[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 186 (Tuesday, November 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S7129]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                CONFIRMATION OF STEPHEN ALEXANDER VADEN

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, President Trump nominated Stephen 
Vaden to be General Counsel for the Department of Agriculture. In that 
role, Mr. Vaden will oversee all of the legal services for all 
operations and programs of the Department and 250 attorneys nationwide.
  Most of Mr. Vaden's experience is not in agriculture or natural 
resources issues. Much of his work at the law firm Jones Day focused on 
election law, and during the 2016 election cycle, he coauthored amicus 
briefs in States where State legislatures had enacted discriminatory 
voting laws designed to suppress minority votes following the Supreme 
Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder which gutted the Voting Rights 
Act of 1965. State legislatures in North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia 
took full advantage of the Shelby County ruling that removed previous 
preclearance requirements.
  In North Carolina, the legislature passed a law changing various 
State voting procedures. The legislature utilized racial data on voting 
practices in drafting the law, and where they saw voting practices that 
were predominately utilized by African American voters, they changed 
those voting practices.
  Mr. Vaden was one of three attorneys who submitted an amicus brief in 
support of the State of North Carolina, for Senators Tillis, Graham, 
Cruz, Lee, and the Judicial Education Project. The Jones Day amicus 
brief argued that ``North Carolina's race-neutral regulations of the 
time, place, and manner of its elections do not violate Section 2 [Of 
the Voting Rights Act].'' They further wrote, ``Quite to the contrary, 
North Carolina allows all citizens to vote. Although members of 
minority races may disproportionately choose, for socio-economic or 
other reasons, not to take advantage of this equal opportunity, North 
Carolina's practices are not the proximate cause of this phenomenon.''
  In its published opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals strongly 
disagreed with that argument and found that the North Carolina State 
election law ``targeted African Americans with almost surgical 
precision.'' The court further stated, ``We cannot ignore the evidence 
that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest 
restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,'' and 
``Faced with this record, we can only conclude that the North Carolina 
General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions with discriminatory 
intent.''
  At the November 9, 2017, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and 
Forestry hearing to consider Mr. Vaden's nomination, I questioned him 
about his role in the amicus brief in the North Carolina voting rights 
case. I am a firm believer in the right to vote and deeply troubled by 
the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals findings that the North Carolina case 
involved voter discrimination.
  I did not find Mr. Vaden's answers to my questions to be sufficient. 
When I asked him if the Judicial Education Project paid Jones Day in 
full for their work on the North Carolina case, he simply said, ``As an 
associate I did not have access, nor did I participate in the billing 
function of the firm.'' I find this answer insufficient.
  Also, I noted in my questions to Mr. Vaden that, in my experience as 
having been an associate at a law firm, if an associate indicated to a 
partner that they did not want to participate in a case, the firm would 
certainly defer to their wishes. When I asked Mr. Vaden if he expressed 
any concern with participating in the voting rights cases to his 
partners at Jones Day, he replied that he did not.
  I also note Mr. Vaden's lack of experience in the area of 
agriculture. Prior to joining USDA last January, Mr. Vaden had no 
particular involvement in any agriculture-specific issues or any 
agriculture-specific clients during his tenure at Jones Day. His 
nomination is a significant departure by the Trump administration from 
the background and experience of previous USDA General Counsel 
nominees, Republican or Democrat. For example, during the Obama 
administration, Jeff Prieto was a longtime attorney at the Justice 
Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division before becoming 
USDA General Counsel. His predecessor, Ramona Romero, was an attorney 
with a major U.S. agribusiness company involved in a wide range of 
agricultural policy and legal issues. Going back to the administration 
of George W. Bush, Nancy Bryson was a long-time environment and natural 
resources attorney both at the Justice Department and in private 
practice.
  I am also troubled to learn that the American Federation of 
Government Employees, AFGE, came out in opposition to Mr. Vaden's 
nomination, citing that one of Mr. Vaden's first official acts at USDA 
was to terminate the labor contract between the office and its staff of 
250 lawyers and legal professionals nationwide. In their statement, the 
AFGE stated that, due to his lack of collaboration and partnership with 
Office of General Counsel workers, they believe he will ``continue 
creating an agency culture that results in even more unprecedented 
levels of poor worker morale, with the potential to negatively impact 
the quality of services provided to virtually all Americans.''
  For these reasons, I opposed Stephen Vaden's nomination for General 
Counsel of the Department of Agriculture.

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