Battle over race returns to Capitol with Sessions' bid to become AG
Washington (CNN)Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions is preparing to face fresh scrutiny for a decades' old charge he made racially-charged comments while a US Attorney in his home state of Alabama.
The allegations cost him a job as a federal judge in 1986 and have the potential to sink his nomination to be attorney general under President-elect Donald Trump. To survive, he will need to carefully distance himself from the damaging charges and deftly manage how his Senate colleagues -- and the public -- react to them.
It won't be easy.
Many Democrats already are deeply disturbed by the allegations that Sessions may have called an African-American lawyer "boy" and accused the NAACP and ACLU of being "un-American." They promise to re-investigate the charges to determine if they are still relevant. But Democrats are equally concerned about fourth-term senator's current views on immigration and border control, which they consider strident and racially-biased.
They worry that in the sensitive post as the top law enforcement official in the country, Sessions may not treat all people equally under law and already some Democrats privately want to defeat him.
video at link:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/jeff-sessions-attorney-general-race/index.html