Republicans force judicial votes
WASHINGTON (AP) – Republicans this week are forcing showdowns with Democrats over the most conservative of President Bush’s judicial nominees, seeing a prime political opportunity just before senators head home for summertime fund raising for next year’s elections. GOP senators have spent the week accusing Democrats of religious bias and of flaunting the Constitution by filibustering four of the White House’s most contentious nominees – allegations the Republicans hope will stir outrage back home. Democrats say that religion has nothing to do with it and the few nominees they are challenging have not demonstrated fitness for the appointments.
The Democrats are filibustering Texas judge Priscilla Owen, District of Columbia lawyer Miguel Estrada and Mississippi judge Charles Pickering, and most recently California judge Carolyn Kuhl and Alabama Attorney General William Pryor.
The GOP hopes that by casting Democratic opposition to the appointees as hostility to their religious anti-abortion positions will make their voters angry in a way their other arguments this year against the filibusters have not.
Senate Democrats officially began a filibuster of Pryor, who wants a seat on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, on Thursday. Pryor could not get the 60 votes needed from the 100-member Senate to win his seat, with all 51 Republicans and two Democrats, Zell Miller of Georgia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voting for him.
“If (Pryor) can’t get confirmed, then about 90 percent of the people that I grew up with can’t be a federal judge,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “Because 90 percent of the people that I grew up with have strongly held beliefs about life and death.”
Estrada and Owen were blocked earlier in the week. Democrats are expected on Friday to filibuster Kuhl, who wants a seat on the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Democrats say they are proud of their record on Bush’s judges, and are willing to take those records home. “We’re willing to stand by our record,” said Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, noting that Democrats have helped confirm 140 federal district and appeals court judges since Bush took office.
“We believe we are following the will of the American people who don’t want judges who are too far left or too far right,” added Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “I assure my colleagues in the Senate that we will continue to do this.”
The politically charged votes right before the recess helps excite the ideological voters on both sides, who then raise money and turn out the vote come election time, said Nancy Scherer, a University of Miami professor who is writing a book on the nomination process called “Scoring Points: Politicians, Activists and the Lower Court Appointment Process.”
“The activists and the politicians – the people who really care about these issues – they want to know where everyone stands,” she said. “It’s helps them to be able to go out into the fields during the break and point to a vote and say, ‘He’s with us,’ or ‘he’s not with us.”‘
Democrats seem to be targeting “traditional pro-life, Catholic conservatives,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
“It is clear in this case, that Mr. Pryor’s deeply held beliefs, with respect to abortion, are formed from his devout Catholic upbringing,” said Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. “So what we are seeing de facto by members of the other side is a test, a religious test. We have taken the separation of church and state to the extreme to suggest that some people in some religions simply cannot participate in this state.”
Democrats say any accusations that they are against Catholics are grossly incorrect and part of a Republican pattern. “Each time we have opposed a nominee, there has been bias used as a rationale for those who do not agree with us,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “It happened with an anti-Hispanic charge with Miguel Estrada, an anti-woman charge with Priscilla Owen, an anti-Baptist charge with Charles Pickering, and now with William Pryor, an anti-Catholic charge.”
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Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.