A Voting Issue
Filibustering judges has only hurt Democrats.
BY MANUEL MIRANDA
Monday, August 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Just one week before the 2002 midterms, the president invited leaders in the fight for his judicial nominees to the White House to a lunch reception. A Clinton administration adviser who'd gotten wind of the event and thought it a waste of time had been overheard saying, "What does that rate as an issue with American voters--somewhere below campaign-finance reform?"
The answer, in fact, is that the issue of the judicial nominees mattered--and matters--a lot; you might even say it explains the current Republican margin in the Senate. Allow me to explain why.
Back in 2002, the conventional Beltway wisdom was that the American public simply did not take notice of a president's judicial nominees (except, of course, to the Supreme Court). As a result, Senate Democrats calculated that they could stall several nominees endlessly without having to pay a political price.
Republicans, however, saw it differently. After Democrats used scurrilous allegations to block federal District Judge Charles Pickering of Mississippi from the appellate bench in March 2002, Republicans noticed something new in their polls tracking the Democrats' "negatives": obstruction of judges.
By November of that year, Democrats had blocked Judge Pickering for being insensitive to civil rights; Texas Justice Priscilla Owen for being unfriendly to abortion rights; Judge Dennis Shedd of South Carolina for being unfriendly to trial lawyers; and Miguel Estrada for being, well, Hispanic--as would later become evident from Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's memos.
In the meantime, the president was doing more to put the spotlight on Democratic obstructionism. In May 2002, he spoke to his supporters on judicial confirmations in an auditorium in the Eisenhower Building, next door to the executive mansion. A few months later it was in the East Room. (By April 2003, it would be getting Rose Garden-level attention.) When the president hit the stump, it was the issue of "blocked judicial nominees" that received the most sustained applause.
That November, something new happened. In three states, Missouri, Minnesota, and Georgia, single-issue, pro-life voters came out to vote in unusually large numbers in a mid-term election. Their margin was, in fact, larger than the Republican margin of victory in all three states.
In an election framed around national security and lower taxes, only one issue moved these marginal voters to the polls: judges.
Meanwhile in Texas, John Cornyn's run against Ron Kirk, the popular mayor of Dallas, was on the ropes, his funds depleted. But in mid-September, Senate Democrats voted to block Justice Owen, whom Texans had elected to their high court with 83% of the vote. Mr. Kirk defended Senate Democrats--and Mr. Cornyn's fund-raising boomed. Mr. Cornyn went on to win the race easily.
In Colorado, Republican incumbent Wayne Allard decided he would spend resources reaching out to Hispanics. When Democrats refused to move Mr. Estrada, Mr. Allard used it as an issue against Democrats, increasing his Hispanic vote by over 20%. Mr. Allard won in a squeaker.
Then came 2003 and 2004, and another 10 judicial filibusters. Last November, Republican Senate candidates swept the South, ousted Tom Daschle, and won by bringing out "moral-issues" voters, all concerned by the matter of judges.
Of course, no Democrat would make the mistake of thinking that a Supreme Court nomination is an issue that will fly below the radar screen. But the history of the past few years ought to give Senate Democrats pause to think before picking an ideological fight over John Roberts' nomination.
Mr. Miranda, former counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, is founder and chairman of the Third Branch Conference, a coalition of grassroots organizations following judicial issues. His column appears on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. |
