NEW ADMINISTRATION: Attorney general designate questioned about black judge
By Craig Gordon, Newsday — Jan 8th, 2001
WASHINGTON - As the first black judge on Missouri's top court sat before him seeking a move to the federal bench, then-Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft homed in on one line of questioning during a May 1998, confirmation hearing.
Ashcroft asked Judge Ronnie White whether he would uphold decisions and laws on certain issues even if he might personally disagree with them. White was unequivocal.
"When you take the oath of office," he told Ashcroft, "you swear to uphold the laws of the United States."
By fall of the next year, White's nomination was dead - blocked by Ashcroft, say critics, who accuse him of rallying Republican opposition by labeling White "pro-criminal" over death-penalty case dissents. It was an issue that Ashcroft did not raise at White's Senate confirmation hearing.
White's supporters charge Ashcroft with engineering a politically motivated attack, or worse, one fueled by racial bias - charges Ashcroft vehemently denies.
Now, White's failed nomination is emerging as a rallying point for a broad array of liberal interest groups fighting to block President-elect George W. Bush's nomination of Ashcroft for attorney general. Top Democrats suggest White could be invited to testify, adding a note of drama to what promises to be Bush's most fiercely contested nomination fight.
In essence, these groups - from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, to leading abortion-rights groups, to the Sierra Club - will press Ashcroft on the same issue he asked White. They question whether a staunch conservative who has dedicated his public career to fighting abortion rights and expanded gun control laws now can be expected to uphold them.
"My fundamental worry is not what his views are ... but that he is the chief law enforcement officer. Will he enforce the laws of the land on things that he is so ideologically opposed to?" said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who has been tapped to be among the lead questioners during Ashcroft's confirmation hearing that could start before Bush takes office Jan. 20.
Bush said he remains confident that Ashcroft will be confirmed, and many Democrats agree. The Senate, which must confirm Cabinet appointees with a simple majority, has a long tradition of supporting its own, and also of giving the president wide latitude in choosing a Cabinet.
"It's obviously an uphill fight," said Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, who led the successful opposition to Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.
Republicans defend Ashcroft as an eminently qualified public servant who would be duty-bound to uphold the nation's laws fairly and equally. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Republican leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Ashcroft "does not have a discriminatory bone in his body."
Bush spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said Ashcroft took a "no-nonsense approach to law enforcement" as Missouri's governor and attorney general. "He understands that his No. 1 responsibility will be to enforce the law, and President-elect Bush chose him for that reason," Tucker said.
In Ashcroft, Bush has tapped one of the most conservative members of the last Senate to head an agency that touches on practically every aspect of American life, and many of particular concern to civil-rights activists, from guaranteeing access to abortion clinics, to enforcing anti-discrimination and voting rights laws, to investigating racial bias allegations against law-enforcement agencies.
Ashcroft, 58, is a minister's son who doesn't drink, dance or smoke, but was one of the "Singing Senators" barbershop quartet. He served one Senate term but was defeated in November by the deceased Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose name remained on the ballot. Carnahan's widow, Jean, filled the seat.
Ashcroft has advocated banning abortions, including in cases of rape and incest. His only exception would be to protect the mother's life. As Missouri governor, he signed a bill barring the use of state funds or facilities for abortions except in that instance. On gun control, he was considered one of the National Rifle Association's most reliable allies in the Senate.
But he also found himself in line with some civil liberties groups when he expressed concern about giving federal agencies authority over Internet security and monitoring e-mail and other computer communications.
Ashcroft has come under fire for giving the commencement address and accepting an honorary degree in May 1999 at Bob Jones University, which until recently had a policy banning interracial dating and whose leaders have called the Catholic Church a cult.
Civil-rights groups in Missouri circulated petitions criticizing Ashcroft for comments published in Southern Partisan magazine in the fall of 1998, where he indicated he and others must defend Confederate leaders and "Southern patriots" such as Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis or history will show they gave their lives for "some perverted agenda."
An Ashcroft spokesman at the time said the senator was echoing his political hero, Abraham Lincoln, who had said Lee and others shouldn't be disrespected even though they fought to defend slavery in the Civil War.
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