Man in Tillis campaign ad owns a restaurant at center of a racial bias suit
A man featured in a campaign TV ad for Republican Sen. Thom Tillis owns a restaurant at the center of a federal lawsuit over racial bias.
The ad features Tillis walking through a restaurant kitchen talking about how he started his career as a short order cook and then sitting at a table in Jeffrey’s Restaurant in Mooresville with owner Jeff Lancaster. Lancaster also owns Lancaster’s BBQ in Mooresville.
Lancaster is expected to be in federal court in Statesville next month for a trial that could determine whether his barbecue restaurant is liable in a racial discrimination case brought by a former employee.
The case was brought in 2018 by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The Tillis campaign said the senator did not know Lancaster or know about the EEOC suit. His restaurant was chosen because it was convenient, the campaign said.
The former Lancaster’s employee, Shana Knox, who is black, alleges that a white co-worker repeatedly called her the n-word and then, according to the suit, “doused her face and chest with hot barbeque sauce and hit her with a metal pan.”
The white employee, Chris Bishop, was fired, only to be rehired four months later.
Last Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Ken Bell dismissed some of Knox’s claims against Lancaster’s, but allowed the case to move to a July 20 trial.
In his June 12 order, Bell rejected Knox’s claim for punitive damages and dismissed other claims.
“(T)he Court finds that there is insufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that Bishop’s battery was ratified by Lancaster’s,” Bell wrote. “Bishop was fired immediately after the incident. The record reflects that it was Knox’s version of the events that was accepted by the managers, not Bishop’s. . .
“The Court finds that Knox has failed to present evidence from which a reasonable jury could hold Lancaster’s liable for Bishop’s actions. . . . (T)he managers at Lancaster’s never actively engaged in the discrimination.”
The trial is expected to determine whether the restaurant is liable for compensatory damages to Knox.
Lancaster’s attorney, William Robinson, declined to comment. So did Knox’s lawyer, Josh Van Kampen.
In the ad, Tillis talks about how he started his career in a restaurant kitchen and got his college degree at night, eventually becoming an IBM management consultant. The ad goes on to talk about the 1 million unemployed North Carolinians.
“My job,” Tillis says in the ad, “is fighting for your job.”
“Restaurants, and the people who depend on them for their paychecks, are hurting all over North Carolina,” campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said in a statement Thursday. “Senator Tillis knows what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck — that’s how he was raised, and those are the people he is fighting for in Washington.”
A spokesman for Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham declined to comment.
Staff writer Michael Gordon contributed.
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 3:54 PM.
