(Reuters) – The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to confirm Philip Jefferson as an economist and Davidson College dean of faculty to the Federal Reserve Board.

The 91-7 vote approved Jefferson’s nomination, with no votes from Republicans. The fourth Black person to become a U.S. bank governor is Jefferson. He will serve his term until 2036.

Jerome Powell will be confirmed as Fed chair by lawmakers Thursday. But, that margin is expected to shrink.

But, this vote won’t just be an endorsement for his handling of the 2020 pandemic, and of the disastrous 2020 recession, which marked his first term. It will also support the March round of steep interest rate increases he started to counter the high inflation, now in its second decade.

Jefferson was confirmed the day after Kamala Harris (Vice President) cast a tiebreaking vote on Senate Floor to confirm Lisa Cook, Michigan State University’s nominee to the Fed.

She’s the first Black woman elected Fed governor. Never before have two Black governors served concurrently on the Fed Board.

Jefferson feels that the confirmation is a little bit of a back to his roots. After graduating from Vassar College, New York State in 2002, he was a research assistant at Fed.

He taught economics at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania and Columbia University, New York for over two decades before he took up his position at Davidson College. His research has been published on monetary policy, as well as extensive writings on income distribution, wages and poverty.

One of the remaining seven members of the panel will not have enough seats to fill its entire complement.

Biden had earlier announced that he would nominate Michael Barr, an ex-Treasury official, to the Fed’s Vice Chair of Supervision. Sarah Bloom Raskin was his first choice for the position, but she withdrew after being opposed by Republicans and one Democrat who denied her a pathway to confirmation.