After a barrage of laws made it harder for people of color to vote in this months midterm elections, the Senate is set to vote this week on a controversial judicial nominee who repeatedly defended such laws in federal court.
Last year, President Donald Trump nominated Thomas Farr, a Republican lawyer based in Raleigh, to be a federal judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, which spans 44 counties from Raleigh to the Atlantic coast. He has a long history of representing the state against voting rights groups accusing it of discrimination against voters of color. In 2013, North Carolinas GOP-controlled Legislature hired Farr to defend a sweeping set of voting restrictions that a federal appeals court ultimately struck down for targeting black voters with almost surgical precision. The North Carolina Legislature also hired Farr to defend redistricting maps for Congress and the state Legislature that have since been invalidated in court, with one federal panel calling the state legislative districts among the largest racial gerrymanders ever encountered by a federal court.
Farrs defense of such laws has led civil rights groups and Senate Democrats to vigorously oppose his nomination. Every American should be alarmed by the attempt to confirm a nominee with Farrs egregious record on voting rights, particularly with the Republican agenda to maintain power by limiting access to the ballot now on full display, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted on November 16.
Senate Democrats believe the vote will be close. Schumer said that every Senate Democrat opposes Farrs nomination. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has vowed to oppose all of Trumps judicial nominations until the Senate votes on his bill to protect the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller, so only one more Republican senator would need to defect in order to sink Farrs nomination.
Farr has also attracted attention for his ties to former Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina. In 1984 and 1990, Farr served as campaign lawyer for Helms, whom the Washington Posts David Broder called the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country. In 1990, when Helms faced off against former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, the citys first black mayor, the North Carolina Republican Party sent 125,000 postcards to predominantly African American households falsely telling them it was a crime to vote if they moved within 30 days of the election, with a punishment of up to five years in jail.
The Justice Department sued the Helms campaign, saying the postcards were designed to intimidate and/or threaten black voters in an effort to deter such voters from exercising their right to vote. The lawsuit said officials from the Helms campaign and the state Republican Party had discussed the mailing with an attorney who had been involved in past ballot security efforts on behalf of Senator Helms and/or the Defendant North Carolina Republican Party. The Raleigh News & Observer later identified that attorney as Farr.
Farr appears to have misled the Senate about his role in Helms disenfranchisement scheme. ... Notes kept by Gerald Hebert, who served as deputy chief of the voting section at the Justice Department in the 1990s, show that Farr participated in a meeting with Helms campaign officials in October 1990 to discuss ballot security efforts and advised the campaign on what to do. Farr also denied he had any role in the drafting or sending of the postcards, Hebert told HuffPost. But he did discuss the issue of sending the postcards three weeks before they were sent. I would describe that as playing some role. He also denied flat-out that he did not participate in any meetings in which the postcards were discussed before they were sent. That is definitely incorrect.