After months of unnecessary delay, Loretta Lynch has finally won confirmation to serve as the nation’s attorney general.
On Thursday, the Senate voted 56-43 to confirm her.
Lynch will replace Eric Holder, the nation’s first African-American attorney general. Lynch will become the first Black woman in the nation’s top law enforcement post. She currently serves as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Her confirmation was delayed for months for several reasons, most recently a lengthy dispute over abortion on a totally unrelated bill to address sex trafficking.
Lynch boasts strong credentials and a reputation as a no-nonsense prosecutor.
Partisan politics had prolonged a months-long delay in confirming President Barack Obama’s attorney general nominee.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas warned last week the Senate could bypass the sex trafficking bill that’s been somehow entangled with Lynch’s nomination in order to deal with Iran review legislation that cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The delay in Lynch’s confirmation for attorney general was shameful. Her confirmation should not have been held up so long over political battles that had nothing to do with her. Obama nominated Lynch five months ago to succeed Holder as the Justice Department’s top official.
Lynch would have little more than 18 months in office, during which time she would face a Republican-controlled Congress, and a lame-duck president.
While this will probably leave her little time to make major policy changes, she could still have a major impact on such issues as police misconduct, voting rights, immigration and terrorism.
One of the many challenges she will face is how to set priorities for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which is now called on to investigate every suspicious police shooting in the country.
Many in the civil rights community who strongly backed her confirmation are right to have high expectations of her and expect Lynch will use her legal skills and decades of experience to be a champion of all those whom the U.S. Constitution protects.
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