Sheila Bair Oral History About Bob Dole
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This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu ROBERT J. DOLE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Interview with SHEILA BAIR December 17, 2007 Interviewer Richard Norton Smith Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics 2350 Petefish Drive Lawrence, KS 66045 Phone: (785) 864-4900 Fax: (785) 864-1414 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Bair 12-17-07—p. 2 [Sheila Bair edited this transcript. Consequently, it may be at variance at some points with the original recording.] Smith: First, the most obvious question is how did you come to work for Bob Dole? Bair: Came to work for Bob Dole in 1981. I was an attorney in the General Counsel’s Office at the Department of Education. I had started in the regional office at the old HEW Regional Attorney’s Office and then promoted to Washington [D.C.]. Then the department split off, and I decided I didn’t want to just work on education matters, so I wanted to find another job. I had always been an admirer of Senator Dole. As a matter of fact, when I was in college he had come to visit at K.U. [Kansas University] and tried to speak. This was at the height of the Vietnam War protests and he had just been shouted down. It was terrible. People wouldn’t even let him say anything. So I wrote him this really heartfelt apology letter. One of the few people—I was probably one of ten Republicans on the entire campus during that time frame, and got such a nice personal note back from him. My family, we were active Republicans in Kansas, so I think he kind of knew who I was. Smith: What part of Kansas? Bair: Southeast. Independence. So anyway, so I thought that it would be fun to work for him, so I think, actually, I called Rosemary Mong, who was working in Washington then, and she told me about this vacancy on his Judiciary subcommittee staff. It was a perfect fit, because the Republicans had just taken over the majority at that point and Strom Thurmond was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and the Voting Rights Act—there were a lot of civil rights issues in that committee and a lot of anxiety about Chairman Thurmond taking over that committee. The biggest issue, probably, was the Voting Rights Act extension. Key provisions of the Voting Rights Act were expiring in 1982. This was 1981. So because they were in the majority, Dole had staff positions to fill. There were new Republican slots and he wanted a civil rights person. So it was really just a perfect fit. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Bair 12-17-07—p. 3 So I went over and interviewed I think Pete Velde was the head of the subcommittee back then, [unclear], and Doug Comer was there. So I got the job and I worked with Sen. Dole from ’81 to ’85. We did the Voting Rights Act extension. We did the Martin Luther King [Jr.] holiday. Those were probably the two most press- worthy issues. I did Judiciary Committee stuff. Well, actually, we did the Sandra Day O’Connor nomination. That was fun. That was really a treat to meet her and deal with her and work on her confirmation. But anyway, so that’s how I got—it was just being in the right place at the right time, the families. Being in a good-standing Republican family in Kansas, he was generally familiar with us and I knew Rosemary. Smith: You said you interviewed with Pete Velde. Did you have a conversation early on with the senator in which he laid out any sort of agenda? Bair: Yes, he did bring up the Voting Rights Act. I think really that was very much on his mind because I think he realized—Dole’s always been good on civil right issues, as you know. You wrote some wonderful speeches for him, I think fabulous. I’ll never forget that speech you wrote for the Martin Luther King— Smith: Yes, the opening and closing. Bair: Were you there? Because they were saying, “Amen! Amen!” That was great. He had them. It was wonderful, and he kind of got this funny grin on his face when they started interacting with him and saying, “Amen!” So anyway, he’d always been good on civil rights, and I think he was worried about the image of the party, and perceptions of Strom Thurmond being the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and he knew the Voting Rights Act was up for extension. Smith: And frankly, [Ronald] Reagan in the White House. Bair: Yes, Reagan, too. Absolutely. And I think he knew then already that he wanted to have a leadership role in this as a more moderate Republican, to try to bridge the divide between the Strom Thurmonds and the Ted [Edward M.] Kennedys on that committee, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Bair 12-17-07—p. 4 which he did and which is absolutely what happened. But I think even back then he saw that there was a void there, that Strom would lack credibility, he would be immediately suspect, and that the liberals would be trying to make this a—there’s always the temptation that they would try to play it for political advantage as opposed to trying to get an extension done. So I think even then he saw that it was going to fall to him to kind of put the deal together, which he did do. You know that. He thinks forward. He thinks strategically. Smith: Well, I want to get into into that part. But I’d be intrigued to know, what was Thurmond like? Because they obviously had a very— Bair: The biggest opposition, frankly, was not Strom Thurmond. It was some of the younger conservatives and their staffs. They were still back in the state’s rights mindset. Thurmond actually was not. Thurmond had a very strong black constituency in South Carolina. He got a good percentage of the black vote in South Carolina. It was an important constituency to him. He understood that even though he may not completely agree with all parts of the Voting Rights Act, that it was important to those constituents. So he actually, I think, was much more accommodating and understanding that Dole kind of needed to put this together, and working with Dole. Smith: And what were their issues with the—for example, what were their complaints, criticisms with the— Bair: The big issue was—there is something called the Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, which is the overarching prohibition against racial discrimination in voting, and the big issue was whether that should have an “effects” test or an “intent” test. The courts had pretty much gone with an effects test in the sense that you can imply discrimination from gross statistical disparities. So they didn’t require kind of the smoking gun of—the saying, “Let’s keep the blacks out,” or whatever, that if you had a policy or procedure that had the effect of denying African Americans the right to vote, then you could prove a violation. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Bair 12-17-07—p. 5 Smith: A lower threshold. Bair: That was a lower threshold, right. But historically, if you look at what the Voting Rights Act—like literacy tests, literacy tests, on their face, they don’t make racial distinctions—but the effect was to deny most blacks the right to vote. So my view was that, as one who had practiced civil rights law, is that the types of practices that the Voting Rights Act was originally designed to address, the poll tax and literacy test, were effect tests. They weren’t intent tests. But I think other conservatives’ staffs equated effects with quotas. They thought if you had an effects test, that you would just end up with judges trying to gerrymand districts to guarantee that there would be proportional representation in Congress prorated to the black population, which is not what anybody wanted. So the Dole compromise basically maintained an effects test in Section Two, but then it added language saying that this did not mean there was a right to proportional representation, so it just disavowed it. If you read Section Two, it said “provided there is no right to proportional representation,” so it was like two sentences. [laughs] It was months, months of fighting to get it negotiated out, but that was the key issue. And then there were some other things, like there were pre-clearance provisions that districts that historically had racial discrimination had to pre-clear changes in the voting procedures at the Justice Department, and there was an issue about whether those should be extended, and we did end up extending them. Then there was another issue about bilingual ballot access, and I think we did provide for some bilingual ballot assistance, depending—I’m taxing my memory now—if there was a large population of non-primary English- speaking population. But the big thing was the effects versus intent. Smith: Presumably, for most of that time, this was at the staff level or other— Bair: The initial discussions were at the staff level.