Jeff Sessions took a surprise trip to South Carolina this week at the behest of the Senate’s only black Republican. His allies talk up how Sessions locked arms with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. And the senator, in a lengthy nominee questionnaire delivered this month, practically depicts himself as a civil rights hero.
When the Senate takes up President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be the nation’s next top law enforcement official in January, allegations of racism that have dogged Sessions for three decades running are certain to be his biggest liability. So he and his allies have mounted an aggressive public relations campaign to refashion Sessions’ image.
The core message: The charges that sank Sessions’ bid to become a federal judge in 1986 don’t represent who Sessions is now, or even who he was at the time. Delivering it is a lineup of prominent black leaders and others with personal ties to Sessions enlisted by Trump’s transition team.
"He knows all of my brothers and sisters,” said one of the character witnesses, William Huntley, who worked under Sessions in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. Huntley, now a lawyer in Mobile, Ala., said in an interview that he’s never encountered racial insensitivity from Sessions in the three decades they’ve known each other.
“He came to the hospital when my first child was born,” Huntley said. “He has come to birthday parties at my house.”
Liberal outside groups are unmoved. Alarmed by what they view as a weak legislative record on voting issues, gay rights and immigration policy, Sessions’ opponents are trying to litigate a broader case against him rather than focus solely on the racism questions.
“Yes, it happened a long time ago. It’s certainly not irrelevant and it has to be raised,” said Christopher Kang, a former deputy counsel to President Barack Obama who now serves as national director for the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans. But “it has to be examined in the context of his entire career.”
Sessions, who appeared with Trump at a rally in Alabama on Saturday, has forcefully denied accusations of racism ever since they prompted the GOP-controlled Judiciary Committee to reject him for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. During the lengthy testimony, senators heard from a former black deputy to Sessions that Sessions once told him to “be careful what you say to white folks” and that Sessions said he was fine with the Ku Klux Klan until he found out its members used marijuana.
Trump’s transition team and Sessions’ allies have tried to cast doubt on the 10-8 committee vote against him. They point out that the late former Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican on the committee at the time who later switched parties, said he long regretted voting against Sessions’ confirmation. The transition team is also emphasizing Sessions’ record of working on bipartisan bills during his time in the Senate.
Democrats, who lowered the confirmation threshold for nearly all nominations three years ago, are powerless to stop Sessions assuming no Republicans vote against him.
But Trump’s team and friends of the 69-year-old senator are taking no chances. In speeches on the Senate floor and comments to the media, top GOP senators who’ll be influential in the confirmation fight have set out to douse the racism allegations before they have a chance to derail Sessions once again.
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), the second-ranking Senate Republican, recalled in a recent floor speech Sessions’ collaboration with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to reform sentences for crack cocaine charges. The law prior to their effort had “disproportionately discriminated against African-American communities,” Cornyn said.
And in a sharp warning last month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called on Democratic senators to avoid “an attack on his character” as they take up Sessions’ nomination. He invoked the nasty confirmation battle of another senator-turned-attorney general, Republican John Ashcroft, in 2001.
That episode "turned into a reckless campaign that snowballed into an avalanche of innuendo, rumor and spin,” Grassley, who will preside over hearings on Sessions early next month, said after meeting with Sessions privately in late November. “That will not happen here.”
Grassley predicted in a brief interview that Sessions will prevail, noting the senator "himself has told me he’s had some Democrat support.”
Sen. Tim Scott’s invitation for Sessions to come to South Carolina last week wasn't meant as an audition, Scott told the Charleston Post & Courier. Still, Sessions spoke with local officials about issues of diversity and crime.
"Before I vote for him to be our attorney general, I want to know what's in his heart," Scott told the publication. "Not what he allegedly said back in 1986." Aides said Scott was unavailable for an interview Friday.
The Trump team is also counting on people like Regina Benjamin, a former surgeon general under Obama and a Hillary Clinton supporter who has known Sessions for two decades. The Alabama senator lobbied other Republicans to back Benjamin’s own confirmation, and she told POLITICO in an interview that Sessions called her personally to ask her to vouch for him.
“I think he’ll be fine. I consider him a friend,” she said.
Benjamin also said that Sessions’ staff sent her talking points that she opted not to use that played up the senator’s vote to extend the Civil Rights Act and his vote to confirm Eric Holder as the nation’s first black attorney general. “At least he will listen as attorney general," she said. "My hope is that he’ll do what is the best for the American people.”
Barring major revelations during the confirmation hearings, Sessions seems assured to clear his first major hurdle: the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans' current two-seat advantage on the panel is expected to continue in the next Congress. No Republican on the committee has expressed opposition to Sessions.
Senate Democrats have taken a cautious yet firm tone toward Sessions so far, highlighting policy differences and promising a thorough grilling but not committing to oppose him. No Democrat on the committee directly addressed Sessions’ derailed 1986 bid when his nomination was unveiled last month. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who’ll be the top Democrat on the committee next year, said in a brief interview that she plans to sit down privately with Sessions sometime in the new year.
But Sessions gave Democrats and liberal opponents a clear opening to bring up his history, when he did not mention the failed judiciary bid on the nominee questionnaire he submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee. A transition official called it an oversight and said Sessions will file supplemental information to address the issue.
The questionnaire highlights cases such as United States vs. Conecuh County from 1984, which Sessions wrote was "the first voter suppression lawsuit ever instituted” by the Justice Department. The suit went after allegations of racist behavior at the polls such as hiring only white poll workers and limiting access to polling places for black voters. Sessions, however, did not mention the case in his questionnaire for the federal judgeship in 1986.
Officials with outside groups on the left say Sessions' current questionnaire — as well as the larger attempt to remake the 69-year-old senator's image — is not a true depiction of him.
“There is a lot of rightful focus on the really divisive past of Sen. Sessions,” said Scott Simpson, the director of media and campaigns for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of civil rights organizations. “The key thing to understand is that Sen. Sessions hasn’t given any indication that he’s changed throughout his Senate career.”