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July 24, 2002 8:45 a.m. One Vote Short The GOP searches for a Democrat to vote for Priscilla Owen.

n the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans are going down the list — of Democrats. Who might vote to approve Priscilla Owen, President Bush's nominee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals? All the liberal interest groups — People for the American Way, Alliance for Justice, NARAL, you name them — have lined up against Owen, charging that she is, in the words of a People for the American Way report, "a judicial activist with a disturbing tendency to try to rewrite or disregard the law in order to achieve particular results." And all are demanding that the nomination be killed in committee.

Owen defended herself at a packed confirmation hearing Tuesday. "I truly believe that the picture that some special interest groups have painted of me is wrong," she said, "and I very much want the opportunity to try to set the record straight." She got that opportunity, and both Republicans in the Senate and in the White House believe she used it well — "spectacularly well," according to one.

But every GOP senator was already solidly behind Owen when the hearing began. The real question is: Did she win the vote of any Democrats? The committee is split between ten Democrats and nine Republicans. If just one Democrat votes for her, she'll be approved. But that's the problem.

Go down the list. Committee chairman Patrick Leahy? Forget it. Teddy Kennedy? No way. Charles Schumer? No. Dick Durbin? No. Maria Cantwell? No.

That's five. The rest are Russ Feingold, Herb Kohl, John Edwards, Dianne Feinstein, and Joe Biden. Might one of them vote for Owen?

Feingold has bucked his party occasionally, but there's no good reason to think he'll do it now. He's probably a no. Kohl has no ax to grind, but is unlikely to step up and be the lone Democrat to vote for Owen, so he's probably a no, too. Edwards took a lot of heat for voting to kill the Charles Pickering nomination, so it's hard to say whether he is ready to do it again. But he wants to be president, and a no vote would be popular with the national Democratic base.

That leaves two, Feinstein and Biden. Feinstein is friends with Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Owen's top Senate supporter. That will certainly work in Owen's favor. On the other hand, Feinstein has gone as far as any senator in saying that she will apply an abortion litmus test, although she doesn't use that phrase, for appeals-court nominees. The most controversial issues about Owen, from the Democratic/interest-group point of view, are her decisions on a Texas abortion parental-notification law. Given that, it seems highly unlikely that Feinstein will vote for Owen.

Finally, there is Biden. The former chairman of the committee can be unpredictable and vote against his colleagues, as he did in the nomination of Judge Brooks Smith. But there is word that he declined to meet with Owen — a discouraging sign for Republicans — and he is unlikely to go on a one-man crusade in her favor.

So that's it — ten Democrats and not a lot of hope. "I don't think we have any Democrats yet," says one GOP aide. "We've got to work them."

Meanwhile, as the working begins, a behind-the-scenes fight between the White House and Leahy appears to be escalating. In late June, Leahy met with White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to discuss the pace of confirmations for the administration's appeals court nominees. Leahy later wrote a letter to the president defending the Democrats' record, and yesterday, the White House shot back.

"Respectfully, the pace of holding hearings and confirming circuit court nominees is harming the federal court system," Gonzales wrote:

Your letter compares the committee's record to that of the Senate in the past. But the Senate has confirmed only 11 of 32 circuit court nominees, which is a 34 percent rate. In the first two years of the Clinton administration, by contrast, 22 circuit nominees were submitted and 19 circuit nominees confirmed — a rate of 86 percent. In the first two years of the George H.W. Bush administration, the record was 22 of 23 (96 percent); in the Reagan administration, 19 of 20 (95 percent). Focusing on these numbers, one could conclude that the Senate currently is well behind the pace of the Senate in the past, particularly with respect to circuit court nominees.

It's likely that you'll hear more about that 34-percent confirmation rate in coming weeks as Republicans continue their efforts to pressure Leahy to do more. But in the end, Republicans keep coming back to the only real way to get the job done, which is to win back the Senate in November. "If we don't get the Senate back, there will be no judges," says one frustrated Republican. "We're going to go years without them. And what are we going to do if we get a Supreme Court vacancy?"