Left seethes over Tom Vilsack agriculture secretary pick

Liberal dissent reached a crescendo this week after private complaints about Vilsack made during a conversation between Biden and civil rights activists were publicly aired.

In a recording leaked to the far-left outlet the Intercept, NAACP President Derrick Johnson warned Biden that selecting Vilsack may backfire on Democrats running in the two Georgia Senate runoff elections that will determine which party controls the chamber next Congress.

Johnson, in particular, cited Vilsack’s 2010 firing of Shirley Sherrod, a black former USDA official.

Sherrod was named the USDA’s Georgia rural development director in 2010 but was forced to resign after Andrew Breitbart posted video on his conservative website of a speech she gave at an NAACP event earlier that year.

Breitbart accused Sherrod of being racist after she admitted she considered race in 1986 before she joined the USDA as she helped a white farmer at risk of losing his land. Her full remarks were later released, exonerating her, but not before Vilsack’s aides pressured her to step down.

Vilsack and the White House reviewed Sherrod’s case and apologized to her.

“I will submit to you that former Secretary Vilsack could have a disastrous impact on voters in Georgia. Shirley Sherrod is a civil rights legend, a hero,” Johnson told Biden Tuesday.

But two days later, on Thursday, Biden confirmed rumors he was considering tapping longtime ally Vilsack for agriculture secretary. And the reaction from liberals was swift and fierce.

People’s Action senior strategist Shawn Sebastian issued one of the most searing anti-Vilsack statements.

“Because of his previous record as USDA secretary and his ongoing work, Vilsack was utterly rejected as unacceptable by organizations and elected officials representing black people, multiple black farmers groups, the NAACP, USDA employees, and even Majority Whip Rep. Clyburn, who turned the tide in the Democratic primary for Biden,” Sebastian said of South Carolina’s Jim Clyburn.

Sebastian described the move “a completely avoidable, self-inflicted injury.”

Some critics focused on 2019 allegations that the USDA, under Vilsack, distorted agricultural census data to improve black farmer outcomes concerning loans and discrimination settlements. The claims reinforced USDA’s reputation as “the last plantation,” cultivated since its inception in 1862.

Others honed in on Vilsack’s relationship with agribusiness conglomerates and support of unpopular trade deals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

As secretary, for instance, Vilsack was called “Mr. Monsanto” for drafting an industry-friendly genetically modified organisms labeling bill. And after leaving office, he has earned approximately $1 million a year marketing American dairy abroad as the U.S. Dairy Export Council’s president and CEO.

“Tom Vilsack is hated by both rural whites whose livelihoods he crushed and black Americans towards whom his department was actively racist. That’s a strong R bloc and strong D bloc, united in dislike,” American Economic Liberties Project research director Matt Stoller tweeted, abbreviating “Republican” and “Democratic.”

Stoller added, “But he’s friends with Biden and Des Moines upper class lawyers like him.”

Victor Dutchuk, an Iowa Democrat who supported Vice President-elect Kamala Harris during the primaries, disagreed that Vilsack had too many Republican critics.

Dutchuk, instead, believed Vilsack’s conservative appeal was one of the reasons Biden went with him. Dutchuk told the Washington Examiner Vilsack was an establishment favorite for whom Republicans were comfortably vouching. The Senate consented to his first appointment unanimously.

“The progressive wing of our party saw this as an opportunity perhaps to make more of an aggressive change in the ag industry,” Dutchuk said. “They don’t think that Tom Vilsack will bring that because of his more moderate tendencies.”

For Dutchuk, far-left Democrats wanted Biden to look for a younger, fresher, more liberal candidate to “promote more diversity.” Rather, Biden’s backing Vilsack was an overt snub of Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, 68.

Fudge openly campaigned to become Biden’s agriculture secretary and would have been the first black woman to hold the post. Instead, Biden announced this week he will nominate Fudge, who was endorsed by Clyburn for the USDA, to head the Department of Urban Housing and Development. Fudge sits on the House Agriculture Committee and has scrutinized President Trump’s approach to food stamps, which falls under the USDA’s purview.

To black South Carolina Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, Vilsack’s job will have to “look different” in this administration than Obama’s because “the country is in a different place.”

“People who look like me have legitimate concerns about things that have happened in the past and what needs to happen going forward,” he said. “There is no choice but for him to be better than he was last time.”

Sherrod later told The 19th that Vilsack was “certainly qualified,” and “ready to get on the ground to make real change this time around.”

“And we need to hold him to it. Black people need to see some real change,” she said.