WASHINGTON — Andrew Traver, nominated to lead the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, faces a powerful foe on the road to Senate approval.
That’s the National Rifle Association.
Traver, 47 and praised for his work against the Chicago area’s street gangs, has led the bureau in Illinois since 2004. Both senators from Illinois have applauded President Barack Obama’s choice; so have law enforcement officials.
Obama nominated him in November, triggering strong opposition from the National Rifle Association, which called him hostile to the Second Amendment. It urged the president to withdraw the nomination.
Traver “has been deeply aligned with gun-control advocates and anti-gun activities,” Chris Cox, who leads the association’s lobbying arm, said then.
Obama renominated Traver when the new Congress convened in January, and the National Rifle Association’s rejection of Traver still stands.
The job of director for the bureau has required Senate confirmation only since 2006, and that hasn’t happened yet, leaving the agency in the hands of acting directors. Even former President George W. Bush couldn’t get his nominee, a Republican U.S. attorney from Boston, through the Senate.
Writing Obama this month, Illinois’ senators, Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Mark Kirk, said the lack of leadership at the bureau has hampered efforts to keep guns from criminals and combat gangs and drug cartels.
Durbin sits on the Judiciary Committee, which has not yet scheduled a confirmation hearing.
Traver declined an interview, but some details about him emerge in information he gave the committee and interviews with acquaintances, who spoke on condition of anonymity since he has not won Senate approval.
Traver joined the bureau in 1987 as a street agent in Chicago.
Writing the committee, Traver said the bureau’s Chicago division and its partner agencies have “struck significant blows against some of the most prolific, entrenched and violent street gangs in Chicago, such as the Latin Kings, the Vice Lords and the Black Gangster Disciples.”
Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said Traver’s response to gangs has been “excellent,” noting that Aurora’s murder rate plummeted after Traver helped crack down on the Insane Deuces there beginning in 2005. Aurora had 26 murders in 2002, but two in 2008.
Traver, a Navy veteran, has helped troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Having been diagnosed with prostate cancer at age 44 in 2008, he’s been active in peer support for others with the same cancer.
But the National Association for Gun Rights in Fort Collins, Colo., called Traveran “anti-gun thug ... an enemy of liberty and an enemy of gun owners,” in the words of Executive Director Dudley Brown.
He said the group would “like to repeal the ability of the ATF to even exist.”
The top Republican on the judiciary panel is Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, whose spokesman, Beth Pellett Levine, said the National Rifle Association’s concerns, or those of any group, should be explored at a confirmation hearing.
The association lobbies Congress heavily and gives favored candidates big bucks.Its political action committee spent $14.8 million on federal elections in two years ending Dec. 31, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It dropped $119,000 on Grassley’s race and in November, when he won a sixth term in the Senate.
Information for this article was contributed by Kim Geiger of the Tribune Washington Bureau.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 02/21/2011