Linda Chavez: No stranger to controversy

Chavez: From Democrat to conservative Republican

Linda Chavez's feisty attack on the Washington establishment as she withdrew from her nomination as secretary of labour was typical of her combative and controversial nature.

Ms Chavez admitted at the news conference where she announced her withdrawal that she had had a difficult childhood.

This, she said, persuaded her of the need to help others in difficulty, hence her decision to shelter an illegal immigrant in her home in the early 1990s.

Ms Chavez sheltered Marta Mercado in her home

But it also proved her downfall, as she fell victim to what she herself described as the "search and destroy politics" of federal government.

Ms Chavez graduated from the University of Colorado in 1970 and edited a quarterly journal for the American Federation of Teachers. It was this experience, in President-elect Bush's view, which qualified her for the post of labour secretary.

Starting out a Democrat, she moved steadily to the right, and by the early 1980s she was serving as staff director of the US Commission on Civil Rights during the Republican Reagan administration.

As she grew more conservative, Ms Chavez started campaigning against a federal minimum wage and affirmative action, a programme that promotes women and minorities.

It was this that prompted the American labour movement to oppose her recent nomination vehemently .

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO labour confederation, called the nomination "an insult to American working men and women".