Scoop: Kamala Harris likely to nominate Gary Gensler as Treasury Secretary if elected: Senate sources

While publicly, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler hasn’t expressed desire to leave his current role, multiple senior Senate staffers are telling the Washington Reporter that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November, she plans to nominate Gensler as her Treasury Secretary. Those rumors corroborate what top Republicans have also told the Reporter on the record.

In an interview with the Reporter, Rep. Tom Emmer (R., Minn.) previously warned that Harris may pick Gensler — or Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) — to serve as her Treasury Secretary. Such a move, he cautioned, would be a disaster for the economy. 

Gensler, Emmer said, has “been bringing lawsuits all over the place — and losing all over the place. That time’s past. Gary Gensler needs to move on. His career in government should be over.”

If Harris wins, senior Republican Senate staff expect “unified Republican opposition” to Gensler, but he’ll likely be able to count on broad Democratic support. Two potential confirmation votes for him are Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) and Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), who have received millions of dollars of spending from a pro-cryptocurrency group, called Fairshake PAC. Both Slotkin and Gallego have amassed anti-cryptocurrency voting records while serving in Congress. Neither responded to requests for comment about whether they’d vote for Gensler, but Republicans plan to make his potential nomination painful.

Beyond the possibility of Gensler serving as Treasury Secretary in a hypothetical Harris administration, there are also rumors that he may step down as SEC chairman, allowing President Joe Biden to nominate a new chair prior to the November election. 

Katie Biber, the CLO of Paradigm, a crypto-related investment firm, floated the possibility of a “Gensler plan” that would “ensure a Dem Commission majority in 2025 — forcing a newly-elected President Trump to oust him.” Under this theory, Gensler could revert to serving as a commissioner, and Biden could tap a successor, such as Caroline Crenshaw, whose hostility to the crypto industry the Reporter previously covered.

The “Gensler plan” is a longer shot, but it’s not impossible. One Hill source who works on SEC issues said that “the only way I see Gensler agreeing to that is if Harris promised if she wins they’ll give him Treasury Secretary.”