Background:The Ashcroft Controversies
A Look at the Key Issues Surrounding George W. Bush's Attorney General-Designate
President-elect George W. Bush's nominee for attorney general, former Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri faces a tough confirmation hearing before the Senate this week.
And while Senate Republicans are predicting their one-time colleague will be confirmed, the hearings promise to become rancorous. In a career in public life during which he also served as both attorney general and governor of Missouri, Ashcroft has been involved in a number of controversial matters — enough so that a 200-member coalition of Democratic-leaning interest groups announced their opposition to his appointment last Tuesday.
Here is an overview of important issues that have become the center of attention as Ashcroft's hearings are set to begin.
Judgeships
Ronnie White's isn't the only nomination for a federal judgeship that experienced controversy involving Ashcroft, who waged well-publicized battles against other White House nominees.
In June 1995, a Jefferson City attorney who once sharply questioned Ashcroft, then state attorney general, in a court-ordered deposition went public with assertions that Ashcroft was nursing a decade-old grudge by opposing his nomination to the federal bench.
Attorney Alex Bartlett was among six candidates chosen by an independent commission in 1993 for President Clinton to consider for two court vacancies in Missouri.
Bartlett said he was told by Clinton administration officials that Ashcroft was raising questions that centered on the old lawsuit. The case, which Ashcroft brought as Missouri's attorney general, charged Inland Oil with consumer fraud over a gasoline additive. Bartlett was one of the attorneys for Inland Oil.
Bartlett said the problem revolved around a deposition taken of Ashcroft and other officials in the state attorney general's office in 1983, he said. Ashcroft objected to the deposition, but a court ordered that it be taken. At the deposition, Bartlett said Ashcroft declined to answer some questions and would not produce some documents related to the case. As those issues were being hashed out, the case was settled.
An Ashcroft spokesman declined at the time to comment directly on Bartlett's allegations, but said Ashcroft was demanding that nominees "possess the highest standards of character and ethics."
Noting that the Inland incident happened a decade before his nomination, Bartlett said: "It may burn some bridges, but I just felt something needed to be said."
Concealed Guns
Ashcroft is a supporter of allowing people to carry concealed guns. In 1999, Ashcroft lent his voice to radio ads endorsing an unsuccessful referendum that would have let Missourians apply to county sheriffs for permits to carry concealed guns. The campaign was heavily backed by the National Rifle Association.
Opposition to the initiative was funded largely by Handgun Control Inc., a lobby group founded by President Reagan's former press secretary Jim Brady and his wife, Sarah.
During last year's election, gun-control advocates ran televisions ads against Ashcroft featuring the Bradys. However, Ashcroft's stance on concealed guns has changed over time. As governor, Ashcroft expressed "grave concerns" in 1992 about then-pending state legislation allowing Missourians to pack hidden handguns.
Abortion Rights
Ashcroft has said he is opposed to abortion in all cases except those which would endanger the life of the mother. He is opposed to abortion in cases of incest or rape.
Abortion-rights proponents say Ashcroft would work to limit or overturn a woman's right to choose.
"John Ashcroft … will roll back decades of legal advances and public policy gains for women and their families," the National Women's Law Center said in a statement released Tuesday.
Also at issue, say groups opposed to the nomination, is the willingness of Ashcroft and those working under him at the Justice Department to prosecute people accused of violent crimes against doctors performing or providing access to abortions.
Bob Jones University
In May, 1999, Ashcroft traveled to Bob Jones University in South Carolina to receive an honorary degree.
The Christian school in Greenville, S.C., has a segregationist history and until recently banned interracial dating and marriage. It lost its tax-exempt status in the 1970s because of racial discrimination but was a popular stop for many GOP candidates seeking conservative support.
Ashcroft said despite accepting an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, he rejected the college's anti-Catholic beliefs and its policy against interracial dating. He said he didn't have prior knowledge that the school held those positions.
While Democrats said Ashcroft used poor judgment in speaking at the school, they stopped short of accusing the senator of being a bigot. He has come under criticism from liberal organizations who say his conservative ideology might interfere with the attorney general's duties to enforce civil rights and other federal programs.
The Confederacy
In the October 1998 edition of Southern Partisan, a South Carolina magazine, Ashcroft said "traditionalists must do more" to defend Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
An Ashcroft spokesman defended the remarks, noting that Lee, for example, should not be disrespected as an American despite his leading role in the Confederate cause.
The Missouri Citizen Education Fund, a coalition of several St. Louis-area groups, circulated a petition calling for Ashcroft to publicly retract his magazine-interview praise for the Confederate leaders. The group accused Ashcroft of pandering to racist elements in society.
To discount the racism accusations, Republicans forwarded a copy of a 1991 letter from the Mound City Bar Association, a black lawyers group, that praised Ashcroft's decision as Missouri governor to appoint a black woman to a state judgeship.
Voting Rights
As governor of Missouri, Ashcroft twice vetoed legislation intended to allow the League of Women Voters to register new voters in St. Louis, a Democratic-leaning city.
The bills would have implemented the same voter-registration procedures already used in the more heavily Republican areas of the St. Louis suburbs.
Ashcroft cited concerns over voter fraud as his rationale for nixing the legislation. But observers claimed that was not the case.
"There is no evidence that the fraud feared by the Election Board would take place if outside groups were permitted to sign up voters," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said in a July 1989 editorial. "Accordingly, the bill ought to become law."
Transportation
A 1993 book published by Ashcroft's office at the end of his two terms as governor praised passage of a highway program as one of his top accomplishments. But the plan is now considered a financial flop.
Ashcroft's book says of the plan, in part: "In February 1992, after leading an extensive legislative campaign, Governor Ashcroft signed into law legislation hailed as the most important economic development bill of the decade."
The 1992 plan was embraced by the Republican governor and a bipartisan majority of lawmakers. It boosted the state gasoline tax by 6 cents on the dollar and made some big promises: building four-lane highways to all Missouri cities with 5,000 or more residents; creation of 40,000 new jobs; and "roads twice as safe for travel."
But the then-state auditor of Ashcroft's own political party, along with independent analysts, have declared the 1992 plan a financial failure as a blueprint for road building. They concluded that the plan started out with $1.3 billion more in projects than money, and that the plan's projections didn't account for inflation or growth in the scope of projects.
Ashcroft sidestepped responsibility, saying he relied on state transportation officials — part of his administration — to crunch the numbers and make them work. Any problems with the math came in the planning stage, he said, not from his office.
All this has left the Legislature and state officials struggling for ways to win voter approval of increased revenues for road building. |
