As the Senate gears up to vote on the next Treasury secretary, President Obama’s choice for the job, Jacob J. Lew, has been forced to navigate through something of a political minefield.

As White House chief of staff and a former budget director, Mr. Lew has sought to show he has enough Wall Street experience to handle turbulent financial markets, but not enough to prevent him from reining in the powerful banking industry.

Mr. Lew, who is expected to win an initial nod from the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday and sail on to approval in a full Senate vote, has battled a range of criticism, including questions about his lucrative tenure at Citigroup, a Cayman Islands investment and housing assistance he received as an administrator at New York University more than a decade ago.

To shore up his support, Mr. Lew has met privately in recent weeks with 41 senators and responded to 738 questions for the record. On Tuesday, he is scheduled to head to Capitol Hill for another meeting.

Much of the vitriol surrounding Mr. Lew’s nomination concerns the terms of his employment at Citigroup, which seemed to reward him for leaving the bank if he took a high-ranking position in government.

During Mr. Lew’s confirmation hearing, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, peppered Mr. Lew with questions about the terms of that contract, specifically challenging whether the contract violated the president’s efforts to “close the revolving door.”

Under the terms of Mr. Lew’s contract with Citi, he kept certain bonus compensation if he left for a “high level position with the United States government or regulatory body,” but not a competitor in the private sector, according to several people with direct knowledge of the contract.

Many of the most exacting questions have come from Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, related to a money-losing investment in a fund based in the Cayman Islands.

Mr. Lew had a $56,000 investment in the Citigroup fund, leading to questions from Republican senators about whether the investment had been put there to dodge taxes.

At one point during the hearings, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, held up a huge picture of Ugland House, an office building in the Cayman Islands where thousands of companies, including Mr. Lew’s fund, have registered. The display struck a particularly discordant note because Mr. Obama has used the Ugland House as a symbol for tax havens in his first campaign for president.

“Well there’s a certain hypocrisy in what the president says about other taxpayers, and your appointment,” Mr. Grassley said during the hearing.

Mr. Lew responded by saying that he did not get any tax advantages because of the investment’s location and sold it for a loss.

Senator Grassley also pressed Mr. Lew for more details on hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans that New York University provided while he was an executive with the school.

“N.Y.U. provided the financing over a decade ago,” Mr. Lew wrote in a response to Senator Grassley’s follow-up questions, providing details on the dollar figures and construction of the financing. “During the intervening time period, I repaid the university and privately refinanced the mortgage on my home multiple times. I am still living in the same home today.”

Senator Grassley was not satisfied with Mr. Lew’s written responses, saying he still had concerns about the transparency of Mr. Lew’s compensation. “Mr. Lew has a lack of knowledge or a poor memory of some of the perks he received through his tenure at New York University and Citigroup,” the senator said in a statement. “Most people who receive a $1.4 million loan from their employer remember the terms.”

Privately, officials involved in the confirmation process called the spate of attacks on Mr. Lew politically motivated, arguing that the Cayman Islands criticisms are a direct reprisal for attacks leveled at Mitt Romney during the presidential campaign for his offshore bank accounts.

Much of the battle over Mr. Lew’s income and former status on Wall Street is inconsistent, the aides contended, pointing out that Republicans broadly backed Henry M. Paulson Jr., who left his position as chief executive of Goldman Sachs to become Treasury secretary in 2006.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly included one senator as a source of questioning about loans received by Jacob Lew while working at New York University. The questions came from Senator Charles Grassley alone; Senator Orrin Hatch did not join in raising them. The article also misstated when Mr. Lew worked on a Eugene McCarthy presidential campaign. It was while he was in grade school, not after he arrived in Washington.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/business/economy/treasury-nominee-works-to-address-concerns.html?partner=rss&emc=rss