Quick. Who’s the president of the U.S. Senate, and what key role does he play in the event of a tie vote in the Senate?

Chances are, if you follow politics, you now know the answer to both of these questions. For those who do not, the answer is the Vice President of the United States – currently Mike Pence – and his role in the Senate becomes significantly increased in the case of a tie vote. As the tie-breaking vote, the vice president becomes one of the most powerful people in his party as his vote, which will undoubtedly run along party lines, essentially, establishes law.

On Monday, February 7, Vice-President Mike Pence became the first vice president called upon to cast the deciding vote in a cabinet nomination. According to The New York Times’ Emmarie Huetteman and Yamiche Alcindor, “taking the gavel as the vote deadlocked at 50-50, Mr. Pence, a former member of the House, declared his vote for Devos before announcing that Mr. Trump’s nominee for education secretary had been confirmed.”

In order to even get to Pence’s deciding vote, two republican senators had to break party lines and vote “no” on Devos’ confirmation. According to Huetteman and Alcindor, those two senators were Maine senator Susan Collins and Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, who announced their opposition to Devos last week, citing Devos’ “…lack of familiarity with public schools and with laws meant to protect them.”

Betsy Devos is the daughter-in-law of Richard Devos, a man who owns the Orlando Magic and is co-founder of Amway, a company which uses multi-level marketing as its business model, is ranked by Forbes as one of the thirty-largest private companies in the world, and has been investigated several times in its existence for what investigators called pyramid-scheme-type practices. Like the issues surrounding President Trump’s own separation of business and government, Devos’ relationship with Amway presented a bit of a problem for the nominee during the confirmation process.

The start of Devos’ confirmation process did not receive much coverage at first because she was seen as not being as President Trump’s other nominees, most of whom brought with them a number of potential conflicts of interest or other significant areas of concern for democratic lawmakers.

Critics of Devos see her as a poor fit for the role of Secretary of Education, noting that she has no personal experience with public schools, except for arguing vigorously – mostly with her checkbook – in opposition to them and in favor of charter schools in her home state of Michigan.

In an open letter to Devos prior to the Senate confirmation hearings in January, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned Devos’ experience, competence and intestinal fortitude to protect public schools.

Devos’ bumpy confirmation took another hit when she failed to answer Minnesota Senator Al Franken’s questions on one of the biggest controversies in education: measuring growth vs. proficiency. Responding to Senator Franken’s question, Devos seemed to struggle with the basic tenets of the debate over the use of tests to either determine proficiency making sure students get a certain score or growth making sure and students attain measurable improvement.

Devos seemed not to understand the question or even the debate as she stumbled and fumbled her way through an answer. Yet even after her less-than-stellar confirmation hearing, the Senate – with the Vice President’s deciding vote – confirmed Devos. This led Senator Franken to question the entire process. “What are we even doing here?” asked the junior senator from Minnesota.

Devos’ lack of knowledge, which was on full display during her confirmation hearings, has provided critics with significant fodder and reason to oppose Devos, yet her confirmation seemed inevitable as Democrats fought an uphill battle in the Senate. Despite the two “no” votes from Collins and Murkowski, Devos won confirmation and now takes the reins at the Department of Education.