[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 186 (Tuesday, November 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S7108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of Thomas Farr

  Mr. President, on the pending judicial nomination of Thomas Farr for 
a seat in the Eastern District of North Carolina, in his legal career, 
Mr. Farr has repeatedly defended efforts by North Carolina's 
Republicans to undermine voting rights generally and disenfranchise 
African-American voters specifically.
  This man was chief cook and bottle washer of the State that probably 
did more to prevent people, and particularly minorities, from voting 
than any other State. It is so bad that the discriminatory 
congressional maps, drawn by the Republican legislature, which Mr. Farr 
defended, were struck down by the very conservative Supreme Court.
  Mr. Farr defended North Carolina's absurdly restrictive voter ID law, 
also passed by the conservative Republican State legislature, and they 
tailored their election laws to disadvantage African-American voters 
after requesting race-specific data on voting practices. The law was 
one of five changes to registration and voting, all of which--all of 
which--disproportionately affected African Americans. That wasn't a 
coincidence; that was designed.
  Mr. Farr called the provisions, which a Federal judge said ``targeted 
African-Americans with surgical precision,'' a minor inconvenience.
  Finally, Mr. Farr was a lawyer for the reelection campaign of Senator 
Jesse Helms and may well have had preknowledge of a mailer sent 
overwhelmingly to Black voters, with the purpose of intimidating them 
from voting.
  Partisan affiliation, my friends, should not matter in this debate. 
Voting rights are sacred. It is part of our soil in which the tree of 
democracy is nurtured. It shouldn't be a Democratic issue or Republican 
issue. Taking away the voting rights of Americans, of whatever race, 
creed, color, party, or region is a despicable act. It cuts against the 
very thing that generations of soldiers have died for--the right of 
democracy, the right to vote.
  Every Senator here, including our Republican friends, should be 
disturbed by the fact that Mr. Farr has been involved, often directly, 
in multiple attempts to disenfranchise minority voters.
  What sticks in the craw is, we are voting on Mr. Farr only because 
Republican Senators--when we Democrats were in the majority and still 
respected the blue slip, they blocked two nominees, both African 
American, both women, to represent a jurisdiction that is 27 percent 
African American and doesn't have a single African American judge, even 
though one-quarter of the people are African American. I don't care 
what the ideology is here. Then, adding insult to injury, they are 
putting on the bench someone who would disenfranchise people, 
particularly people of color. It is a disgrace.
  This morning I called Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum, both of whom 
were hurt by attempts to limit voting rights, and they issued the 
following statement together:

       When it comes to the trifecta of voter disenfranchisement--
     voter suppression, racial gerrymandering, and restriction of 
     voting rights--Thomas Farr is, sadly, one of the most 
     experienced election lawyers in the country. . . . Thomas 
     Farr's record of hostility and disregard for fundamental 
     civil rights disqualifies him for a lifetime appointment that 
     will allow him to codify his discriminatory ideology into 
     law.

  I couldn't agree more. I urge my Republican colleagues to see the 
better part of reason, to let, as Abraham Lincoln said--and we all know 
what he did--the better angels of their nature appeal to them, not just 
the political machine that says: This guy helped us get elected. Even 
if he took away voting rights of people, let's put him in.
  One more point, the great Chief Justice John Roberts, who told us he 
would call balls and strikes, allowed a lot of this to happen when he 
authored the Shelby decision, which took away protections against 
horrible things that Mr. Farr helped perpetrate. He said there wasn't 
much discrimination anymore. Well, clearly there is. Nineteen States 
have rolled back voting rights since Shelby. Mr. Roberts tries to 
portray himself as a middle-of-the-road, call-the-balls-and-strikes 
person, but in his decisions he is very far from that, and that is why 
people see the courts as so political.