‘Black Lives Matter’ Democrat Senator will OPPOSE Rahm Emanuel’s nomination for Ambassador to Japan

Progressive Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon announced his intent to vote down Rahm Emanuel’s nomination to serve as President Joe Biden’s Ambassador to Japan on Wednesday.

Merkley said he came to his decision after extensively speaking with civil rights leaders and others familiar with Emanuel who voiced concerns.

‘Black Lives Matter. Here in the halls of Congress, it is important that we not just speak and believe these words, but put them into action in the decisions we make,’ the Oregon lawmaker said in a statement.

‘I have carefully considered Mayor Emanuel’s record—and the input of civil rights leaders, criminal justice experts, and local elected officials who have reached out to the Senate to weigh in—and I have reached the decision that I cannot support his nomination to serve as a U.S. Ambassador. 

‘While I respect Mayor Emanuel’s many years of service, and the points of view of my colleagues who have come to a different conclusion, I will be voting “no” when his nomination comes before the committee.’  

Merkley is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will be considering Emanuel’s nomination. He’s the first Democrat to say he’ll vote against it.

Progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York praised Merkley’s statement on Wednesday.

‘Thank you @SenJeffMerkley,’ she wrote on Twitter. ‘This was the courageous and right thing to do.’ 

Emanuel and Biden had previously worked together when the former served as Barack Obama’s chief of staff. 

But Emanuel’s tumultuous tenure as mayor of Chicago after the Obama administration is what some speculated would have brought down his shot to represent Biden in Asia. 

His eight-year tenure as mayor of Chicago was historically unpopular and marked by a number of high-profile scandals involving police shootings. 

Emanuel’s administration refused to make public police dash cam video of the killing for more than a year and not until being compelled to do so by a state court.

The video’s release proved that police lied about the details leading to McDonald’s 2014 death, in which the 17-year-old was shot 16 times by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke.

He later apologized for his handling of the situation, which sparked weeks of mostly peaceful protests in the nation’s third-largest city after the video’s release.

Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder for McDonald’s death and jailed for nearly seven years. 

Merkley, who had a tense exchange with Emanuel during his confirmation hearing in late October, is further left than most of his colleagues in the Senate. 

In 2016 he was the only member of Congress’ upper chamber to endorse Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. 

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At the hearing on October 20, seven years to the day of McDonald’s killing, confronted Emanuel about his city’s decision to force McDonald’s family to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they could see video of the teen’s murder. 

He questioned whether Emanuel knew more than he let on at the time – but the former mayor wouldn’t give a direct answer.

‘That’s a pretty significant decision, you’re saying you had no idea of the circumstances of the shooting?’ Merkley asked.

‘Senator, in that situation, the family approached the city about a settlement, an NDA is standard practice at that time,’ Emanuel replied before venturing to explain the bureaucratic red tape that go into such agreements.

But Merkley pushed ahead, clarifying: ‘Yes of course, I didn’t ask about the NDA, I asked if at that point you had been briefed on the details of the shooting.’ 

Merkley stated that Emanuel’s role in Chicago’s handling of the teenager’s death should not be overlooked at a time the country is grappling with ‘the challenge of Black Lives Matter’ and a nationwide racial reckoning, noting other officials have also spoken out on the issue.

‘I think it’s important for this committee to actually weigh this,’ he said, adding to Emanuel: ‘Thank you for addressing this now.’

He concluded, ‘Just to clarify – because all of these things happened, the family requested the video, the city attorney reached out proactively before there was a lawsuit to ask for a settlement, the settlement was approved in a less than one minute meeting with no public discussion, it seems hard to believe that all those things happened but you weren’t briefed on the details of the situation.’

Emanuel had said of McDonald’s death at the hearing, ‘Seven years ago, a young man had his life taken on the streets of the city of Chicago. He had all the promise ahead of him and a police officer took his life, killed him. I said then, I’m the mayor and I’m responsible and accountable for fixing this so this never happens again.’

‘And to be honest, there’s not a day or a week that has gone by in the last seven years I haven’t thought about this and thought about that the what ifs and the changes, and what could have been.’ 

With an even split between Republicans and Democrats on the committee, Emanuel will need the backing of the minority party to sail through his confirmation vote. 

But despite his scandal-ridden tenure as mayor, he’s got the support of the White House and a number of other senators on a bipartisan basis.

GOP Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, refused to comment on Merkley’s Wednesday statement but intends to vote for Emanuel’s confirmation.

Former US ambassador to Japan and now GOP Senator from Tennessee Bill Hagerty called Emanuel a ‘qualified and capable nominee’ at the hearing.

Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia thanked Emanuel for discussing the teenager’s murder at all.

‘You can’t be a mayor especially in a city like Chicago without picking up some scar tissue along the way,’ he noted.

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