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Senates new math may aid stalled judicial nominees { February 13 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/politics/13nominees.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/politics/13nominees.html
February 13, 2005
Senate's New Math May Aid Stalled Judicial Nominees
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - When the battle over judicial nominations resumes in the next few weeks, President Bush may have a good chance of winning confirmation for some of his previously blocked candidates, Democrats and Republicans said this week.
Mr. Bush, who was regularly stymied in his first term by Senate Democrats, who blocked 10 of his appeals court choices by filibuster, comes to the fight this time with a larger Republican majority in the Senate and what many see as an increased opportunity to get some of those same nominees confirmed. One reason for that view is that the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter, has been quietly building a strategy that could break the logjam over judicial nominations.
Mr. Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who became chairman over the objections of many conservatives, has been lobbying Democratic senators on behalf of some of the Bush nominees in order to obtain the needed 60 votes to foil a filibuster. He said in an interview that part of his approach was to begin with the nominees he believed had the best chance of attracting Democratic support first.
"I'm going to put up these nominees up in a particular order," he said.
He said the nominee he intended to bring up for a vote first, in a move he hoped would end the divisive partisan battle over judges, was William G. Myers III, a longtime lobbyist for mining and timber interests, nominated for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco. Next in line, he suggested, would be William H. Pryor Jr., the former Alabama attorney general who was put on the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, temporarily by Mr. Bush during a Congressional recess, after Democrats blocked his confirmation.
The politics of judicial confirmations has come down to simple math. In the last Congress, the Republicans had 51 votes, a slim majority. That allowed the Democrats, who said that many of Mr. Bush's choices were right-wing ideologues, to block confirmations by waging filibusters, the threat of tying up the Senate in endless debate.
The Republicans came close to getting the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the last Congress, but never quite had enough. The Senate now has 55 Republicans, meaning Republicans need only attract 5 Democrats to their side this time.
Mr. Specter said that he believed Mr. Myers had a strong chance of being confirmed because he would get 55 Republican votes along with the two to four votes of Democrats who sided with the Republicans on various nominees last term. He said that Senator Ken Salazar, the newly elected Democrat from Colorado, was expected to support Mr. Myers's nomination. "And that brings us pretty close," Mr. Specter said.
When he was Colorado's attorney general, Mr. Salazar signed a letter with others endorsing the Myers nomination the last time it was before the Senate. A spokesman for Mr. Salazar said Friday that the senator would, in his new role, review the nomination before taking a position.
One Democratic senator and several senior Democratic staff aides said in interviews they also believed the new math in the Senate could give the Republicans and the White House some confirmation victories. One aide noted that several Democrats voted to confirm Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general despite an effort to maintain party unity against that nomination. The staff aides said they could not be quoted by name because it was politically unseemly for them to be acknowledging that their party might lose some confirmation battles.
The Ninth Circuit, to which Mr. Myers is expected to be nominated, covers nine Western states, where environmental disputes have been heated. Mr. Myers's nomination presents an exceptionally stark example in the debate over whether someone who has spent a career vigorously advocating a particular ideological viewpoint about the law is an appropriate candidate to be a federal judge.
Mr. Pryor, the former Alabama attorney general, was criticized by Democrats who blocked his nomination last term as someone who would be unable to divorce his strong personal views from his role as a judge. They cited his strong opposition to legalized abortion and his advocacy of a greater role for religion in government.
Mr. Specter said that he was hopeful he could convince senators that Judge Pryor has been mostly a moderate in his 11 months on the bench, which ended when his recess appointment expired recently.
Although Democrats on the Judiciary Committee objected to Mr. Pryor's rhetoric before he went on the bench, Mr. Specter said, "he has written about a half dozen moderate to progressive opinions on the bench which show a judicial temperament and judicial disposition that would be admired by anybody."
Mr. Specter recently circulated a memorandum to Democratic senators outlining five of Judge Pryor's decisions, asserting that they showed he stood up to corporations, protected immigrants and upheld a sex discrimination claim.
Although it was not included in the memorandum, Judge Pryor also provided a critical vote upholding Florida's law against adoption by gay couples.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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