About 40 women from North Carolina conferred with their state’s two U.S. senators in Washington on Tuesday to urge them to support attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch, but left the meeting rejected and angry.
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr told the visiting delegation that they’d vote against Lynch, who was born in Greensboro and grew up in Durham before attending Harvard University as an undergraduate and a law student.
Lynch, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, sailed through her nomination hearing, but Burr and Tillis were among a number of Republicans who have said they would oppose oppose her.
“Their responses were in a lot of ways very juvenile responses, the Rev. Michelle Laws, executive director of the North Carolina NAACP, who took part in the meeting, said afterward. “They decided not on her merit, not on her record, but on a response to a question: ‘What would you do that’s different than this current administration in your leadership?’..They have decided not to give her a chance to lead on her own and set a record, but are punishing her because of the record of Attorney General (Eric) Holder. That’s their explanation. That’s very shameful.”
Reporters were not allowed into the meeting in Burr’s office between the senators and the women. Tillis and Burr quickly left together. Later in a joint statement, they described the meeting as “a thoughtful, thorough conversation.”
“While we remain concerned with Ms. Lynch’s stated desire to lead the Department of Justice in the same manner as Eric Holder and will not be supporting her nomination, we are grateful that the group came to Washington to talk about this issue and exchange ideas,” they said.
The Rev. William Barber, president of the NC NAACP, who also attended the meeting, called the senators’ reasons “weak, bogus, deeply partisan.” He noted that they brought up a Department of Justice inspector general’s report that raised some criticisms of the agency.
“There’s no agency that’s perfect,” he said. “But to ask Loretta Lynch, based on two or three things in a report how would she change things, when she hasn’t even had a chance to be in office, to examine, it’s just wrong.”
Meanwhile, Lynch’s nomination has become caught up in an unrelated debate in the Senate over what had been a bipartisan bill on human trafficking. But an anti-abortion provision has turned it into a partisan battle. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is holding up Lynch’s confirmation vote until that stalemate is broken.
Lynch was nominated four months ago and has waited longer than any other nominee for attorney general in the past 30 years. She would be the nation’s first African American woman to head the Justice Department, if confirmed.
E. Lavonia Allison of Durham, who attended the meeting with Burr and Tillis, said that their reasons for opposing her were “very weak, very embarrassing.” Allison was a member of the Baptist church where Lynch’s father, the Rev. Lorenzo Lynch, was a pastor in Durham during the civil rights movement.
Burr said in a statement in February that he opposed Lynch “due to her advocacy for continuing federal lawsuits against states like North Carolina” over election laws, including voter ID requirements.
Tillis voted against Lynch in a Judiciary Committee hearing in February, where her nomination, nonetheless, was approved and sent to the full Senate. He said he didn’t think she was a good manager, didn’t approve of her support for the elections lawsuit and opposed President Barack Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
The orders, now being challenged in court, would shield from deportation several million people who are living in the country illegally.
Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told reporters earlier on Tuesday in a conference call that Lynch’s qualifications were impeccable.
Speaking in the same call with Butterfield, Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said Lynch’s nomination should be beyond politics.
“When women all over the country see the right person for the right job at the right time, flawlessly performed, is still unable to get the job, it sends a very toxic message,” she said.
William Douglas of the Washington Bureau contributed.
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