Feinstein Backs Corporate Lawyer for U.S. Bench : Judiciary: Unusual recommendation prior to vacancy follows campaign by supporters of attorney Kim Wardlaw, who has ties to Clinton and Riordan.

In an unusual preemptive strike, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has recommended to President Clinton that he nominate politically influential corporate lawyer Kim Wardlaw for a federal trial judgeship the next time there is a vacancy in Los Angeles, The Times has learned.

Normally, such recommendations are not made until there is an open seat and that is not expected to occur for several months.

The move comes after a high-powered campaign in which nearly a hundred prominent Wardlaw backers from the worlds of law and politics deluged the offices of Feinstein and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer with letters of support. Sources in both offices said they received more letters of recommendation for Wardlaw than any other candidate.

Wardlaw has strong ties to Feinstein and to the Clinton White House. She helped raise money for the senator’s 1992 campaign, and was a Clinton delegate to the 1992 Democratic convention. She also was responsible for organizing Hillary Clinton’s schedule during campaign trips to California and served on the Clinton Administration’s Justice Department transition team. Her husband, Bill Wardlaw, was co-chairman of Clinton’s California campaign and is Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s closest adviser.

The 40-year-old business litigation specialist has been pursuing a federal judgeship since early 1993, but her initial attempts were unsuccessful.

She did not make it past the first round with Boxer’s screening committee in 1993. Although she was one of 15 candidates who sources said were well ranked by Feinstein’s screening committee the same year, Feinstein recommended Audrey Collins, the highest ranking African American woman in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, and Robert Timlin, a state appeals court judge from San Bernardino.

But Wardlaw did not abandon her quest. During and after the elections last fall, some of her backers, particularly her husband, renewed the push with Feinstein and White House officials and in late April Feinstein sent the recommendation to Clinton.

“She is a nominee with very strong credentials and very strong support,” said Feinstein’s state director Bill Chandler, referring to Wardlaw’s political backing and her resume, which includes graduation with honors from UCLA Law School in 1979, clerkship for a federal judge and partnership at O’Melveny & Myers.

“The President has indicated his support for her nomination. Mayor Riordan has indicated his support,” Chandler said.

Several sources noted that Riordan’s support and Wardlaw’s strong ties to corporate America--she has represented Bausch & Lomb, Blockbuster, Cigna, the E. & J. Gallo Winery, Paramount Pictures and Southern California Edison--would prove useful in helping her survive the potentially treacherous confirmation process in the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee and the Republican majority Senate.

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Although the President nominates federal judges, normally he gives considerable deference to a senator’s recommendations for district court judgeships. (When they took office, Boxer and Feinstein agreed that they would each make two recommendations for the four vacancies then existing on the Los Angeles district court bench and then rotate picks for subsequent vacancies. Feinstein has the next one.)

Chandler said Feinstein reviewed the list of candidates ranked highly by her committee and recommended Wardlaw earlier than normal because she “wanted to make sure there was no lag time” between the next vacancy and the nomination of a successor.

State Court of Appeal Justice Joan Dempsey Klein, a member of Feinstein’s screening committee, would not talk about the committee process. But Klein said she knows Wardlaw personally, considers her “extraordinarily well qualified” and added that there is a good reason for Feinstein to try to speed up the process.

“I would assume Feinstein and Boxer are most eager to fill any vacancies they have some input on,” Klein said. “Many of us are concerned about the slow pace at which the federal bench has been occupied with new appointments.”

She said that since Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has indicated that he is not going to move nominations rapidly, the White House needs to get as many viable candidates in the pipeline as soon as possible, particularly because it becomes increasingly difficult to get a nominee through the Senate the closer it gets to election time.

Chandler said that it would be premature for the White House to do anything formal until another vacancy materializes, if and when U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima is confirmed by the Senate for a seat on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. White House officials declined comment.

Wardlaw said in an interview that she was “very honored and grateful to the senator for her recommendation and to the President for his consideration. . . . I’ve had a lifelong desire to serve on the bench.”

In addition to an active litigation practice, Wardlaw has been involved in a variety of civic activities, including a term as president of the Women Lawyers Assn. of Los Angeles, and she has been a member of the Commission on the Future of Loyola Marymount University.

Her elevation to the bench would be “bittersweet” for her colleagues at O’Melveny, said Henry C. Thumann, who heads the firm’s litigation department. “The price of this wonderful nomination for her is we lose her as a partner and colleague, particularly the loss of an outstanding mentor and role model for young lawyers, especially women lawyers,” Thumann said.

In addition to a bevy of lawyers from her firm, one of the state’s most prestigious, Wardlaw garnered broad support from individuals ranging from conservative federal appeals court Judge Joseph T. Sneed to liberal State Court of Appeal Justice Earl Johnson.

Among her other prominent backers are Justice Department anti-trust chief Anne K. Bingaman, Voice of America head Geoffrey Cowan, former California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor chieftain Jim Wood, Southern California Edison President Michael R. Peevey, and former Los Angeles County Bar Assn. President Gerald L. Chaleff.

“Without question, she would be a first-rate judge, in every dimension of the judicial task,” said UCLA constitutional law professor Kenneth Karst, who met Wardlaw when she was a first-year law student in 1976.

“A great many of our graduates are bright, and a number of the bright ones are also level-headed. What Kim has in addition--and what I think is sorely needed in the federal judiciary--is a genuine sense of responsibility to those who are disadvantaged,” Karst wrote. In particular, Karst cited Wardlaw’s role in organizing the Women Lawyers’ Public Action Grant program, which enables law students to spend a summer doing public interest work and getting paid for it.

Also lavish in her praise was Georgetown law professor Emma Coleman Jordan, who was Wardlaw’s boss on the Clinton Administration’s Justice Department transition team and served as one of Anita Hill’s lawyers during the controversy over Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court:

“She displays a deeply personal sensitivity to the problems of women and people of color. I believe that her life experiences are sufficiently broad that she will serve the teeming variety of the central district well.”

Indeed, Wardlaw cited her personal history in a letter she sent to Boxer and Feinstein asking for their support in February, 1993. She acknowledged that most of her professional experience has been as a business litigator. But Wardlaw added that she had spent “much of my professional life working on behalf of women, minorities and the disadvantaged through my outside involvements.” She said experiences during her youth explained her motivation for those activities:

“As a product of what was viewed as an interracial marriage, I have experienced the pain of discrimination and have empathized most deeply with those less fortunate than I am today. My mother, Solidad Jimenez, is one of six children of Mexican immigrants who came here, like my father’s Scotch-Irish immigrant parents, seeking realization of the American dream. My mother’s dream was stolen because of the open and accepted prejudice against Mexicans in California in the ‘30s and ‘40s, which precluded her from obtaining a college education, although she was salutatorian of her high school class.”

Born in San Francisco, Wardlaw lives with her husband and 5-year-old son in Pasadena. The couple are expecting their second child in June.

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Wardlaw and her husband have been very active politically. They played a key role in urging Riordan to run for mayor. Both are active contributors to candidates; she has donated money to Clinton, Riordan, Boxer, Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg and gubernatorial aspirant Kathleen Brown, among others. She also played a significant role in Brown’s preparation for her debate with Gov. Pete Wilson last year.

Although Wardlaw has broadly based backing, several sources said they were troubled by the fact that Feinstein would be pushing her so hard without doing further screening to consider other candidates. They said Feinstein’s move looked “very political” because of Wardlaw’s close ties to Clinton and Riordan--and Feinstein’s desire to please both. Riordan, a Republican, supported Feinstein in her close race against Mike Huffington last year.

Others said Feinstein made a smart move because Wardlaw is qualified and confirmable, and because Clinton clearly would like to reward Wardlaw and please her husband. “This is the first act of the Clinton reelection campaign in California,” said one longtime Democratic activist.

But none of those sources would speak for attribution, saying they feared angering Wardlaw or her politically powerful husband. “It would be political suicide to oppose this appointment,” one attorney said. A good friend of Wardlaw’s said: “These appointments are real political,” but added that Wardlaw hardly would be the first person to use political connections to help garner a judgeship.

As one prominent lawyer put it: “She certainly passes any credential muster, and remember, merit only gets you so far in this process.”