Senate Republicans and their conservative allies on Tuesday were targeting red-state Democrats in a last-ditch bid to win a confirmation battle over the most contentious judicial nominee of the 110th Congress, Leslie Southwick.
The efforts appeared to be paying some dividends ahead of Wednesday’s decisive vote. Most of the 14 red-state Democrats said they were still considering whether to support the nomination. And some signaled they would — at least — vote for Wednesday’s cloture motion to move toward a final vote on the nomination. Sixty votes would be needed for cloture, and if that’s successful, a simple majority could confirm Southwick to the bench.
Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, which President Bush carried with 64 percent of the vote in 2004, said he was planning to support Southwick’s bid for a seat on the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
“I am satisfied that he is a person of good will, and he is not somebody that would discriminate against people,” Conrad said.
At a time when Republicans have been largely on the defensive over the Iraq war and have seen some of their members embroiled in scandals, Republicans predicted they would be largely united over the Southwick nomination, an issue that plays well and energizes their conservative base.
Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said the backlash against Democrats if they killed the nomination would be “huge.”
“That would be about the worst message that the Democrat majority could send,” he said.
Curt Levey, head of the conservative Committee for Justice, said his group is targeting all 14 red-state Democrats, as well as freshman Democrat Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. His Republican allies in the Senate also indicated the breadth of support from that voting bloc would determine whether Southwick would be confirmed.
Levey said the cloture vote is “this year’s first big test of where senators stand on the judges issue.”
Chief vote counters in both parties suggested that the votes would be close, as did Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who added he is “doing everything I can” to derail the nomination.
“I don’t know where the votes are on this,” Reid said. “This is an issue that senators are going to have to make their individual decisions on.”
Senate aides said they hoped the Democratic presidential candidates would be in attendance during the expected close vote.
The fight over Southwick represents the most partisan judicial fight over an appeals court nominee since Republicans threatened to curtail Democrats’ use of filibusters in the last Congress. But a bipartisan group of senators — known as the Gang of 14 — helped avert the showdown by brokering a deal that allowed for the confirmation of some nominees while keeping the filibuster intact.
Liberal groups, including the People for the American Way, the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP, say that while sitting on the Mississippi Court of Appeals from 1995 to 2006, Southwick had a hostile record toward minorities, which critics say is especially problematic in a court that hears a slew of civil rights cases across the South.
They point to a 1998 case where Southwick joined a ruling that upheld the reinstatement of a state employee who was fired for using a racial slur against a black co-worker. They also criticize a 2001 ruling he joined to award custody of an 8-year-old girl to a father, saying the mother was living with another woman in a “lesbian home.” He joined a concurring opinion that liberal groups charge was “gratuitously” anti-gay.
Southwick’s supporters, which include his home-state senators, Mississippi Republicans Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, say that the critics have distorted the record of a well-qualified nominee by cherry-picking two opinions that he joined but did not author.
Southwick has told Judiciary Committee senators that he rejects the use of such slurs and would have a fair and open mind if confirmed to the 5th Circuit.
Such assurances were good enough for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who joined all nine Judiciary Committee Republicans in voting for the nomination in August. His nomination was sent to the floor on a 10-9 vote.
Feinstein said Tuesday she would vote for cloture and for the nomination on the floor.
In a flashback to last Congress, Republicans also complained that Democrats were using procedural tactics to kill the nomination, rather than allowing an up-or-down vote on its merits.
Lott called Southwick “a very judicious, mild-mannered moderate, highly qualified, capable” judge.
“Certainly this is the wrong one to try [a filibuster] on,” Lott said.
Don Stewart, a spokesman for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said he would be “awfully surprised” to see Democrats filibuster “a judge who meets and exceeds the qualifications for this post.”
But there are signs that Republicans might succeed in killing Democratic attempts at a filibuster.
Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, who was a part of the Gang of 14, is signaling that he would support at least the cloture vote on Southwick, and urged other Democrats to join him to foster an “atmosphere of cooperation.” He suggested that if Democrats cooperated on this cloture vote, more Republicans could be coaxed to vote for other Democratic bills.
That argument appears to have won over another Democrat who signaled he would vote for cloture, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.). He added he was undecided on voting for Southwick’s actual confirmation.
The senior Arkansas Democrat, Blanche Lincoln, would not say how she was leaning. “I’m still thinking about it,” she said.
Three other red-state Democrats, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, Ken Salazar of Colorado and Virginia’s Jim Webb, signaled they were still weighing the nomination.
Still, Democrats are hoping they could prevent enough defections from states that Bush carried, including West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller and Indiana’s Evan Bayh, who each said they were leaning toward voting against Southwick on procedural and substantive grounds. |
