Roosevelt administration now considered Madden a political liability, and resolved to replace him. NLRB Chairman J. Warren Maddden's term on the Board expired on August 27, 1940. President Roosevelt, campaigning for re-election, refused to name successor to Madden until the election was over. Senator Wagner and influential Roosevelt confidante and labor leader Sidney Hillman both suggested Millis to the president. After the election, Roosevelt personally contacted Millis and asked him to be NLRB Chairman. Millis later said, "I was dragged into that job by the President; I certainly was not a candidate for membership on the Board, much less the chairmanship." Word leaked of the Millis appointment on November 6, the day after the election. His nomination was officially announced on November 14. Media outlets said that Millis' nomination was intended to replace a "radical" majority on the Board with one that was merely "liberal." Millis' appointment had an immediate effect. Witt resigned immediately. David Saposs, also under fire for alleged communist beliefs, left the Board on October 11 after Congress defunded his office. Millis was confirmed by the Senate on November 26. Thomas I. Emerson, chief of NLRB's Review Division, resigned the next day—the same day that Millis was sworn in as NLRB Chairman. Changes instituted at the Board Millis implemented significant administrative changes at the NLRB. His goal was to get the NLRB out of the limelight in wake of Smith Committee investigation. He deliberately made the NLRB more dependent on Congress and the executive branch for its survival. Millis allied with Leiserson against Edwin S. Smith, and made extensive changes in NLRB administration, doctrine, personnel and operations. Smith strongly criticized these changes, but Millis replied that Smith had refused to discuss these changes or participate in Board decisions making them and had thus lost his right to criticize. Millis stripped the office of Secretary of all its power and never filled the position, set up an Administrative Division to supervise the 22 regional offices, initiated a study of the Board's administrative procedures, and genuinely delegated power to the regional offices. He appointed Robert Watts as the agency's new chief counsel, removed casehandling and regional office communication from the jurisdiction of the Office of the Secretary, created a Field Division, delegated large amounts of authority to field offices, and generally implemented the recommendations of a 1939 internal staff report (which had been stalled by Chairman Madden because it