.
Warren is known for castigating Wall Street’s close relationship to many in Washington. She worries that Weiss’s background only furthers that revolving door, her office said.
She also has concerns about his advisory role on tax inversions, a practice that allows companies to pay fewer taxes by relocating their addresses overseas. Weiss serves as the global head of investment banking at Lazard, a financial advisory firm that is technically headquartered in Bermuda and has worked on tax inversion deals.
One of its more prominent inversion deals took place this August when Burger King merged with Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee and doughnut chain. The company’s legal location will be in Ontario.
“Relationships matter,” Warren said in an April op-ed that ran in Politico. “And anyone who doubts that Wall Street’s outsized influence in Washington has watered down our government’s approach toward still-too big-to-fail banks has their eyes deliberately closed.”
Warren does not sit on the Senate Finance Committee, which will first consider Weiss’s nomination. A full Senate vote might not come up until next year, when Republicans will have control of the upper chamber. But as a former special adviser to the Treasury secretary, Warren’s stance could carry weight.
“She might very well be the Tea Party equivalent of the Democratic Party now,” said Mark Calabria
“We really do have this knee-jerk reaction where, when we have to have Treasury officials, where do we go but Wall Street,” he said. “These are very legitimate concerns she is raising.”
Warren’s position resembles that of Senate Finance Committee Republican Charles Grassley, of Iowa, who accused the Obama administration of “hypocrisy” for vowing to go after tax inversions and then selecting a man who has worked on them.
Weiss, who earned a master of business administration at Harvard University, has been a prominent donor for the president and Democrats such as Senator Charles Schumer of New York. Weiss worked with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, on a 2012 report that examined ways to reform the tax system and bolster the middle class.
American Progress president Neera Tanden, in a statement after his nomination, said Weiss brought “expertise in financial markets” and a “deep commitment to the goals of this administration, including smart policies that spur economic growth and support the middle class.”
Some see Warren’s opposition to Weiss as an indication that her new leadership role won’t keep her tethered to the party line.
“The only thing that has changed with Elizabeth Warren is her platform” to speak, said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic political analyst in Boston. “Is there anything better than [this] example?”
Jessica Meyers can be reached at jessica.meyers@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessicameyers.
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify Antionio Weiss’s title at Lazard. He is the global head of investment banking.