Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina | Email Max While the logjam of Biden administration nominees is slowly loosening, Democrats say that it’s not happening equitably. Progressive activists and party officials are accusing Republicans of disproportionately delaying women and nominees of color in their quest for confirmation to the executive branch. “There are some very slow nominations. We compare ALVARO BEDOYA to JONATHAN KANTER as the most recent anti-monopoly nominees, and Kanter moved through expeditiously with bipartisan support and Bedoya is going to be a slog, and it’s going to require discharge,” said JEFF HAUSER , executive director of the Revolving Door Project. Bedoya is a Federal Trade Commission nominee and Kanter was confirmed last month as assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Hauser also cited KRISTIN JOHNSON at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, SHALANDA YOUNG at the office of management and budget and GIGI SOHN , who is LGBTQ, at the Federal Communications Commission, as diverse nominees who have been stalled in the Senate. “Some of these things are not just about the specific people, but it does seem clear that…the white men tend to do better or the white candidate when it’s white versus non-white or the straight versus non straight,” Hauser said. Nominations data through Dec. 9 compiled by the White House tells a similar tale. White nominees moved through the confirmation process more quickly than non-white nominees. Among those confirmed, it took an average of 95 days for white nominees to go from nomination to confirmation, compared to 101 days for non-white nominees. The data also found white nominees are more likely to be confirmed via voice votes than nominees of color. We dug into the data on Department of Defense nominations, via the Partnership for Public Service’s Biden Nominations Tracker, and also found nominees of color waited longer than white nominees to be approved by the Senate. Of the 25 people confirmed for Pentagon roles as of Dec. 16,the eight people of color waited roughly 97 days to get through, on average, while 17 white candidates waited an average of approximately 86 days. The nominee delayed the longest, MICHAEL CONNOR , waited more than six months after his nomination to lead the U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers was announced on April 27. Connor is a tribal member of the Taos Pueblo. At the Commerce Department, the statistics from the Partnership for Public Service were even starker. Of the nine positions confirmed at the Cabinet agency, the five nominees of color waited an average of roughly 135 days before the Senate confirmed them, while the four white nominees waited an average of about 83 days. All told, Biden has only been able to confirm 38 percent of his nominations as of Dec. 9. At that point in their presidencies, former President DONALD TRUMP was able to confirm 50 percent of his nominees, and former president BARACK OBAMA was able to confirm 68 percent. Unlike his two predecessors, Biden has no margin for error in the Senate. There are also a couple of committees with extremely low rates of nominees confirmed — under 40 percent — including in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Commerce, Science and Transportation; and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, according to White House data. Biden’s ambassador and other foreign affairs picks have been slow-walked by Sens. TED CRUZ (R-Texas) and JOSH HAWLEY (R-Mo.) — both potential 2024 presidential candidates — over their criticisms of Biden’s foreign policy. Cruz has halted State Department nominees since February in protest of Biden’s decision to waive sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Europe. Hawley has blocked certain State Department and Pentagon nominees since September over the Biden administration’s management of the Afghanistan troop withdrawal. We asked Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. BOB MENENDEZ, (D-N.J.), if there is concern or chatter within the committee that diverse candidates are having a tougher time getting through the Senate. He didn’t downplay it. “What adds insult to injury about these delays, is the willingness of Senate Republicans to treat so many imminently qualified diverse nominees as political pawns in order to score cheap points against President Biden,” Menendez said in a statement. “What they don’t seem to understand is opportunities like these do not come along very often for minorities, especially for women of color, and every single one of these individuals has more than earned their right to help in the development and implementation of U.S. foreign policy.” Of the 36 State Department nominees who have been confirmed by the Senate, 24 are white and 12 are people of color. Both sets of nominees have had to wait long stretches to receive votes on the Senate floor, but nominees of color waited slightly longer, on average: approximately 139 days compared to 130 days for white nominees. A Republican spokesperson for the committee called the narrative that diverse nominees are being held up longer than white nominees “absurd,” noting all nominations have on average moved faster through the committee this Congress — 71 days — than the last — 94 days. “In some cases, these nominees have publicly and personally attacked members of the committee, others have very real policy issues in their personal and professional backgrounds,” the spokesperson said. “The premise of the argument ignores a number of high profile women who have been in their roles for months now, and it is an insult to the Senate as an institution to say that Senators should only care about gender, religion or race.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you PATRICK BONSIGNORE at Building Back Together? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. 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