The Vanishing Bipartisan Attorney General: What the Confirmation Math Now Requires

The hearing this week

On Wednesday, July 16, 2026, the Senate Judiciary Committee opens confirmation hearings for Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general nominated to hold the post outright (Roll Call, July 14, 2026; The Washington Post, July 14, 2026). More than 1,200 former Justice Department employees have signed a letter urging the Senate to reject him (The Washington Post, July 14, 2026). At least one Republican on the committee, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, has said he intends to press the nominee on specific questions before deciding (The Washington Post, July 14, 2026). Supporters, including Judiciary Republicans, say the department needs a confirmed leader and that the acting attorney general has earned the promotion.

Set the merits of that fight aside for a moment, because they will be argued at length by people paid to argue them. Look instead at the number the hearing is building toward, the roll call vote on the Senate floor, and follow that number backward. It tells a story that has nothing to do with any one nominee and everything to do with what the office of attorney general has become.

The spine of the number

Begin where the modern record is cleanest. On March 11, 1993, the Senate confirmed Janet Reno as attorney general by a vote of 98 to 0 (U.S. Senate roll call, 103rd Congress; UPI, March 11, 1993). Not a single senator voted no. Reno was a Democratic president's nominee confirmed unanimously by a Senate that included 43 Republicans, and the vote was unremarkable at the time because that was roughly how the job worked. The attorney general was understood as the nation's lawyer, and while the confirmation could be contentious, the final tally usually was not close.

That 98 is the spine of this piece. Every number that follows bends away from it. The decline is not a straight line, and it is not evenly paced, but read decade by decade it is unmistakable, and it is measured in the same currency every time: how many senators were willing to vote yes.

The collapse, decade by decade

The first real crack came in 2001, when the Senate confirmed John Ashcroft 58 to 42 after a bruising fight, the closest attorney general vote in modern memory to that point (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 1, 2001). Eight years later the number recovered. Eric Holder was confirmed 75 to 21 in 2009, a broad bipartisan margin that included a substantial share of the minority (U.S. Senate roll call, 111th Congress; NPR, February 2, 2009). As late as the Holder vote, an attorney general could still draw dozens of votes from the other party.

Then the floor gave way. Jeff Sessions was confirmed 52 to 47 in 2017, with exactly one senator from the opposing party voting yes (U.S. Senate roll call, 115th Congress; The Washington Post, February 8, 2017). William Barr followed at 54 to 45 in 2019 (PBS NewsHour, February 14, 2019). Merrick Garland stood out as the exception that proves the pattern, confirmed 70 to 30 in 2021 with real crossover support (NBC News, March 10, 2021). Pam Bondi returned to the new baseline in 2025, confirmed 54 to 46 with a single senator from the other party in favor (NPR, February 4, 2025). Loretta Lynch, confirmed 56 to 43 in 2015, sits in the same tight band (The Hill, April 23, 2015). The office that went 98 to 0 in 1993 now clears the floor by margins in the single digits and low teens. In our ranking of the Senate by cross-party legislating, the same hardening shows up across nearly every roll call the chamber takes.

What the math now requires

Here is why the collapse matters beyond the history books. When a confirmation ran 98 to 0, the size of a party's majority was irrelevant, because the votes came from everywhere. When a confirmation runs 52 to 47, the majority's exact seat count is the whole game. A nominee who cannot expect help from the other side must hold almost his entire own side, and the arithmetic leaves little room.

The current Senate holds 53 Republicans and 47 in the Democratic caucus once South Carolina's interim appointee is seated (Wikipedia, List of current United States senators, 2026). With the vice president available to break a tie, a party-line nominee can lose as many as three of his own and still be confirmed 50 to 50. Lose a fourth and the nomination fails. For a stretch of days this month that cushion was even thinner, because the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham on July 11 left the seat empty until Gov. Henry McMaster filled it by appointment on July 13 (CNN, July 13, 2026). A single vacancy, in a chamber where the attorney general now clears by a handful of votes, is the difference between a confirmation and a failed one.

What to watch

Do not watch the hearing for the outcome. Committee hearings rarely change a final tally, and the votes that decide this nomination will be cast on the floor by senators who are not on the Judiciary Committee at all. Watch instead for the number this piece has traced. If Blanche is confirmed by a margin in the single digits, he joins Sessions, Barr, and Bondi in the party line era, and the 98 to 0 world of 1993 recedes another step. If any senator from the other party votes yes, note the name, because that senator is now a rarity worth counting. And if a single defection from the majority appears, the three seat cushion becomes the story, and a job that was once beneath the reach of partisanship comes down to whether one senator changes his mind. The record says the bipartisan attorney general is nearly gone. This week will show how close to gone.