Sen. Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, will likely face a tough confirmation fight. What remains to be seen is how ugly those hearings will get.

No sooner had Sessions been named than the left — and much of the press — were tarring the Alabama senator as a racist. The NAACP tweeted that he “supports an old, ugly history” when it comes to civil rights.

Most of this traces to 1986, when the Senate rejected his nomination for a federal judgeship, based on hearsay testimony from two lawyers alleging he’d made racially charged statements.

Sessions denied some of the statements and apologized for others, while defending his record. The late Sen. Arlen Specter, a liberal Republican who cast the deciding vote against Sessions, later called it “a mistake” that “remains one of my biggest regrets.”

Later, as a US attorney, Sessions desegregated schools and successfully prosecuted the head of the state Ku Klux Klan for murder — then, as the state’s attorney general, saw the killer executed. That prosecution set the stage for a $7 million civil judgment that broke the Alabama Klan.

Then Sessions won election to the Senate in 1996. That’s when Specter (who actually finished his career as a Democrat) came to know him, and reversed his opinion.

Yes, he’s a hawk on immigration; some may claim that in itself is proof of racism. Which would be another explanation of why Democrats just took a beating at the polls.

But while many senators disagree strongly with his views, he remains well-respected. In two decades in the Senate, he has a record of working cordially with Democrats on key issues. And he voted across ideological lines to confirm Eric Holder as President Obama’s attorney general.

Sessions’ votes and ideology are fair game for confirmation hearings. Democrats have every right to conduct a tough and spirited grilling — provided it’s a fair one, and not another in a long line of liberal smears.