Former Congressman Dr. David Weldon speaks in The Villages, FL, on May 31, 2012.
The White House has withdrawn the nomination of former Florida state representative Dave Weldon, whom President Donald Trump had chosen to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a senior administration official said.
The development came just before Weldon was set to testify at his Senate confirmation hearing for the role at 10 a.m. ET before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Axios was the first to report the news, citing sources on Capitol Hill.
Watch NBC 4 free wherever you are
WATCH HEREWeldon was told last night that his nomination was being withdrawn, another Trump administration official said. The White House decided to pull Weldon’s nomination when it became clear that he would not have the votes to be favorably reported out of committee because of his past controversial comments about vaccines, the official said.
The Senate committee chairman, Bill Cassidy, R-La., had been looking forward to the hearing, but Weldon didn’t have the votes from the panel to get the nomination onto the Senate floor, a source on Capitol Hill close to the chairman said.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox with NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
SIGN UP In a lengthy statement, Weldon said he assumed the White House withdrew his nomination because Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had reservations, and Cassidy also planned to vote against him. Weldon added that Cassidy had asked for his nomination to be withdrawn over concerns that he could be “antivax.”
There are 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee, Weldon noted, so even losing one of the Republican senators was a problem.
U.S. & World
“So, he was a big problem and losing Collins too was clearly too much for the White House,” Weldon said, referring to Cassidy. “The president is a busy man doing good work for our nation, and the last thing he needs is a controversy about CDC.”
Weldon also claimed the pharmaceutical industry lobbied against his nomination, and he defended the work of Andrew Wakefield, the British physician who published a study that falsely claimed the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella causes autism.
A spokesperson for Cassidy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cassidy, a doctor, had raised concerns about the anti-vaccine advocacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before his confirmation as health secretary last month. Weldon has held some vaccine views similar to those of Kennedy.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., met with Weldon last month, and signaled she would oppose his nomination, saying she had little confidence he would stand up to Kennedy. She said Weldon "spent years promoting the false conspiracy that vaccines cause autism, but he has also criticized the CDC’s essential role in vaccine safety research."
After his nomination was withdrawn Thursday, Murray called Weldon "a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines" and "should never have even been under consideration to lead the foremost agency charged with protecting public health."
"While I have little to no confidence in the Trump administration to do so, they should immediately nominate someone for this position who at bare minimum believes in basic science and will help lead CDC’s important work to monitor and prevent deadly outbreaks," she said about the next CDC director nominee.
Weldon served 14 years in the House until 2009, during which time he criticized the CDC and questioned the safety of vaccines. Similar to Kennedy, Weldon has made statements linking vaccines to autism despite research showing no connection exists, and has called on the CDC to further research it.
As a congressman, he questioned the safety of the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, and he also promoted disproven claims that a mercury-containing preservative, thimerosal, used in children's vaccines caused autism, even sponsoring a bill called the Mercury-Free Vaccines Act.
In 2007, he unveiled legislation that would have transferred oversight of vaccine safety from the CDC to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
Weldon also reportedly helped anti-vaccine researchers Mark Geier and his son David access the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a CDC database containing patient health records, according to an account in the 2004 book “Evidence of Harm” by journalist David Kirby.
The CDC has decided to begin researching autism and potential links to vaccines, according to a source familiar with the agency's planning.
Vaughn Hillyard contributed to this report.
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
