Race an Issue for Ashcroft’s Foes

As civil rights leaders seek to mobilize opposition to Sen. John Ashcroft’s nomination for attorney general, many are adopting a two-word rallying cry: Ronnie White.

White is a judge in Ashcroft’s home state of Missouri whose elevation to the federal bench was rejected by the Senate in 1999 after Ashcroft mounted a vigorous and unusual lobbying effort, branding the judge “pro-criminal.”

White is African American, and for that reason, Ashcroft’s opponents accuse the senator of inflaming racial prejudices through his attacks on the judge. The White case, coupled with Ashcroft’s comments on Southern Civil War “patriots” and other sensitive issues, promises to make racial politics a hot-button issue in Ashcroft’s confirmation hearings, activists say.

“Ronnie White will figure prominently in this debate. This was an example of Ashcroft engaging essentially in a hate crime against an eminently qualified African American solely for political gain,” said Nan Aron, head of Alliance for Justice, a civil rights coalition.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), speaking Sunday on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation,” said Ashcroft was “very unfair, very unjust” in describing White as “pro-criminal,” adding that the comments were based on White’s actions in a single case.

Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, speaking on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” promised that the issue of Ashcroft’s behavior in the White nomination would be fully explored during the confirmation process.

None of Ashcroft’s Senate colleagues--including Democrats--has moved publicly to oppose his nomination, and his confirmation is all but assured. But the passionate rhetoric from prominent liberal groups suggests that the battle to confirm Ashcroft will prove the most acrimonious of any of President-elect George W. Bush’s Cabinet nominations.

Ashcroft has declined to give interviews until the confirmation process is completed. But his conservative supporters hail the former Missouri governor as a man of integrity, and Bush’s transition team has put out a packet to defend Ashcroft’s role in the White controversy.

“When people take a careful look at the [White] nomination battle and Sen. Ashcroft’s record, it will be a nonissue,” said Juleanna Glover Weiss, a spokeswoman for the Bush transition team.

Ashcroft himself has said that he helped sink White’s nomination because the judge was soft on crime--characterizations disputed by White and his supporters--not because he is black. Attempts to reach White were unsuccessful.

Liberal activists are criticizing Ashcroft on other matters as well, and asking whether he would bring an overly conservative and ideological dogma to law-enforcement policy. Abortion rights groups, for instance, suggest that Ashcroft--an ardent foe of abortion--might push the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade. They also are concerned that he might not fully enforce federal laws protecting abortion clinics from violence and harassment.

The Drug Reform Coordination Network, a coalition favoring liberalized laws on drug sentencing, medical marijuana and related issues, also is mobilizing opposition to Ashcroft. It characterizes him as “one of the most ideologically extreme drug warriors” in government, a charge his supporters deny.

“I can’t think of a more divisive choice, one that is likely to generate controversy from the outset,” Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said of the Ashcroft nomination.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will review Ashcroft’s nomination, said he wants to explore how the senator’s conservative politics will affect his enforcement of the law.

Leahy said that although Ashcroft has shown a willingness to compromise in the Senate on some issues, “he took some very strong ideological positions that seemed rather inflexible” during his 1998 flirtation with a presidential run.

“I have no problem with George Bush appointing a conservative Republican as attorney general. He has every right to,” Leahy said. “But the attorney general still has an obligation to the whole country to enforce the law for all the country and not to isolate any groups that might have a different ideology.”

Ashcroft’s role in defeating White’s nomination, Leahy said, “is a serious question. That’s obviously going to be an issue.”

But Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, predicted that Ashcroft will be confirmed easily and said it was unfortunate that the senator’s opponents are trying to depict his stance in the White case as racially motivated.

“He’s a man of impeccable integrity,” Hatch said. “He hasn’t got a discriminatory bone in his body.

“There was good reason” for Ashcroft to oppose White, Hatch said Sunday on ABC-TV’s “This Week.” “There were 73 of the top law enforcement people in Missouri who felt that he should not have that position. [It was] a legitimate controversy that literally both sides felt aggrieved on.”

Hatch also pointed out that Ashcroft has voted to confirm other black judicial appointees.

President Clinton, who has struggled to bring more diversity to the federal bench, first nominated White to be a U.S. district judge in St. Louis in 1997. As the first black judge on the Missouri Supreme Court, White had appeared to enjoy broad support.

In introducing White to the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 1998, Rep. William “Bill” Clay (D-Mo.) said he had spoken with Ashcroft, who had received positive feedback from White’s colleagues on the Missouri Supreme Court--all of them Ashcroft appointees.

Ashcroft “said he had canvassed the other six, the ones he appointed, and they all spoke very highly of Ronnie White and suggested that he would make an outstanding federal judge,” Clay told the committee. But that climate of support evaporated. Ashcroft has said it was a fuller examination of White’s record that led him to oppose the judge’s nomination; Ashcroft’s critics allege racism and point to the senator’s then-pending reelection campaign.

By the time the full Senate considered White’s nomination 17 months later, Ashcroft was vigorously attacking the judge’s opinions on the death penalty and drug prosecutions.

While White’s record on the state Supreme Court clearly reflected a relatively liberal reading of the law, White’s supporters charged that Ashcroft purposely misrepresented it. On capital punishment, for example, Ashcroft said White had voted against the death penalty more often than any of his colleagues. White’s supporters said, however, that he had voted to uphold the death penalty in 41 of 59 cases--more frequently than some of Ashcroft’s own nominees.

On drug cases, Ashcroft objected to White’s position as the sole dissenter in a case that unsuccessfully challenged the authority of Missouri police to conduct a drug checkpoint. “If you had persuaded your colleagues,” Ashcroft said, “your opinion would have led to the suppression of over 37 pounds of marijuana as evidence.” Ashcroft predicted that, if confirmed as a federal judge, White would “use his lifetime appointment to push law in a pro-criminal direction.”

Ashcroft also cited opposition to White’s nomination from numerous law enforcement groups in the state, opposition that White’s supporters said Ashcroft had sought out.

Ashcroft’s opposition was effective; the specter of a senator lobbying against a judge from his own state held considerable sway with some senators. A fellow Missouri Republican, Sen. Christopher S. Bond, who lauded White’s pick initially, also opposed it at the eleventh hour, and the nomination was doomed.

Ultimately, the Senate defeated White’s nomination, making him the first judicial nominee in 12 years to be rejected by the full chamber.

Some critics have suggested that the real reason for Ashcroft’s opposition dated back to the role White played in 1992 when, as a state legislator, he helped kill an anti-abortion bill. Others cite the race issue.

Ashcroft’s critics in Missouri accused him of being a racist who had opposed a black man in order to solidify the right-wing, law-and-order vote in his heated reelection campaign against popular Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan.

“I do think the issue of race played an important role in Ashcroft’s decision to oppose Ronnie White,” said Henderson, the civil rights leader.

The accusations of racism became so heated in Missouri in 1999 that Ashcroft published a defense of his record on race issues in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, highlighting his record of support for black causes and rebutting “those who attack my integrity and deepest beliefs.”

But in recent days, civil rights leaders have revisited some of his comments and actions on racial issues that they consider insensitive. In a 1998 interview with a Southern magazine, Ashcroft hailed the publication’s “heritage of defending Southern patriots” from the Civil War such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. Ashcroft also drew criticism for accepting an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, which banned interracial dating until recently, and for refusing to sign on to a federal Civil Rights Commission report in 1988.

The irony is that Ashcroft might not be up for the attorney general’s job were it not for White: Many blacks in Missouri were so enraged by the White controversy that they flocked to the polls in November to help vote Ashcroft out of the Senate, voting instead for Carnahan, who died in a plane crash shortly before the election.

“There’s no question in my mind that he will uphold and enforce the law, the civil rights laws on the books of America,” Bush said. “He has had a very good record of reaching out to people from all walks of life. . . . He’s a man who has a good and decent heart.”

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Times staff writers Stuart Silverstein in Los Angeles and Marlene Cimons contributed to this story.