If It Can’t Be Sanders, Warren, or Brown, Tom Perez is the Next Best Pick
Tom Perez was the top legal adviser to the nation’s “Liberal Lion” (Senator Ted Kennedy) on civil rights, the criminal justice system, and the U.S. Constitution. He attended the most liberal Ivy. He graduated from Harvard Law School. He was the first Hispanic elected to the Montgomery County Council in Maryland. He has the support of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the United States. He was the Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He’s the current Secretary of Labor. He’s a first-generation American. He’s the child of immigrants. His father enlisted in the Army while a non-citizen. He father was a doctor. His grandfather was exiled from the Dominican Republic for speaking out against a dictator. He has degrees in International Relations, Political Science, and Law. He worked his way through college as a janitor and food-service employee. He knows what it’s like to need and receive federal grants to attend college. He worked for the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights. He clerked for a progressive judge in Colorado. He was a prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. He chaired the federal government’s Worker Exploitation Task Force. He was a teacher for six years. As a county councilor he asked to work on three committees: Health and Human Services, Transportation, and the Environment. He spearheaded legislation outlawing predatory lending, particularly subprime lending, years before the national housing and banking crises. He’s opposed healthcare privatization with both activism and legislation. He introduced an initiative in Montgomery County, Maryland to provide affordable prescription drugs for county employees and retirees. He has the support of the teachers’ unions. He has the support of the SEIU. He prosecuted corporations suspected of engaging in workplace fraud as the head of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation. He focused his prosecutions on corporations that evade taxes and deny health insurance benefits to their workers. He has years of executive experience at the county, state, and federal levels. He fought for a living wage in Maryland. He served as co-chair of the Maryland Workforce Creation and Adult Education Transition Council, fighting for better educational funding for correctional institutions. He was nominated by President Obama to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. His nomination before the U.S. Senate received more than 90% support in committee, and 77% from the full Senate, with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority ultimately declaring him qualified for the position. His nomination was openly opposed by only two out of a hundred Senators. He fought for expansion and better enforcement of the Americans With Disabilities Act, focusing on discrimination against individuals with HIV/AIDS. He fought for the expansion and enforcement of laws protecting LGBTQI+ individuals from hate crimes. He oversaw the first hate crime conviction under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. He was an early endorser of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a statute prohibiting discrimination in hiring and employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He was one of the first federal lawyers ever to seek the application of Title IX to a gender identity discrimination case. His office found and prosecuted multiple violations of African-American and disabled students’ due process rights in Mississippi schools, accusing these schools of running a “school-to-prison pipeline.” He investigated the Sanford, Florida police department over its handling of the Trayvon Martin case, leading to the firing of the town’s police chief. He took action against the Seattle Police Department for excessive use of force in the death of a homeless Native American man, John T. Williams. He investigated and prosecuted Trump supporter and oft-accused civil rights abuser Sheriff Joe Arpaio over the running of his correctional facilities in Arizona, specifically targeting Arpaio’s treatment of Latino inmates. His wife works for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. He has three children. He is known, at the Department of Labor, for regularly making house-calls and site visits to directly get feedback from abused and exploited American workers. He challenged Republicans’ new “voter ID” law in South Carolina. He challenged Republicans’ new “voter ID” law in Texas. His nomination for Secretary of Labor was opposed by Trump booster Jeff Sessions over Perez’s progressive views on immigration. His nomination was supported enthusiastically by the NAACP, the National Women’s Law Center, the United Farm Workers of America, and the AFL-CIO. Owing in large part to his progressive track record in government, his was the first cabinet-level confirmation vote in U.S. history that received a party-line vote in the Senate. He’s often been called a “progressive champion.” He would be the first Latino on a major-party ticket. He’s fought bigotry, big banks, and big corporations his entire life. Bernie would approve of his selection for the Democratic ticket.
A public defender in New England from 2000 to 2007, Seth Abramson is now an Assistant Professor at University of New Hampshire and the Series Editor for Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University). He is also the author of six books, most recently DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016).