Senate Panel Splits 10-8 for Ashcroft

A bitterly divided Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed John Ashcroft for attorney general Tuesday on a 10-8 vote, sending his nomination to the full Senate for a vote as early as today in the first big political test of the Bush administration.

Although Republicans say they remain confident of securing the 51 votes needed to confirm Ashcroft as the nation’s top law enforcement official, Democrats vowed to fight, and the debate is sure to expose the deep rifts between the parties on such hotly contested issues as abortion, civil and gay rights; gun control; racial profiling; and affirmative action.

A mini-version of the debate played out Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans portrayed Democrats as overly partisan and unfair to the former Missouri senator, while Democrats sought to raise doubts about Ashcroft’s credibility and ensure that he would be held accountable for his actions.

The vote, with only one Democrat endorsing the nomination, was the closest in memory for a would-be attorney general, and Ashcroft’s opponents said that it should send a strong signal to the Bush White House about the divisive effect Ashcroft’s nomination has had on the nation.

Controversy has raged around the nomination since President Bush named Ashcroft on Dec. 22. Opponents have flooded Senate offices with hundreds of thousands of letters, e-mail messages and phone calls, while religious groups have mounted a counteroffensive portraying Ashcroft--the devout son of a Pentecostal minister--as a victim of “religious profiling.”

Several Republicans said Tuesday that they were stung by the depth of opposition, though it was not surprising after five weeks of vigorous debate over Ashcroft’s conservative views.

“I was obviously disappointed that the Democrats did not see fit to give Sen. Ashcroft the benefit of the doubt,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said after the vote.

Of the committee’s nine Democrats, only Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin voted for Ashcroft. And he was deeply troubled by “serious problems” with Ashcroft’s record. He cited as troubling Ashcroft’s treatment of judicial and political nominees, his comments in support of a neo-Confederacy magazine and his acceptance of an honorary degree from Bob Jones University at a time when the school banned interracial dating.

Ultimately, however, Feingold said he would vote for Ashcroft because he believes a president should have broad discretion to choose his top advisors.

Confirmation ‘Is Asking Too Much’

Other senators, however, including the chamber’s top Democrat, said their respect for that principle was outweighed by their concerns about Ashcroft.

“How can John Ashcroft enforce laws he has spent his entire public career fighting?” Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) asked Tuesday in announcing his opposition. “John Ashcroft spent six years in the Senate mocking bipartisanship. To require that we confirm him now as proof of our bipartisanship and good faith is asking too much.”

The nine Republicans on the committee, rallying in defense of Ashcroft, said Democrats were burying the nominee in what Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) called “an avalanche of distortions.”

Republicans said that critics should take Ashcroft at his word when he promises to uphold the law as the nation’s chief law enforcement official, regardless of his strong personal beliefs. During two days of testimony last month, Ashcroft described Roe vs. Wade as the “settled law of the land” on abortion, pledged to respect gun prohibitions put in place by Congress and vowed not to seek changes in these and other policies despite his past opposition.

Grassley charged that the effort by congressional Democrats and liberal interest groups to depict Ashcroft as a rabid partisan is “not right, it’s not moral and it’s not ethical.” And Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said it does “a grave disservice to an honorable man.”

But one by one, Democrats laid out their concerns about what Ashcroft has said and done in a quarter-century in public service in Missouri and Washington--and what he might do as attorney general.

Their dominant theme was that Ashcroft cannot be trusted to enforce the laws for all Americans in light of what Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) called his “remarkable revisionist remaking of his record” during his testimony last month.

Sen. Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin, one of several Democratic fence-sitters, said that he would oppose Ashcroft because he found his views to be “far out of the mainstream of American life.”

“I believe he will not be the people’s lawyer. I believe that he will push and prod the law to conform to his own strongly held beliefs,” Kohl said.

Ashcroft’s opponents went into the committee hearing hoping for a 9-9 tie. Under new rules instituted just weeks ago, a tie would no longer block the nomination from moving to the full Senate. But opponents said it would have been a political disaster for Bush in the first big struggle of his presidency.

“A 9-9 vote would be Richter scale,” said Kate Michelman, the head of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, as she and other activists waited in a standing-room-only hearing room before the vote was announced.

With Feingold not even in attendance for several hours, the outcome remained in some doubt. When he did appear, he ticked off a long list of concerns about Ashcroft, growing most enraged about Ashcroft’s derailment of the 1999 federal judicial nomination of Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White.

Ashcroft accused White at the time of being “pro-criminal,” infuriating minority groups who saw the attack on the African American judge as racially motivated.

Feingold said that Ashcroft misled the Senate about White. “There was no excuse for this behavior, and it represents for me an extremely sorry chapter in Sen. Ashcroft’s public record.”

Senate Owes ‘Deference’ to Bush

Nonetheless, Feingold said he wanted to extend an “olive branch” to the Republicans. “The Senate owes the president substantial deference in the selection of the Cabinet,” he said.

Senior senators on both sides of the aisle said they could not remember a closer committee vote on an attorney general nominee. Even Edwin Meese III, whose selection by President Reagan sparked a major battle, escaped the committee in 1985 with a 12-6 vote in his favor.

“This is a very strong showing,” said Nan Aron, head of the Alliance for Justice, a civil rights group opposed to Ashcroft. “This says loud and clear that the White House cannot send ultraconservative nominees without a fight, and it says that the Senate will be watching Mr. Ashcroft very closely to hold him to his word.”

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Times staff writer Nick Anderson contributed to this story.