The Next Target
Democrats zero in on another Bush judge.

March 25, 2002 1:15 p.m.

ess 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.