WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed dozens of ambassadors early Saturday — including Dallas lawyer Marc Stanley’s appointment to Argentina and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's to Japan — after Sen. Ted Cruz lifted a monthslong blockade in exchange for a sanctions vote on a Russian gas pipeline.
Hours before the 1:30 a.m. confirmation vote, Cruz cut a deal to lift holds on 32 diplomats. In exchange, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promised the Senate will vote by Jan. 14 on the Nord Stream 2 project.
President Joe Biden waived sanctions in May on the Russian company behind the pipeline, in part to improve relations with Germany, which strongly supports it as it seeks access to natural gas.
The Texas senator and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, another potential 2024 GOP presidential contender, had blocked scores of nominations since then. They warn the pipeline will give strongman Vladimir Putin a potent weapon against Western Europe.
Putin has cut energy supplies to neighboring Ukraine during past conflicts. With Russia massing troops on the border, tensions with NATO are high. Nord Stream 2 delivers gas directly to Germany, without transiting Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that wants closer ties with the west.
It will take a supermajority of 60 senators to impose sanctions, including 10 Democrats if all Republicans side with Cruz.
That’s unlikely. But forcing the vote at all gives Cruz a face-saving way to end the stalemate.
Biden nominated Stanley in August as U.S. emissary in Buenos Aires, the Paris of South America.
Stanley chaired Lawyers for Biden during last year’s campaign. A prominent Democratic activist and fundraiser, he chaired a political action committee during the 2018 Senate campaign that blistered Cruz for sucking up to Donald Trump despite having deemed him a pathological liar during their presidential fight two years earlier.
The confirmation was done by voice vote along with dozens of other nominations.
Moments later the Senate confirmed a more contentious nomination: Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and member of the House, as ambassador to Japan.
That vote was 48-21. Cruz voted no. Sen. John Cornyn was among the 31 senators not casting votes.
Presidents in both parties have sent political allies and career diplomats to Argentina, a country of 46 million people wracked lately by debt, recession and COVID-19.
It’s four times the size of Texas and Latin America’s third largest economy after Brazil and Mexico, and an important trading partner.
“I do not see this post as simply one of ceremony,” Stanley told the Foreign Affairs Committee at his Oct. 26 confirmation hearing, held virtually. “I will make it clear that America is truly back. That our presence is a positive one.”
The panel approved his nomination on Dec. 15.
Stanley is expected to be sworn in next week, with a formal ceremony after New Year’s. He’ll arrive in Buenos Aires in early January.
At his hearing, he called Argentina “a critical partner in our hemisphere” and “a truly beautiful country — a place where I’ve loved meeting the people and exploring. Walking the streets of Buenos Aires, hiking in Bariloche [in Patagonia] and getting drenched at Iguazu [Falls].”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2016, introduced Stanley at the hearing, calling him “super qualified.”
They met 15 years ago when Kaine chaired the Democratic National Committee.
“He is extremely well known for his devotion to his faith, Judaism, and public affairs. At every level of professional, philanthropic and public service, Marc has demonstrated excellence, character and integrity,” Kaine said.
“Serving in this role would truly be the honor of a lifetime — and another humbling chapter in a family story that is truly unique to the American promise. That story finds its roots in small villages in Belarus and Ukraine and Poland …. My mother’s father fled pogroms in the early 1900s,” Stanley told senators. “Throughout my life, public service, the pursuit of justice, the desire to give back and repair the world — what in Judaism we call `tikkun olam’ — have always been a central part of my identity.”
One looming issue is that Argentina is deep in debt to the International Monetary Fund.
“Argentina is a beautiful country. It’s a beautiful tour bus that doesn’t have the wheels on working right. The IMF debt of $45 billion is huge,” he told senators. “It’s the Argentines’ leadership responsibility to come up with a macro plan to pay this back. And they have yet to do so. They say one is coming soon.”
“COVID has certainly not helped the situation at all,” he added.
At Kaine’s prompting, Stanley vowed to keep pressure on Argentina to hunt down and prosecute the terrorists behind the bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994. Hundreds were injured and 85 people were killed.
Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America.
“This is a huge issue, and this is not a Jewish issue. This is an affront on Argentina. … No one’s been called to account for it,” Stanley said. “We do call on Argentines to continue to focus on this.”
Argentina has long pinned blame on Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, which Argentina declared a terrorist organization in 2019.
Stanley lauded that move and said he was “pleased” that President Alberto Fernández voiced outrage when one of the alleged co-conspirators was elevated to a senior post in the Iranian regime. But he said, that’s not enough.
“There should be a demand that this government, the judiciary, prosecute and find out who’s responsible and get justice,” he said.
———
