CAMDEN, Ala. (AP) – Upperclassmen on the Wilcox County High School football team sometimes harassed the freshmen of 1964. But linebacker Jeff Sessions, a senior who was barely bigger than his younger schoolmates, didn’t join in.
“One of my friends was a football manager and they were picking on him. Jeff stood up and said, ‘Leave him alone,'” recalled fellow student George Alford, laughing as he remembered the 140-pound player who went on to represent Alabama in the U.S. Senate and is now President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
“It’s not like he had any physical presence,” Alford said, “but he stood up.”
That’s the man Sessions’ backers want the nation to see on Tuesday when the 70-year-old Republican appears before his colleagues for a confirmation hearing: a polite but tenacious little guy fighting for other little guys.
Yet critics question whether Sessions, whose confirmation would mark a profound change from the Obama administration’s Justice Department, can universally apply that sense of fairness to the divisive policy matters that buffet the agency each day. Opponents have already signaled concern over his hard-line views on immigration and national security, and they are likely to use statements he’s made as a prosecutor and senator to cast doubt on his commitment to civil rights, an enforcement priority of the two most recent attorneys general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.