The Hill
By Alexander Bolton
July 28, 2004
The issue of President Bush's judicial nominations has flared into life as a core election issue after lying dormant for months.
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Republicans and Democrats are gearing up to spar this August and into the campaign high season of September and October over a dispute that has hobbled the Senate throughout the 108th Congress.
Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe unveiled last week a new national Democratic program to be headed by Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Senate Republicans triggered floor votes last week on three controversial Bush nominees to the 9th and 6th Circuit appeals courts, prompting Democratic filibusters in each case. Their actions brought to 10 the number of Bush nominees bottled up in the Senate by Democratic filibusters.
By forcing the Democrats' hand last week, Republicans put themselves in a position to campaign on the judges issue throughout August and during the GOP convention in New York.
Both sides are likely to highlight the expectation that whoever holds the White House in January is likely to appoint two and perhaps more justices to the Supreme Court.
If Bush is reelected, activists engaged in the fight over judges expect Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, both Republican appointees, to retire within the next four years. If Sen. John Kerry wins, Democrat-appointed Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has battled health problems, are expected to retire.
But even if Bush wins four months from now, it is questionable whether Stevens, who is 84, and Ginsburg will have the stamina to stay on the bench until after the next presidential election, in 2008.
Campaign to Save the Court is the new DNC program that Michelman will lead.
Its purpose is to "highlight the critically important issue of how the 2004 Presidential election will affect the future of Supreme Court appointments," says a DNC statement.
The program, designed to energize voters, is scheduled for this Wednesday here at the Boston convention.
Michelman s appointment may lend credence to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch s (R-Utah) assertion that for liberals, the fight over judges is a proxy for the fight over abortion.
Pressure groups are also laying plans to raise judicial nominees as a political issue.
The Sierra Club and an array of civil rights and women s groups have joined to run television advertisements criticizing what they view as the extreme records of Bush s nominees.
Committee for Justice, run by former Bush White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, unveiled plans Friday to advertise on Boston billboards "why President Kerry's judiciary would be frightening," in the words of the group's chairman.
Another group that supports Bush s nominees, Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, is pushing for Senate candidates to sign a "Fair Judiciary Oath," a pledge to fight for the right of Bush s nominees to receive up-or-down votes and not be filibustered.
"For most of the year, this issue has been quiet because of Senate gridlock, so it s not surprising that it s come back to life," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice. "It was bound to come back to life before the end of the year because so many nominees are awaiting a vote and Republicans are learning that this is a powerful issue.
"It's one that brings a lot of moderate voters and blue-collar voters over to the Republican side, people who aren t sure about the economy or not sure about the war."
Senate Republican candidates and Bush frequently raised the issue of Democratic opposition to judicial nominees during the 2002 midterm elections.
The issue died in the Senate this year because of a controversy over internal Democratic documents leaked to the press. A sergeant-at-arms investigation, later referred to the Department of Justice, sucked the oxygen out of the Senate debate over judges.
Conservative activists charge that Republican senators were so preoccupied over minimizing the controversy that they let the judges issue drop. But last week's action indicates that Republicans, like Democrats, are ready for the fight again.