(The Washington Post) – Loretta E. Lynch’s long wait to win confirmation as U.S. attorney general ended Thursday, after the Senate narrowly approved the veteran New York prosecutor’s nomination.
Twenty Republicans joined the Senate’s 44 Democrats and two independents in supporting the procedural move that set up a final vote. But getting the Senate to this point has been a slow and rancorous affair, one President Obama deemed “embarrassing” last week.
“I guess I was naive in thinking my Republican colleagues would treat Loretta Lynch with the dignity that she and her office deserve,” Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor Thursday morning. “Perhaps my mistake was forgetting that for Republicans, this isn’t about Loretta Lynch. It’s about President Obama.”
Obama nominated Lynch, 55, to replace Eric H. Holder Jr. in November. The Senate, then under Democratic control, did not act on the nomination, preferring to spend precious time in the lame-duck session on judicial appointments that party leaders believed would stall in a Republican-controlled Senate.