Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, a supporter of California Sen. Kamala Harris’ White House campaign, says former Vice President Joe Biden is the reason Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed. Wilson is urging Harris to make a bigger issue of it on the campaign trail.
Biden in 1991, as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, presided over Thomas’s contentious confirmation hearings.
Thomas, nominated to the Supreme Court by by President George H.W. Bush, was at the time a court of appeals judge in Washington, D.C., who previously served as assistant secretary of education for the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education early in the Reagan administration. Thomas then went on to head up the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for eight years.
Following his appointment to the high court, he was accused by long-time federal staff attorney Anita Hill of sexual harassment. Thomas denied the allegations when Hill publicly brought the accusations before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Thomas was narrowly confirmed by the Senate, 52-48.
Despite Biden’s votes against Thomas, Hill was critical of his handling of the hearing saying in an interview with The Huffington Post in 2015, saying Biden did “a disservice to me, a disservice more importantly, to the public” and that calling other witnesses ready to testify against Thomas may have “helped the public to understand sexual harassment. He failed to do that.”
Wilson said she agrees with this sentiment. Wilson, 76, who has represented the Miami area 24th District since 2013, said she blamed Biden for Thomas’ confirmation. And even serving as vice president for President Barack Obama doesn’t make up for it.
“Joe Biden is a man, who I appreciate his partnership with the president of the United States, but I have to think back to when Joe Biden was the chairman of the [Senate Judiciary Committee], and I always said, as I have tumbled through politics, if Joe Biden had done what was fair, Clarence Thomas would not be on the Supreme Court,” Wilson said. “Every time I see or hear Clarence Thomas’s name my mind goes back to Joe Biden. Everyone else’s mind goes to Anita Hill, but I think of Joe Biden.”
Wilson said that Thomas, the only black justice on the court, is the “worst Supreme Court Justice” for his conservative opinions on a range of issues.
The Florida Democrat believes that if Harris talks more about Biden’s involvement during the Thomas confirmation hearings, it could prove a political winner, in a Democratic primary contest in which black voters make up an influential part of the electorate.
“She needs to remind African-American people of his role in assisting the appointment of Clarence Thomas,” Wilson said. “This is something that people probably don’t even think about. She needs to call that attention to the American people,” Wilson noted.
