Drop Judge Nominees, Democrat Urges Bush

Hopes that the Senate could rapidly confirm some troubled judicial nominations ran into a roadblock Tuesday when one of the moderate Democrats expected to support a vote by the full Senate on the nominees instead called on President Bush to withdraw the 10 candidates he resubmitted last month.

The move by Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), a newcomer to the Senate, surprised both sides in the rancorous debate and came just hours after the Senate Judiciary Committee held a second testy hearing for one of those nominees -- Idaho attorney William G. Myers III, whom Bush has tapped for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

In a letter to Bush, Salazar said that withdrawing those nominations -- all of which had failed to win confirmation last year -- “would be a recognition that the Congress and the president must work on those matters where we can find common purpose,” including “historic deficits, healthcare, transportation and the war on terrorism.”

White House spokeswoman Erin Healy responded by noting that “the president has a constitutional responsibility to nominate individuals to the federal bench, and the Senate has a constitutional obligation to provide that up-or-down vote.”

Salazar’s initiative surprised even people who are intensely involved in the judicial nomination issue. As Colorado’s attorney general, he signed a letter of support for Myers last year, as did a dozen other state attorney generals. After he was elected to the Senate, however, he told a Colorado newspaper that he would reevaluate the issue from his new perspective.

Last July, Senate Democrats blocked the nomination of Myers, a longtime lobbyist for mining and cattle interests, who is opposed by environmental, Native American, civil rights and women’s groups. The Republicans needed 60 votes to end debate and bring Myers’ nomination to the floor, a process known as cloture, but mustered just 53 -- the chamber’s 51 Republicans and two of the Democrats.

At the end of Tuesday’s hearing, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the Judiciary Committee chairman, said he had 58 votes for cloture -- all of the Senate’s 55 Republicans, plus three Democrats -- bringing Myers within “hailing distance” of getting a confirmation vote by the full Senate. Confirmation requires a simple majority of 51 senators.

The Democrats, Specter said, were Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who had voted for cloture last year, and Salazar.

Specter had no immediate comment on Salazar’s action.

At the hearing, Specter said that both parties had ratcheted up the contentiousness of the confirmation process in recent years and that he hoped to change that.

“I sense a lot of concern among Democrats and Republicans,” he said, “but no one wants to back down.”

As for Myers, the Interior Department’s top lawyer for two years, Specter noted that “no one comes to this hearing room perfect.” He said that after reviewing Myers’ record, “I feel comfortable supporting you. I feel you’re fit to be on the 9th Circuit.”

Myers tried to convince doubting Democratic senators -- who had charged that he was an ideologue not suited for the bench -- that he could be a fair jurist.

“As a lawyer, I was an advocate of my clients,” Myers said. “If I was to be confirmed, I would be an advocate for the law.”

All the Democrats on the committee voted against Myers last year, and there was no sign of any change Tuesday.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said that during his 31 years in office, Myers was “the most anti-environmental nominee sent to the Senate.”

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he had reviewed Myers’ record for a second time and was struck once again “by your extremism on environmental and land issues.... Your record screams passionate activist. It doesn’t so much as whisper impartial judge.”

Schumer also said that as the first of the resubmitted nominees to come before the committee, Myers had become “part of a real constitutional struggle between the branches of government” and that there would be a continuing battle stemming from “a sincere difference in viewpoints about judicial philosophy.”

As Myers listened calmly, Schumer said Bush’s decision to renominate him and the others “is a thumb in the eye of bipartisanship.”

These candidates “were not rejected casually,” Schumer said. “They were rejected because, after full and fair consideration of their records, they were found to be extreme.”

In a related development Tuesday, there were further signs that the two parties might be headed for a confrontation over the so-called nuclear option -- a move by the Republicans to seek a ruling that 51 votes would be needed to end debate on judicial nominees.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said he hoped both sides would act with restraint. But he also said, “I do think we saw a radical change in the last Congress that can’t be tolerated by the American people [and] shouldn’t be tolerated by this institution” -- referring to Democrats blocking Bush’s nominees.

The Democrats have challenged the radical change characterization, saying that during the Clinton administration Republicans blocked numerous judicial nominees by other means.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) noted that Democrats had approved 204 of Bush’s judicial nominees and blocked 10.

“I don’t expect Myers’ vote is going to be any different” this time around, Reid said.

Asked if he expected a filibuster, Reid said, “On the judges that have been brought forward previously, we’re going to treat them just as we have in the past.”

Times staff writer Maura Reynolds contributed to this report.