McCain Would Name Cuomo to Head SEC

Republican presidential nominee John McCain said he would like to see Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York, as the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“I think he is somebody who could restore some credibility, lend some bipartisanship, to this effort,” McCain said on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

He said Cuomo had “respect” and “prestige,” and praised his tenure as secretary of housing and urban development in the Clinton administration.

Cuomo, the son of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, replaced Eliot Spitzer as attorney general in 2007.

Last week, McCain said that as president, he would have fired Christopher Cox as chairman of the SEC for providing what he characterized as poor regulatory oversight of the financial markets, the New York Sun reported.

“The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the president and, in my view, has betrayed the public's trust," McCain told the crowd at a rally in Iowa. “If I were president today, I would fire him."

McCain acknowledged on Sunday that the president technically does not have the authority to fire the head of the SEC, but added that if he wanted a government official to resign, “they would resign.”