Welcome home, Loretta Lynch (sorry for the delay)

Loretta Lynch, attorney general of the United States, has been all business since her confirmation in April, but one hopes her visit to the Triangle this week will afford her time to enjoy the embrace and congratulations of the folks back home.

A native of Greensboro, Lynch moved to Durham when she was 6 years old. She is the granddaughter of a sharecropper. Her mother was a school librarian and her father a Baptist minister. They still live in Durham.

Lynch’s personal story was obscured slightly because of the contentiousness of her confirmation hearings, which dragged on not because she was viewed as unqualified, but because the Republican-run Senate, or the GOP majority, was determined to drag its heels on Lynch’s confirmation.

Indeed, she was splendidly qualified, a graduate of Harvard and Harvard law, and a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where she oversaw controversial prosecutions of a wide variety of cases including financial fraud and corrupt police officers. Lynch has been praised by Republicans and Democrats in the course of her career.

Disgracefully, both of North Carolina’s Republican U.S. senators, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, opposed Lynch’s nomination on thin and blatantly partisan grounds. They embarrassed themselves more than they did Lynch, and Tillis as a freshman failed the political character test.

Lynch is the first African-American woman and only the second woman to be confirmed as attorney general, and it didn’t take her long to get to work, jumping into the middle of the corruption scandal in international soccer.

In Raleigh and Durham, she’s to meet with U.S. attorneys about human trafficking and talk with Durham community leaders about civil rights.

North Carolina can be justly proud of Lynch, whose distinguished career is entering a new chapter.

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Welcome home, Loretta Lynch (sorry for the delay)."