The way that veterans of the voting-rights section have always expressed their objections to me about the famous Bush-era Noxubee, Mississippi, case filed against a black plaintiff on behalf of white voters has always been in the context of arguing that the Bush-era voting section ignored similar complaints involving minorities. Conservative former employees of the section, by contrast, have always tried to characterize those objections without the latter qualification -- that is, they've said that other voting-section attorneys just didn't want to help whites. The accusation is at the heart of the conservative-dominated U.S. Civil Rights Commission's investigation into the New Black Panther case, which conservative critics say was narrowed because of anti-white racial bias in the voting section.
In a written declaration sent to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, former Special Counsel and Deputy Chief Robert Kengle is disputing the remarks attributed to him by former Voting Section Chief and Bradley Schlozman ally Chris Coates. Coates identified Kengle by name during his testimony a few weeks ago as the voting-section attorney who allegedly said, "Can you believe we're going to Mississippi to protect white voters?" The statement was touted as evidence that employees in the voting section are hostile to enforcing voting-rights protections against minority plaintiffs on behalf of white voters. Kengle's declaration was provided to me by a source close to the commission.
Kengle plainly says that Coates is wrong about what he said: Not only does Kengle say he volunteered for the assignment, but his account of what he was objecting to jibes with pretty much everything else I've heard from his former colleagues:
The sum and substance of the concerns that I definitely and specifically expressed to Mr. Coates during the 2003 Noxubee County coverage, as I did to other management-level career staff within the Voting Section, was that "I think it's ridiculous (or outrageous) that we are being ordered to cover this election when Hans [von Spakovsky] and [Bradley] Schlozman are rejecting our other recommendations." By this I referred to recommendations to monitor elections and open investigations based upon concerns of discrimination against minority voters, which had been rejected by those front office appointees for what I believed were spurious reasons. I believed that a double standard was being applied under which complaints by minority voters were subjected to excessive and unprecedently demanding standards, then dismissed as not being credible, while on the other hand the Voting Section was being ordered to pursue the Noxubee complaints at face value -- in a dispute over party loyalty -- as a top priority I confided my view of this double-standard to Mr. Coates and to other management-level career staff. If I made the remark to Mr. Coates "Can you believe we're doing this?" it was within this context. I did not protest this instance of what I believed to be a double standard to Mr. Schlozman or Mr. von Spakovsky because I was certain it would only prompt retaliation, against Section Chief Joe Rich, myself or other career employees.
And of course it did ultimately result in retaliation -- just from Schlozman and von Spakovsky's former allies in the section, not from them directly. The conservatives on the commission aren't likely to take Kengle's reply at face value -- Kengle was among those former voting-section attorneys who placed their names on a letter to the Senate asking them not to confirm von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission because he "injected partisan political factors into enforcement decisions." Von Spakovsky's nomination was ultimately blocked, but Commissioner Todd Gaziano, who also works for the Heritage Foundation, found von Spakovsky a job working for the commission itself. Von Spakovsky has spent the last year accusing his former colleagues at the Justice Department of racism, an allegation his pal Gaziano has devoted his best efforts to proving.
Unlike the unsubstantiated accusations of racism being leveled by conservative activist and former voting-section attorney J. Christian Adams and Coates, however, the fact that Bush-era Civil Rights Division leadership steered the division away from its traditional role has been quantified and documented in a report released by the Government Accountability Office last year. The report found a "significant drop in the enforcement of several major antidiscrimination and voting rights laws."
Kengle experienced this politicization firsthand. Which is why, I suspect, he calls the commissioners' bluff regarding the recently announced IG investigation, calling on the IG to investigate how things were done in the Bush era:
What Kengle knows, and what the conservative commissioners supporting this witch hunt know, is that any investigation that looks into the tenure of the previous administration will make the current administration look good by comparison. There is far more evidence that Coates' allies put a lower priority on pursuing cases involving minorities than there is evidence the division is full of people biased against whites. Because two conservative spots on the commission will be open in December, the only hope of this scandal surviving into next year is a Republican takeover of the House, which will give conservatives the opportunity to continue pursuing an investigation with a partisan outlook. If it's left up to the IG, I suspect there simply won't be much to find.
Kengle was set to testify before the commission on Friday, but the meeting has been postponed.
UPDATE: My mistake, Kengle wasn't going to testify.
