Despite Helms, Moseley-Braun Wins OK of Senate Panel
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination of former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun to be ambassador to New Zealand on a 17-1 vote late Monday, with Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) the only dissenter.
The committee’s vote opens the way for the Illinois Democrat’s confirmation by the full Senate later this week, possibly today.
Moseley-Braun was the first black woman elected to the Senate. President Clinton nominated her to the diplomatic post after she lost her reelection bid in 1998 to Republican Peter Fitzgerald.
But Helms had raised objections to the nomination, saying his former colleague was under an “ethical cloud.” He refused to hold a hearing until the White House, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service met his request for thousands of pages of documents.
Congressional Democrats and civil rights organizations accused Helms of trying to block the nomination to settle an old score--a 1993 clash between the chairman and Moseley-Braun on the Senate floor over display of the Confederate flag.
She appeared before the committee last week at a session not attended by Helms and received broad bipartisan praise.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the panel, predicted her confirmation by the full Senate.
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