Judge Terms Ashcroft’s Accusations ‘Baseless’

Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie L. White charged Atty. Gen.-designate John Ashcroft on Thursday with torpedoing his elevation to the federal bench, saying in emotional testimony that the nominee made “baseless misrepresentations” about his judicial record.

“The fact is that John Ashcroft seriously distorted my record,” testified White, who has emerged as Ashcroft’s chief accuser at an increasingly nasty confirmation hearing.

“The question for the Senate is whether these misrepresentations are consistent with the fair play and justice you all would require of the U.S. attorney general,” White said.

Ashcroft’s Democratic opponents seized on White’s long-awaited remarks, pointing to them as evidence that Ashcroft was at best a crass political opportunist and at worst racially biased in his derailment of a well-qualified black judge’s nomination. Ashcroft, as a U.S. senator, led a successful fight in 1999 to kill White’s nomination as a federal judge because he charged that his fellow Missourian’s appellate record showed him to be pro-crime.

“We have been asked by President-elect Bush to look into the hearts of his nominees,” said Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). Ashcroft’s unfounded attacks on a man who overcame racism and poverty in St. Louis to become a judge, Durbin said, “to me is a reflection on the heart of the man who wants to be our attorney general.”

Republicans countered that the Democrats are now using the same sorts of smears and distortions that they are alleging to “tar” Ashcroft. He had legitimate concerns about whether White was soft on crime and opposed to the death penalty, they maintained.

Among those speaking for Ashcroft was Collene Thompson Campbell, who just completed a second term as mayor of San Juan Capistrano.

Campbell, whose son, Scott, was murdered in 1982 during a robbery and whose brother, racing promoter Mickey Thompson, and his wife, Trudy, were fatally shot in 1988, spoke on behalf of several crime victims organizations.

She described her family’s experience during the trial of those accused in her son’s death as “inhumane, cruel and barbaric” because they were excluded from the proceedings.

Of Ashcroft she said: “We strongly and unequivocally support the confirmation. . . . Throughout his long career, he has worked to reduce the devastation which victims are forced to endure. . . . He stands for balancing the rights of the accused with the rights of the victims and the law-abiding.”

GOP leaders said they remain confident that Ashcroft will be confirmed as attorney general, and they warned Democrats not to try to block a vote through a filibuster on the Senate floor. With testimony scheduled to end today, a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected early next week, with the nomination then going to the full Senate.

“I think John Ashcroft’s come out of this just fine,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).

The real question, some observers said, is not whether Ashcroft will be confirmed but by how large a margin and whether he can lure a substantial number of Democratic votes. The Senate is split, 50 to 50, between the parties.

“He clearly needs a substantial majority [of the 100 senators] to have the flexibility an attorney general needs . . . ,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. “An attorney general makes dozens and dozens of controversial calls and, if he has the kind of narrow base that, say, [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas had--just 52 votes--then that’s the harbinger of a very difficult tenure for him.”

Energy Nominee Clears Committee

Other Bush nominees saw smoother sailing Thursday:

* Spencer Abraham, Bush’s choice to be Energy secretary, won endorsement from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which agreed without dissent to pass his nomination on to the full Senate.

Abraham, while avoiding many specifics, stressed Bush’s pledge to increase domestic energy production “in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Energy will be a cornerstone of the new administration’s economic policy, the former Michigan senator said, and his department’s proposals to exploit more domestic oil and natural gas resources will be worked out in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.

“Every day our economy grows more dependent on energy,” Abraham said. “Clearly, our continued economic prosperity is directly linked to assuring adequate supplies of reasonably priced energy . . . , [but] we have increased our dependence on imported oil to our highest level ever.”

* Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin, Bush’s Health and Human Services secretary-designate, faced little opposition in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who will be committee chairman after Bush is inaugurated Saturday, predicted that Thompson would win unanimous approval in the committee and probably in the full Senate.

Unlike some of the more contentious hearings this week, Thompson’s was less about his record as a four-term governor of Wisconsin than it was about the direction of the incoming administration’s policies. The committee asked the nominee questions about Bush’s plans on Medicare reform and coverage for the uninsured.

Thompson told the senators that, despite hostility among lawmakers, Bush would send to Capitol Hill proposed legislation for his “helping hand” program: a federal block grant for states to use for a prescription drug benefit for the low-income elderly. Bush campaigned on the proposal but, according to Thompson, would be willing to abandon it if Congress comes up with larger Medicare reform legislation.

* And California native Ann M. Veneman, at her confirmation hearing for the post of secretary of Agriculture, heard pleas from senators to do more to support small farmers.

Veneman said that she backed the idea of government financial aid to farmers. Congress voted to phase out such aid in a 1996 law, but many lawmakers now see that effort as a failure. Record-low crop prices have prompted Congress to pass emergency farm subsidies in each of the last three years.

Veneman also pledged to fight to expand overseas markets for U.S. farmers. However, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) criticized her role in negotiating a global trade pact in the early 1990s, when she was the Agriculture Department’s No. 2 official. Conrad said that the pact allowed the European Union to retain its high level of export subsidies and win a large share of the world agriculture market.

Ashcroft’s hearing was dominated by White. Though soft-spoken, his testimony carried an emotional punch that appeared to strike both Democrats and Republicans as he spoke of overcoming the racism and poverty of his childhood in St. Louis.

White was born to teenage parents and grew up in a segregated neighborhood, living in an unfinished basement with no kitchen or bathroom, he testified. He told of being bused to a grade school in south St. Louis, where kids threw food at him and other black children and told them to “go back where we came from.”

“This racism only strengthened my determination. I was not going to let the color of my skin--or the ignorance and hatefulness of others--hold me back,” he said.

White went on to become a state legislator and a judge. The high point of his career, he said, came when President Clinton nominated him in 1997 for a lifetime seat on the federal bench in Missouri.

Criticism Unexpected

White said that he was blindsided by Ashcroft’s criticism of him on the Senate floor after the appointment. Ashcroft accused him of being “pro-criminal” and having “a tremendous bent toward criminal activity.”

“I deeply resent those baseless misrepresentations. In fact--and I want to say this as clearly as I can--my record belies these accusations,” he said. Democrats also pointed to statistics showing that some of Ashcroft’s own judicial nominees had opposed the death penalty more frequently than White.

In his testimony earlier in the week, Ashcroft modified his policy positions on some issues such as access to abortion, but he defended his treatment of White. He said that he “acted properly” in moving to reject White’s nomination in concurrence with the reservation voiced by some--but not all--of Missouri’s leading law enforcement groups.

Republicans voiced particular objections Thursday to White’s lone dissenting vote in a 1991 murder case in which a gunman killed three sheriff’s deputies and a sheriff’s wife. White believed that the man deserved a new trial because his lawyers had failed him.

Democrats Offer Some Motives

In attacking Ashcroft’s treatment of White, Democrats offered a wide range of possible motives.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) questioned whether Ashcroft held black nominees to a different standard than whites, demonstrating “real insensitivity to our long and tortured history of racial relations.”

But his Democratic colleague, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, questioned whether Ashcroft was trying to get back at White for helping kill an abortion-related bill while White was in the state Legislature and Ashcroft was governor.

Still other Democrats suggested that Ashcroft’s attack on White was motivated by Ashcroft’s tight reelection race in 2000 against the late Gov. Mel Carnahan and his desire to capitalize politically on the death penalty issue.

Despite his own reservations, Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) said that he was leaning toward voting for Ashcroft because the nominee had pledged to enforce laws against abortion clinic violence and “is a man of his word.”

But Gloria Feldt, head of Planned Parenthood’s national arm, answered: “That’s what frightens me. He has said he will stop at nothing until he has a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. And I take him at his word.”

Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Aaron Zitner contributed to this story.