Opponents of the conservative nominees to the Bush cabinet drew their first blood last night when Ms Linda Chavez withdrew her name as prospective Labour Secretary in the face of allegations that she knowingly harboured an illegal immigrant in her home eight years ago.
Her decision is likely to whet the appetites of those gunning for other ideologically-driven nominees, particularly, Mr John Ashcroft (Attorney General) but also Ms Gale Norton (Interior) and Mr Don Rumsfield (Defence).
Ms Chavez, a controversial right-wing columnist and campaigner against affirmative action for women or minorities, had already been made a target by the trade union movement as an unacceptably provocative nomination.
Concerns about the nomination had been growing in the ranks of the transition team as it became increasingly clear that Ms Chavez not only knew at the time that her house guest, Guatemalan immigrant Ms Marta Mercado, was an illegal, but that she concealed the fact from the Bush vetting team.
This team was supposed to unearth personal skeletons before they embarrassed the new administration. Such a breach of faith with her new boss was not survivable.
Ms Chavez said last night that she had decided to withdraw her name because she had become "a distraction". But she lambasted the sort of detailed scrutiny that candidates for office face.
"So long as the game in Washington is a game of search and destroy," she told a press conference, "I think we will have very few people willing to do what I did, which is to put themselves through this to serve."
But Democrats were last night defending the onslaught on her candidacy as being justified less by the illegality of harbouring an illegal immigrant than the hypocrisy demonstrated by Ms Chavez in demanding the head of a previous nominee in a similar situation.
Eight years ago Ms Zoe Baird, a Clinton nominee for Attorney General, had been forced to withdraw her name after it was revealed that she not only employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny but failed to pay taxes on her salary. Among those who criticised her publicly at the time for harbouring an illegal was Ms Linda Chavez.
Ms Chavez has disputed that the cases are comparable, insisting that her sheltering of Ms Mercado was an act of charity in response to the request of a friend and that she was not her employer. Occasionally she had given her spending money, and occasionally Ms Mercado had carried out household chores, but the two were ostensibly not connected, she said.
An act of kindness to a homeless, battered woman in distress, say supporters of Ms Chavez, who say she has on two other occasions taken hard cases into her home.
In 1978, responding to appeals by Catholic charities, she had housed two Vietnamese refugees. And she has also helped out a poor Puerto Rican family by providing a holiday refuge for two of their children, whose school fees she is currently paying.
But trade unions and Democrats are taking a very different view. They argue that the relationship was more akin to that of employer and employee.
Ms Mercado has not helped her friend's case by giving ambiguous interviews about whether she was being paid for the work or simply being given the occasional handout. She says, however, that she did not consider herself an employee.
Mr Bush last night regretted the circumstances of her withdrawal and paid tribute to his nominee as a "good person with a great deal of compassion" who would have made an outstanding Labour Secretary.
Meanwhile a broad coalition of civil rights, environmental, labour, gay, abortion rights and women's organisations met yesterday in Washington to co-ordinate their "Stop Ashcroft" campaign against Mr Bush's nomination for Attorney General.
And there were also new rumblings against the Defence Secretary designate, Mr Don Rumsfeld, who is being accused of racism because of a tape dating back to his days in the Nixon White House.