Obama nominee died before Senate Republicans would confirm her as Bahamas ambassador

(Image credit: Twitter/@Bahamaspress)

published 7 June 2016

Cassandra Butts waited more than two years to be confirmed as the ambassador of the Bahamas — and was still waiting when she died suddenly last month at the age of 50 of undiagnosed leukemia. Senate Republicans had blocked Butts from the not-especially-high-profile gig as payback for Obama's Iran nuclear deal and, later, in an attempt to pressure Obama to take action over a Secret Service leak of private information about another member of Congress, The New York Times reports.

Neither issue had anything to do with Butts or the Bahamas.

"All Cassandra wanted to do was serve her country. Looking back, it is devastating to think that through no fault of her own, she spent the last 835 days of her life waiting for confirmation," senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett said.

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A law school friend of Obama's, Butts was nominated to the ambassadorship as a thanks for her decades of government and nonprofit work. To date, the Bahamas have been without an ambassador from the U.S. for over 1,647 days.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.