WASHINGTON — The Senate voted in dramatic fashion Wednesday to approve one of President Barack Obama's nominees. For Democrats to prevail, all it took was a last-ditch vote switch by one senator, a flight back from North Dakota by another and an afternoon roll call that stretched into the evening.
Five hours after the balloting started, the Senate voted to end Republican delaying tactics against B. Todd Jones, Obama's pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It then voted in a comparatively instantaneous 29 minutes for his final confirmation, 53-42.
A defeat would have been a setback for Obama, who is trying to plug gaps in his second-term administration's lineup, and dealt a blow to the recent cooperation between the two parties over allowing votes on the president's nominees.
The lengthy roll call and the theatrics accompanying it nearly obscured that Jones' approval marked a rare congressional victory for gun-control forces. His confirmation came three months after the Senate rejected Obama's drive to expand background checks for firearms buyers.
In a written statement, Obama applauded senators of both parties for confirming ATF's first director in seven years — gridlock, he said, caused by Senate Republicans who "put politics ahead of the agency's law enforcement mission."
Republicans have said Obama showed no urgency, waiting until November 2010 — almost two years after taking office — before naming his first nominee for the ATF, Andrew Traver, whom the Senate never acted on.
Obama nominated Jones weeks after the December massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 first-graders and six staffers. Jones, a former Marine, has been acting ATF director since 2011.
Gun control advocates backed Jones' nomination, saying he would strengthen an agency long weakened by congressionally imposed restraints. With a national registry of gun owners forbidden by federal law, authorities face constraints when they want to trace firearms used in crimes.