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Senior democrat wont block confirmation gonzales { November 17 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/politics/17cnd-couns.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/politics/17cnd-couns.html
November 17, 2004
Senior Democratic Senator Won't Block Confirmation of Gonzales
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, was all but guaranteed Senate confirmation today when a leading Democrat expressed fondness for the nominee and signaled that he would not stand in his way.
"I like him," Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said today after a closed meeting with Mr. Gonzales, whom he has known as White House counsel.
"I said jokingly that the president, with the majority he has in the Senate, could have sent up Attila the Hun and got him confirmed," Mr. Leahy said. "But Judge Gonzales is no Attila the Hun; he's far from that, and he's a more uniting figure."
Hyperbole aside, Republicans will have 55 seats in the new Senate, to 44 Democrats and one independent, James Jeffords of Vermont, who sides with the Democrats. With Mr. Leahy not standing in his way, Mr. Gonzales can feel very comfortable about his chances of being endorsed by the Judiciary Committee and approved by the full Senate.
Mr. Gonzales, a former member of the Texas Supreme Court and an adviser to Mr. Bush from his days as Texas governor, is in line to replace John Ashcroft, whose resignation was announced last week.
Mr. Leahy said Mr. Gonzales would still face questions in his confirmation hearings about the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners and his views on the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. As White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales wrote a memo suggesting that the detainees need not be given the full protections of the Geneva Convention.
The senator said he hoped Mr. Gonzales would not hesitate to tell the president what he thinks. "I have no objection to presidents appointing close friends," Mr. Leahy said. "But will he keep the kind of independence that an attorney general has to keep from the president?"
"He and I have discussed a lot of things," Mr. Leahy said of Mr. Gonzales. "Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree. He has always kept his word to me, I've always kept my word to him, and I think that's a great way to start."
Mr. Gonzales will be succeeded as White House counsel by Harriet Miers, the deputy chief of staff at the White House. Ms. Miers, who had been Mr. Bush's personal lawyer in Texas, was named to her new post today by the president.
Mr. Leahy also expressed support, if indirectly, for Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is regarded with suspicion by conservatives but is in line by virtue of seniority to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee, replacing Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.
"I didn't like the seniority system when I first came here," Mr. Leahy said, "but having studied it for 30 years, I like it a great deal."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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