Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., signaled he would likely vote against Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., for attorney general over his support for placing more constraints on immigration and his opposition to some elements of the most recent Voting Rights Act renewal.
“As one of the leaders of immigration reform, I go to the gym and we’re on the bikes together with Sen. Sessions, we’re very friendly,” Schumer told reporters Wednesday. “But he has been more anti-immigration than just about any other single lawmaker I can think of.”
“It’s hard for me to countenance an attorney general that is so anti-immigration,” he added.
In addition, Schumer said he feels similarly uneasy about Sessions’ positions on the Voting Rights Act.
“The Voting Rights Act to many of us is sacred, and in the past Sen. Sessions has been no friend of [the law], and the attorney general is the protector of voting rights – so those are the questions I would have,” Schumer said.
Asked further about the his “friendly” time with Sessions at the Senate gym, Schumer said the two spend many early hours together “watching [MSNBC’s] Morning Joe, and making diametrically opposed comments about what’s going on.”
Sessions voted to renew the Voting Rights Act 10 years ago when it was last up for a Congressional reauthorization and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, 98-0. Sessions has acknowledged Alabama’s painful history of trying to limit black voting rights with poll taxes and literacy tests, and has credited the VRA with helping to put an end to these policies.
Democrats, however, point to the years before that vote and argue that Sessions backed a push by Southern Republicans to limit federal oversight of elections in states like Alabama with a long history of voting discrimination.
In 2006, for example, Sessions appeared to question the need for Section 5 of the Act, which mandates that state and local election officials submit election-related changes to a federal judge at the Justice Department in order to ensure that they don’t discriminate against minority voters.
Sessions ultimately voted in favor of the law’s renewal but expressed some reservations.
“I am worried because… [the extension] does little to acknowledge the tremendous progress made over the past 40 years in Alabama and other covered jurisdictions,” Sessions said then, according to a report in USA Today.
