[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 186 (Tuesday, November 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7145-S7146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NOMINATION OF THOMAS FARR

  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the nomination of 
Thomas Farr to serve as a district judge for the Eastern District of 
the great State of North Carolina.
  Over the past year, I have joined many of my colleagues in the 
Senate, my esteemed colleagues in the House, and really people from all 
across the country who have been speaking out about Mr. Farr's 
troubling record.
  We see many district court judges come before the U.S. Senate, but I 
think none has triggered this kind of tumult, this kind of frustration, 
and this kind of outcry.
  We have seen an outpouring of advocacy and activism that is now 
coming around this nomination, but this nomination--and the energy and 
advocacy of Americans speaking out against it--is, frankly, not about 
politics. It is not about partisanship. It is about something deeper 
than just left or right. This is about right or wrong.
  We are a nation of people who I believe have so much more in common 
than we have apart. The lines that divide us are nowhere near as strong 
as the ties that bind us. What binds us? We are bound together not 
because of many of the more obvious historically held things that hold 
people together. It is not our language or our religion or our race 
that holds this Nation and her people together. We are bound to one 
another because of the ideals we share. We say them in our anthem. We 
say them in our salute and in our pledge. We know we are a nation of 
principles and ideals.
  Some of the most fundamental of those principles, the most sacrosanct 
of those ideals we share are about and surrounding that right to vote; 
that every American has the right to vote. When you enter that ballot 
box, whether you are the richest person in this country or a working-
class person from New Jersey, you are equal in that ballot box. You all 
have that right to vote. That is what makes this a great republic. That 
is what makes us a great democracy; that your vote will be equally 
counted and treated equally under the law.

  Throughout our history, greater Americans have fought to secure these 
fundamental rights for us. From Seneca Falls to the Edmund Pettus 
Bridge, Americans have stood and fought and marched and sweated and 
bled for this right to vote, for suffrage, for universal voting rights.
  There have been debates on this floor advancing legislation that has 
secured those rights amongst men and women, further advancing that 
truth about our country that we will be a democracy where every vote 
will be counted, where every person will be treated equally in their 
right to vote.
  Americans from all backgrounds--multiracial, multiethnic coalitions--
struggled together for these rights and fought together to make them 
real, but this nomination now stands in direct contrast to that legacy 
of common sacrifice and common struggle, of that legacy to push for 
equality.
  The facts in this nomination are clear, and they again have nothing 
to do with partisanship but do indicate a very clear pattern of time 
and again that Mr. Farr has worked to advance a very specific, very 
anti-democratic agenda, one that is aimed at turning back the clock, in 
eroding very critical voting rights.
  We know for a fact that in 1984, Mr. Farr managed the so-called 
ballot security program for the reelection campaign of Senator Jesse 
Helms that targeted and attempted to suppress the votes of Black North 
Carolinians.
  We know that in 1990, Mr. Farr participated in a so-called ballot 
security meeting just days before the Helms campaign infamously and 
notoriously sent tens of thousands of postcards targeting Black North 
Carolinian votes, suggesting that they were not only not eligible to 
vote but threatened criminal prosecution if they did. This is not left 
or right. Republicans and Democrats criticized, decried that method of 
voter suppression.
  Mr. Farr has repeatedly claimed that he had no knowledge of the 
mailing until he was contacted after the fact for legal advice, but I 
am deeply troubled that despite being given multiple opportunities, Mr. 
Farr has failed to be completely honest with the Senate about his 
record.
  When Senator Feinstein from California asked Mr. Farr: ``Did you ever 
participate in any meetings in which the postcards were discussed 
before they were sent,'' he replied unequivocally and simply: ``No.'' 
But according to a breaking story published by the Washington Post 
within the last hour, we know that ``during the meeting, participants 
also reviewed the Helms campaign's 1984 ballot security effort Farr had 
coordinated `with an eye toward the activities that should be 
undertaken in 1990.'''
  The evidence that just came out from the Washington Post again casts 
a shadow over the truthfulness and the honesty of Mr. Farr about his 
participation in that meeting and the voter suppression efforts.
  Again, Mr. Farr misrepresented the context of this meeting in his 
responses to me both in December of 2017 and January of this year.
  Finally, we also know that in 2016, Mr. Farr lost one of his biggest 
cases, defending North Carolina's notorious and discriminatory voter ID 
law--a law that he helped write because the court found it would target 
Black North Carolinians ``with almost surgical precision''--target 
those North Carolinians to be disenfranchised from their right to vote.
  Time and again, Mr. Farr has worked to advance an agenda aimed at 
turning back the clock on our democratic advancements, on our common 
ideals, the commonsense fairness that in this country every vote 
counts, every person has the right to vote. Time and again, in this 
process, Mr. Farr has offered misleading and incomplete testimony 
regarding his record and his work.
  This is a body that has shown, in its history, the capability to work 
together in a bipartisan way to protect the right to vote. This body is 
the one that passed one of the most important pieces of legislation in 
our history, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but the weight of history 
isn't just on this body in this moment because it still weighs heavily 
on so many voters in North Carolina who remember receiving one of those 
postcards from Jesse Helms in 1984, at the direction of Mr. Farr and 
others, and who may have received another postcard from the Helms 
campaign in 1990, threatening Federal prosecution if they exercised 
their right to vote.
  It is those people in the Eastern District right now who feel the 
weight, the pushback on historical advancements, who are watching this 
body now. Those voters who got those postcards didn't get them because 
the Helms campaign or Mr. Farr saw value in their vote; they received 
them because the Helms campaign and Mr. Farr were trying to

[[Page S7146]]

suppress it. That is anti-democratic. That is an affront to our 
history.
  Confirming the person responsible for managing and defending those 
tactics, who was involved in them, who has misrepresented that fact 
pattern to this body, wouldn't just be a disservice to North 
Carolinians, wouldn't just be a disservice to those Americans who 
received those postcards, it would be a betrayal of the work of 
generations of Americans from all backgrounds, all races, all 
religions, a multitude of parties--all of those Americans who joined in 
that common pursuit in this country to stand up for the right to vote.
  This is not right or left. This is about whether we move forward or 
back, and forward we have moved: countless generations, people from 
different backgrounds standing together, working together, sweating 
together, bleeding together, marching together, marching feet in the 
suffrage movement, marching feet in the voting rights movement, 
marching feet across this country, from protestors like Alice Paul 
marching in front of the White House to protestors marching through the 
South, through Alabama, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, every 
generation marching forward.
  This nomination now represents a moment in history, not right or 
left, but will we continue to march forward? If this body confirms Mr. 
Farr, it will not be forward-marching. It will be a step backward in 
the wrong direction, against the historical tide and currents that have 
gotten us to this wonderful moment together.
  Let us again stand together in a bipartisan way and say: We will not 
be turned around; that we will not go backward; that we believe, when 
it comes to the sacrosanct rights of the Nation, that we will always 
fight to make sure the right to vote is secure, and we have the truth 
of this country and will go marching on.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________