Clinton Says Senate Stalls Over Latino Judgeships

President Clinton on Saturday angrily criticized extended delays by the U.S. Senate in considering Latinos he has picked for judicial posts, singling out the continuing wait for a Los Angeles judge who was nominated to an appellate court seat in early 1996.

The president stopped short of accusing the Senate’s Republican majority of acting out of ethnic bias, but he did not shy from placing politics at the root of the inaction on the Latino nominees.

Speaking to the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute, Clinton also denounced the Senate for last week’s party-line vote rejecting his nomination of Ronnie White, the first African American to sit on the Missouri Supreme Court, to a U.S. District Court judgeship.

“The Senate’s treatment of Judge White and its failure to vote on the outstanding Hispanic nominees that are pending creates a real doubt about their ability and their willingness to perform their constitutional duties to advise and consent,” he said.

Senate Republicans have staunchly denied that their opposition to some of Clinton’s nominees is based on racial or ethnic considerations. A spokesman for Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), a leading conservative who voiced strong criticism of White’s nomination, said White’s record of being “soft” on crime in opposing the death penalty was the reason for his defeat.

“Bill Clinton’s manipulation of race for political purposes is low demagoguery,” Ashcroft spokesman Steve Hilton said Saturday. “It is bad for the country.”

According to the liberal group People for the American Way, seven of the 10 candidates whose nominations have been delayed the longest are women or minorities.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) has defended the Senate’s work, pointing out that four women, four Latinos and an African American are among the 19 Clinton nominees confirmed this year.

White became the first judicial nominee to be voted down by the full chamber in 12 years, prompting civil rights activists and Democratic lawmakers to accuse the Republican-controlled Senate of subjecting minority and female nominees to unfair scrutiny and delays.

Clinton said that, in voting to deny White’s confirmation, Republican senators distorted his record in capital punishment appeals cases. “It was wrong. That’s the kind of thing that’s going on up there that ought to stop.”

Latinos hold 40 of 843 positions in the federal judiciary--or 4.5% of the total, even though they make up 11% of the nation’s population and are projected to become the nation’s largest minority, said Antonio Hernandez, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The question of Latino appointments--to the courts as well as to influential positions in the executive branch--is particularly sensitive as the 2000 elections approach.

The expanding Latino vote, which is likely to become a focal point in the presidential race, is up for grabs between the leading Republican nominee, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, and the Democratic opponent.

In 1998, when he won reelection in Texas, Bush received 49% of the Latino vote, more than double the 24% he received four years earlier, even as Latinos voted by nearly 4-to-1 ratios for Democrats in other statewide races in the 1990s.

In California, it is projected that Latinos will make up 19% of the eligible voting population next year.

The president spoke of five Latino nominees: Richard Paez, a U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles whom he seeks to elevate to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco; Marsha Berzon, a San Francisco labor lawyer he has also nominated to a 9th Circuit seat; Judge Julio Fuentes, nominated to the 3rd Circuit Court in Philadelphia; civil lawyer Enrique Moreno, nominated to the 5th Circuit in New Orleans; and Ronald Guzman, nominated to the U.S. District Court in northern Illinois.

Labeling as shameless the treatment of Paez, nominated in January 1996, and Berzon, nominated two years later, the president said: “They just disappear somewhere in the dark recesses of the calendar of the Senate.”

Paez, the first Mexican American on the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in 1994, has been criticized for his public statements on California ballot initiatives and for some of his rulings. For example, in a 1995 speech to UC Berkeley law students, the judge attacked Proposition 187, which denied benefits to illegal immigrants, as anti-Latino “discrimination and hostility.” And Paez called Proposition 209, which bars certain affirmative action preferences, an “anti-civil rights initiative.”

Paez later said he regretted using such strong words about Proposition 209 and that he was not biased against the initiative process. He received a “well-qualified” rating from the American Bar Assn., the organization’s highest standard, and has broad bipartisan support in California.

Berzon, a San Francisco labor lawyer who has won major cases at the Supreme Court, was described by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the Judiciary Committee chairman, as one of the most qualified nominees he has ever seen. Yet she has waited nearly two years for a full vote.

The court to which Paez and Berzon have been nominated has a reputation as one of the most liberal in the nation. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other Republicans have said nominees to the 9th Circuit will receive stricter scrutiny than others.

Without uttering the word “politics,” Clinton made it clear he felt the Senate’s delay in taking up Paez’s nomination was rooted in partisanship.

“They don’t want to vote him down because they hope that you will vote with them in the next election, but they don’t want to vote for him,” Clinton said. “So, this man has been hanging there for 3 1/2 years.”

The hundreds of people taking part in the annual conference at Chicago’s massive McCormick Place convention center interrupted Clinton repeatedly with applause and gave him a standing ovation, accentuated by the waving of red, white and blue napkins as Latino music blared from speakers.

Demanding action, Clinton said: “Now, I don’t know about you, but if I took 3 1/2 years to make a decision, you wouldn’t think I was a very good president. And most of you couldn’t hold your jobs if you took 3 1/2 years to do your assigned tasks.”

The increasing partisanship appears to be poisoning relations between the White House and Congress in an area that has generally been immune from such rhetoric.

“Historically, this is almost a milestone in political partisanship in scrutinizing judicial nominees,” said Paul Rothstein, a Georgetown University law professor. “The Senate is playing Russian roulette with the nation’s court system.”