Bush Says He Has Narrowed List for Court

President Bush said Saturday that he had narrowed his list of potential nominees to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, amid suggestions that he planned to finish the winnowing process and announce his decision on Tuesday.

Speculation about likely successors to Marshall, the high court’s only black justice, remained focused on several Latino federal judges as well as Clarence Thomas, a black judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

“It’s narrowing. It’s narrowed today,” Bush told reporters as he got set for his second round of golf of the day near his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me.

In addition to Thomas, those believed to be prominent on Bush’s list include U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo H. Hinojosa of Brownsville, Tex., Appellate Court Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez of Los Angeles, District Court Judge Jose A. Cabranes of Connecticut and Appellate Court Judge Emilio M. Garza of San Antonio.

The extremely secretive process of selecting a nominee likely to gain Senate confirmation without dragging Bush into a lengthy, controversial debate was being conducted by long distance. While the President spent much of his day in recreational activities, aides in Kennebunkport and Washington continued to examine the records of potential candidates.

“I’m talking all the time to Washington,” the President said.

The President arrived in Maine on Friday afternoon and plans to remain there until Tuesday morning, when he is expected to return to Washington early in the day to greet South Korean President Roh Tae Woo at the White House. On Wednesday, he is expected to begin a two-day trip to the Midwest.

Bush and his aides are known to feel that the sooner he can announce his choice, the less time there will be for interest groups to weigh in--and try to undercut potential nominees for various political reasons.

Asked about the length of the list, Bush would only say: “I wouldn’t say two or three.” And while some in the White House said the list contained as many as five names, others said it had indeed been pared to two or three.

Politically, Bush may stand to gain the most by naming a Latino. With few indications that he has made significant headway in his professed campaign to bring blacks into the Republican Party--or to at least support Republican candidates in increasing numbers--choosing someone other than another black to replace Marshall is unlikely to do him much damage.

In discussing his decision to retire, Marshall as much as warned Bush that appointment of a member of a minority group to the court vacancy should not be used as the rationale to nominate a less-than-superlative candidate.

And picking Thomas as the nominee is not likely to win Bush significant support among black voters, because the appeals court judge has alienated many civil rights advocates with his conservative positions on affirmative action and school busing.

On the other hand, the naming of a Latino candidate--the first to be nominated to the high court--almost certainly would benefit Bush within that ethnic community, where Republicans have already been making significant gains throughout the Sun Belt.

Hinojosa was said to be among those at the very top of Bush’s list. However, he has not yet conferred with Bush in person about the job.

His selection, said one source familiar with the President’s thinking on personnel matters, “wouldn’t shock me.”

Hinojosa and Bush have known each other since Bush ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1970, and consider each other friends.

The President, this source said, “likes him a lot, and he’s inclined to appoint people he knows. My gut instinct is, if the President wants to do a minority, he’s going to be much more inclined to do someone he knows.”

In a news conference Friday, Marshall acknowledged that race would be a factor in the nomination, but said it should not be used as “an excuse for doing wrong.” Asked to define that statement, he responded: “Picking the wrong Negro and saying, ‘I’m picking him because he’s a Negro.’ ”

Marshall’s pointed comment was widely interpreted as criticism of Thomas, 43, who was appointed to the appeals court bench by Bush in 1989. Some observers said there are increasing indications that Thomas may no longer be at the top of Bush’s list of candidates.

Thomas was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he zealously pursued individual complaints of bias, but resisted applying some of the traditional methods to fighting discrimination.

Echoing Marshall’s warning, other black leaders have tried to raise a red flag over the possibility that Bush might mask the appointment of a conservative justice behind an effort to fill the vacancy with a member of a minority group.

“You can be assured that if we get some narrow-minded, right-wing conservative reactionary to fill this seat, it will be the mother of all confirmation hearings,” said Benjamin L. Hooks, executive director of the NAACP.

Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Fulwood from Kennebunkport, Me. Times Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson and staff writer Marlene Cimons contributed to this story.