Robert Santos, president of the American Statistical Affiliation, has been permitted to steer the U.S. Census Bureau as its new Senate-confirmed director by 2026.
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Tom Williams/CQ Roll Name by way of Getty Photos
Robert Santos, president of the American Statistical Affiliation, has been permitted to steer the U.S. Census Bureau as its new Senate-confirmed director by 2026.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Name by way of Getty Photos
The Senate has confirmed Robert Santos, President Biden’s nominee to move the U.S. Census Bureau, for a historic political appointment.
After a vote on Thursday, Santos, one of many nation’s main statisticians, is on monitor to be sworn in as the primary Latino to steer the federal authorities’s largest statistical company, which carries out key nationwide surveys and the once-a-decade head depend used to distribute political illustration and federal funding round america.
Whereas Santos is ready to develop into the primary particular person of coloration to function a everlasting, Senate-confirmed Census Bureau director, he’s the second-ever particular person of coloration to supervise the constitutionally mandated depend. Greater than 20 years in the past, James F. Holmes, a survey statistician turned regional director for the bureau who is African American, quickly led the bureau in 1998 as its performing director, breaking with greater than two centuries of white individuals heading the U.S. census.
Santos’ appointment, anticipated to final by the top of 2026 throughout key preparations for the 2030 census, comes because the bureau makes an attempt to get well from an extraordinary string of political appointees without any obvious qualifications becoming a member of the company’s prime ranks throughout former President Donald Trump’s administration. The inflow generated “grave concerns” from the American Statistical Affiliation, the place Santos has served as president.
Santos — who can also be a vice chairman and chief methodologist on the City Institute and a Mexican American who has identified as mestizo for the census — brings a long time of not solely skilled experience in survey design, but additionally private expertise that might assist the Census Bureau mend its repute after the Trump administration’s interference, together with a failed push for a citizenship question that was likely to deter many Latinx and Asian American residents from participating in the census.
Santos advised lawmakers during his confirmation hearing in July that the bureau wants “extra transparency and independence to construct public belief” after a “tumultuous” 2020. Final 12 months’s depend was upended by the coronavirus pandemic and last-minute schedule changes by Trump officers who reduce quick the time for counting — a transfer that Santos criticized in a letter to Senate leaders last year for having “no scientific rationale.”
“I perceive the significance of information high quality and the Census Bureau’s function in offering information that nurtures our democracy, informs our individuals and promotes our nice financial system,” Santos stated in the course of the July listening to.
In 2019, Santos co-wrote an Urban Institute report warning that final 12 months’s nationwide depend may produce excessive undercounts of Black and Latino individuals. Santos lately suggested a study released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank that implies the 2020 census doubtless undercounted individuals of coloration at charges larger than these of the earlier tally.
A brother’s sacrifice allowed Santos to pursue statistics and “serving to individuals”
Born and raised within the barrios of San Antonio, Santos grew up in a Gold Star household. The dying of his brother — U.S. Military Spc. Rene Santos, who died whereas serving within the Vietnam Struggle in 1969 — left him, he testified, with “a ache that endures to this present day.” His brother’s dying gave Santos a navy draft deferment that he says he “didn’t search.”
“Together with his sacrifice to our nation, I used to be free to attend San Antonio School, Trinity College after which the College of Michigan to comply with my twin passions of statistics and serving to individuals,” Santos stated earlier than taking an emotional pause whereas testifying earlier than the Senate Homeland Safety and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Because the bureau’s subsequent director, Santos added, “it is going to be time to serve my nation.”
Santos stated he is “no politician” however a scientist
The bureau’s earlier Senate-confirmed director — Steven Dillingham, a Trump appointee — resigned in January after whistleblowers complained about Dillingham’s try and rush out what one senior bureau worker known as a “statistically indefensible” data report about noncitizens.
“Though it is a political appointment, I’m no politician,” Santos stated in the course of the July affirmation listening to. “I am a scientist, executive-level supervisor, a researcher and a longtime supporter of the Census Bureau.”
Nonetheless, in October, Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida blocked an attempt to confirm Santos by unanimous consent within the Senate, citing issues that Santos “will politicize the Census Bureau and won’t carry out his duties in a good and unbiased vogue.” Requested for what prompted the senator’s issues, McKinley Lewis, Scott’s communications director, famous in a press release the Biden administration’s “full and complete incapacity to put certified and competent individuals in positions of energy throughout the federal authorities.”
There was bipartisan support in August, nonetheless, to advance Santos’ nomination out of the Senate Homeland Safety and Governmental Affairs Committee, regardless of Scott and two different Republicans voting in particular person to not report the nomination favorably to the complete Senate.
Forward of Thursday’s affirmation vote, Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, known as Santos “the right match” for shielding the pinnacle depend from the “pressures of partisan politics.”
“He’s precisely the type of particular person our nation wants overseeing our census — neutral, extremely skilled, somebody from outdoors politics,” Schumer stated on the Senate ground.
