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than two weeks after killing the nomination of Charles Pickering
to a place on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Democrats on the
Senate Judiciary Committee are hinting that another of President
Bush's nominees might soon be in trouble. This time the target is
Priscilla Owen, a justice on the Texas supreme court who, like Pickering,
was selected to sit on the Fifth Circuit. Shortly after her nomination
last May, liberal interest groups like the National Abortion Rights
Action League, People for the American Way, and the Alliance for
Justice, citing Owen's decisions on abortion and workers' rights,
denounced her as part of the "far-right wing" on the Texas
court.
Now, however,
Democrats are raising another objection to Owen: her "connections"
to Enron. In Texas, justices are elected to the state supreme court,
and Owen, who was first elected in 1994, has reportedly received
a total of $8,600 in campaign contributions from Enron-related sources.
A public-interest group known as Texans for Public Justice has suggested
that the contributions may have influenced a decision Owen made
which had the effect of saving Enron about $250,000 in corporate
income taxes. Based on that, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman
Patrick Leahy told Reuters last week that he had urged the White
House to study Owen's ties to Enron. "I have heard from a lot
of Republicans who are concerned about her Enron connections,"
Leahy said. "I mentioned...to the White House it may want to
look into it."
It is not clear
how vigorously committee Democrats will pursue the Enron connection
for Owen. The issue has the potential to backfire, because a leader
in the opposition to Bush nominees, New York's Charles Schumer,
accepted more than twice as much money — $21,933, according
to the Center for Responsive Politics — as did Owen. In the
end, it is possible that Democrats, if they are unable to effectively
use Enron against Owen, will cite it as just one of an array of
"questions" that make her unsuited for the bench.
White House
officials are said to be well aware of the threat to Owen. At the
White House last Friday, representatives of the counsel's office
met with Hill Republicans and members of conservative interest groups
in a session that analyzed the defeat of the Pickering nomination
and considered what actions to take to defend administration nominees
who face Democratic opposition in the future. Owen was one of those
discussed, although no concrete plans were made about actions to
take on her behalf.
In the end,
however, Republicans may be up against an intractable opposition
to Owen that has very little to do with the judge herself. At least
for now, it appears that some Democrats on the committee want to
kill all the president's nominees to the Fifth Circuit. In
a little-noticed statement during the hearing in which the Pickering
nomination was voted down, Wisconsin senator Russell Feingold suggested
that Democrats have the right to stop any Fifth Circuit nominee
they choose. "During the last six years of the Clinton administration,"
Feingold said,
this committee
did not report out a single judge to the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals. Not a single one. President Clinton nominated three well-qualified
lawyers to the court of appeals. None of these nominees even got
a hearing before this committee....So there's a history here,
and I think it means that the administration has a special burden
to consult in a bipartisan way on nominees for this circuit. Otherwise,
we would simply be rewarding the obstructionism that the president's
party engaged in over the last six years by allowing him to fill
with his choices seats that his party held open for years, even
when qualified nominees were advanced by President Clinton.
It appears
that Feingold did not have his facts completely straight —
while the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee indeed took
no action on three Clinton nominees to the circuit, it also confirmed
one Clinton nominee in September 1995. But Feingold's meaning was
plain: The White House can forget about confirming any more judges
to the Fifth Circuit (Democrats confirmed one Bush nominee, Edith
Brown Clement, last November). If Republicans want to avoid an ongoing
bloodbath of nominees to the Fifth Circuit, Feingold said, they
can do so only by "urging the administration to work with us
to address some of the injustices suffered by so many Clinton nominees."
Feingold did
not say what that might involve. But his words make very clear that
Republicans can expect serious Democratic opposition to Owen —
an opposition that transcends any qualms about Enron.
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