CBC members pummel Department of Justice official

Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Artur Davis (D-Ala.) took turns Tuesday lambasting John Tanner, the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) voting section chief, for comments he made earlier this month that “minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do — they die first.”

{mosads}The grilling came at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing in which Tanner opened his testimony by repeating an apology first made to attendees of the National Latino Congreso, where he originally made the remark. A week ago, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) called on him to be fired for the comments.

“I understand that my explanation of the data came across in a hurtful way, which I deeply regret,” said Tanner. “The reports of my comments do not in any way accurately reflect my career of devotion to enforcing federal laws designed to assure fair and equal access to the ballot.”

Tanner first made the comments to explain his contention that a controversial two-year-old Georgia ID law actually discriminated against whites because fewer minorities, at least in that state, reach the age of 60. Because of this statistic, the voter ID laws on the elderly disproportionately affect whites, he argued. He also contended that voter ID laws in fact benefit blacks, because younger African-Americans frequently carry IDs in case they are targeted for racial profiling or they need to cash checks at a “check-cashing business.”

These arguments did not sit well with Davis, who demanded to know exactly what Tanner was apologizing for and whether he still thought the statement was correct.

Tanner attempted to say that “it is a sad fact” that census data in Georgia shows life expectancy among minorities to be lower than among whites.

“But that’s not what you said,” Davis interjected.

Tanner then conceded that it was a “very clumsy statement.”

Davis was not satisfied and pressed on about the check-cashing statement before Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y), who was chairing the subcommittee hearing, reminded him that the hearing was not based on Tanner’s controversial comments.

Despite the warning, Ellison picked up where Davis left off, insisting that he, too, did not know what Tanner was apologizing for if he still believed the statistics backed his comments.

“I hurt people,” Tanner offered.

Ellison relentlessly pursued his inquiry, asking repeatedly whether Tanner would stand by his comments as true. Eventually Tanner conceded that people “age in the same way.”

Ellison punctuated the admission: “I know. My dad is almost 80 — and he’s black.”

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a renowned civil rights activist, sat in on the hearing and told reporters that Tanner’s testimony “is an affront to the Civil Rights Act of 1965.”

Most of the hearing focused on Tanner’s involvement in DoJ’s approval of the Georgia voter ID law, as well as his decision to overrule recommendations from career civil rights division staffers to reject the law and then quash their opposition. A federal appeals court judge later barred the implementation of the law, calling it akin to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

 Tanner said he could not discuss internal staff deliberations. But he repeated that he made the decision to recommend the law after reviewing the statistics he believed proved it was not discriminatory.

Later in the hearing, several witnesses blamed DoJ’s decision to override the staff recommendations on Hans von Spakovsky, a Bush appointee and counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights. Obama and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) are holding up von Spakovsky’s confirmation to the Federal Election Commission over concerns about his role in politicizing the civil rights section.

“The staff recommendation was not only overridden, but the leadership of the voting section instituted a new rule prohibiting the career staff from making recommendations in the future whether or not to object to proposed voting changes,” said Laughlin McDonald, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s voting rights project.

Toby Moore, one of the voting section’s analysts whose recommendations Tanner overruled, said Tanner “is both the cause and the effect of the politicizing of the voting rights section.”