Politics

Helms Blocks Clinton Nominee

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 18, 1999 / 10:14 AM EDT / CBS

A six-year-old grudge over a debate in the Senate over slavery and the Confederacy may blocking President Clinton's choice from becoming the next U.S. ambassador to New Zealand.

CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent Bob Fuss reports Senate Foreign Relations chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC) said in a statement Monday there is an "ethical cloud" hanging over Mosley-Braun and suggests even the government of New Zealand doesn't really want her to have the job. However, he said he may allow hearings to be held.

She was nominated by President Clinton Oct. 8.

In 1993, Moseley-Braun, then a Democratic senator from Illinois, led the fight against renewing a design patent for the United Daughters of the Confederacy that used the Confederate flag as its emblem. Helms had sponsored the measure. It had been a routine request, every 14 years, since 1898.

Moseley-Braun is black, and felt the Confederate flag was the symbol of slavery.

The patent renewal failed to pass.

"I don't think she [should] hold her breath until she becomes an ambassador," Helms told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. "She better look for another line of work."

Former Senators usually have a fairly easy time being confirmed by their colleagues.

The White House says it assumes Senator Jesse Helms will "repudiate" the reported threat to block the ambassadorial nomination, reports CBS News Correspondent Peter Maer. Spokesman Barry Toiv said, "It's hard to believe that he [Helms] would hold up a nomination over a personal grudge."

A few weeks after the United Daughters of the Confederacy vote, Moseley-Braun said in a speech to the National Urban League that she had recently shared a Capitol elevator ride with Helms.

"He saw me standing there, and he started to sing, 'I wish I was in the land of cotton.' And he looked at Senator Hatch and said, 'I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries,'" reported The Washington Post's account of the speech. "And I looked at him and said, 'Senator Helms, your singing would make me cry if you sang 'Rock of Ages.'"

Moseley-Braun could not be reached for comment Friday.

Helms told Roll Call Moseley-Braun must make amends.

"At a very minimum she has got to apologize for the display that she provoked over a little symbol for a wonderful group of little old ladies," Helms said.