Mitt Romney says Democrats’ police reform bill isn’t meant to pass. He’s working on a Republican alternative.
"Anytime you see a piece of legislation that only has people in one party supporting it, then you know it's not meant to actually get passed."
Sen. Mitt Romney says he wants to pass legislation to address systemic racism and excessive force in policing.
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But the Utah Republican and former Massachusetts governor says Democrats haven’t yet made a good-faith effort on reforms that are “meant to actually get passed.”
After becoming the first Republican senator to participate in a demonstration against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s “heinous murder,” Romney told reporters in Washington, D.C., that he was working with GOP colleagues on a bill with more bipartisan appeal than the sweeping package of reforms unveiled Monday by Democrats in the House and Senate.
“I noticed that the Democrats introduced legislation,” he said. “It’s about 140 pages; I have not read it all yet. But the fact that it has no Republican sponsors — the fact that there was no effort to contact any of us and have us weigh in on the legislation — suggests that it’s designed to be a message piece, as opposed to real piece of legislation. They recognize that this chamber is majority Republican and if they want to get something passed, it needs to have people on both sides of the aisle.”
The former presidential candidate said he spoke Monday afternoon with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator, who has been working with fellow GOP colleagues on legislation aimed at “providing justice for all people of color, and all citizens.” However, it’s unclear whether their proposals will satisfy the calls from Democrats for meaningful action in response to the latest series of highly publicized police killings of Black people.
Romney’s office said Tuesday that it’s too early in the process to get into specifics, though the senator mentioned to reporters Monday that the discussions included “some sort of supervisory oversight” to determine if officers have engaged in unnecessary force or racist targeting, as well as additional training around deescalation and bias.
That’s a far cry from what Democrats proposed Monday; in addition to increased accountability and training measures, their legislation would ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, create a federal registry to compile misconduct records (so that “problematic officers” cannot simply move to another jurisdiction), make it easier to sue officers for violating individuals’ rights, increase the use of body cameras, and limit the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement.
Some Republicans have expressed openness to several of these provisions, but Romney said that no Democrats contacted him, nor any other of his GOP colleagues, at least to his knowledge. (Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat, did publicly tweet at Romney to ask if he would support her standalone bill to eliminate qualified immunity, which is cosponsored by a former Republican-turned-Libertarian congressman.)
“Anytime you see a piece of legislation that only has people in one party supporting it, then you know it’s not meant to actually get passed,” Romney said. “It’s meant to make a statement. And they’re making a statement and we’ll look at their legislation and see if there’s things in there that make sense. We’ll try and fashion something that has broader bipartisan appeal.”
According to Politico, Democratic leaders are hoping to vote on their bill in the House, where they have a majority, before the end of June. However, they also reportedly acknowledged its slim chances of passing in the Republican-controlled Senate, where even a widely supported bipartisan bill to recognize lynching as a federal crime recently ran into delays.
Romney said Monday that he hadn’t spoken to anyone in the White House yet about the police reform bill Republicans were crafting, but assumed President Donald Trump would support reforms that “provide better care for all of our citizens.” Despite the Republican president’s divisive response to the recent unrest in the wake of Floyd’s death, Romney said that speaking out in support of “Black lives matter” and racial justice shouldn’t be a polarized issue.
While he said the calls from some activists on the left to reduce funding for police departments was a “silly idea,” Romney added that addressing bias among individual officers and reducing “systemic racism” are “high priorities and should be aggressively considered and pursued.”
According to Romney, a “great majority” of police officers do a “terrific job” and “provide a critical measure of safety for all of us.” But he said Floyd’s death — the latest example in a pattern of disproportionate police violence against Black people — motivated him to march Sunday.
“My party obviously has an embarrassingly small share of African American votes,” Romney said. “I certainly did in my [2012] election and we have since. And I’d like to see that change, but that isn’t what motivated me to stand up and speak. I saw a heinous murder carried out by a person with a badge.”
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