Obama's next move: Picking an attorney general
President Obama convened a meeting of senior advisers in the Oval Office just before 7 p.m. Tuesday night and received glum predictions on the coming returns. Before adjourning the meeting, Obama announced he had not yet made a final decision on his pick to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General.
Obama delayed the decision of naming Holder's replacement until after the election in hopes of freeing vulnerable Senate Democrats from any confirmation controversy that might arise. Now that Obama knows Republicans will run the Senate in the next Congress his move to replace Holder, which could come as early as Thursday, will be among the first indicators of how the White House views the altered political terrain on Capitol Hill.
Officials close to the selection process say Obama has whittled the list of contenders down to three: Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn and Queens), Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and Labor Secretary Tom Perez. The White House holds out hope the lame-duck Congress can confirm the nominee before adjourning in mid-December, but Holder recently said he was likely to remain in his post until February.
All three top contenders to replace Holder have been vetted and an announcement by Obama this week could give the Senate Judiciary Committee time to review documentation while Obama travels to Asia for the APEC and G-20 summits in Beijing and Brisbane, Australia, respectively. Obama is due to depart early Sunday.
Those familiar with White House deliberations say Lynch has received the most attention of late and is emerging as a likely option for Obama. Lynch would be the first African American woman Attorney General and has a long career of successful prosecutions of white color criminals, terrorists and handling volatile civil rights cases.
But Lynch has kept herself out of the limelight while playing a key role as an outside adviser to Holder. Lynch has served for four years on an outside panel advising Holder on policy and law. In January of 2013 Holder appointed Lynch chairwoman of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee. Holder and Lynch recently appeared together in New York, prompting increased speculation she was Holder's favorite.
Lynch's background does not appear to present immediate confirmation problems with a lame-duck Democratically controlled Senate or a GOP-run Senate should the process extend, as it very well might, into early next year. The one downside for Lynch, compared with Verrilli and Perez, is she does not have a strong working or personal relationship with Obama. But Holder is among Obama's most trusted advisers and his advocacy, should he chose to express it strongly, could tip the scales in Lynch's favor.
Verrilli is, according to those inside and outside the White House, is everyone's second choice. Obama likes and respects Verrilli and never bought into the criticism he encountered for his performance in oral arguments before the Supreme Court defending the Affordable Care Act. Verrilli's advocacy on that and other cases - and his work as deputy White House counsel - has earned him high marks within the West Wing. What Verrilli lacks is any legal experience as a prosecutor, something Obama considers important to the management side of the department and the politics of confirmation. Verrilli's work on Obamacare and lack of prosecutorial experience could prove problematic before a GOP-run Senate.
Perez would present even more confirmation troubles, though some on the left believe that is precisely what Obama needs. Though he was confirmed as Labor Secretary in July 2013, Perez garnered only 54 votes. Most Republican objections focused on Perez's work as assistant attorney general of the civil rights division - particularly his challenges to voter identification laws in South Carolina and Texas - and allegations of improper conduct in a whistleblower case.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has endorsed Perez for attorney general. During the confirmation process, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, soon to be majority leader, branded Perez a "crusading ideologue." If Obama were to pick Perez he would signal to progressives a willingness to take on Senate Republicans and prepare for another confirmation struggle to fill a vacancy at the Labor Department. Those close to the deliberations say this is not Obama's current inclination - in part because he's not eager to wage two confirmation battles with newly empowered Republicans.
