Bush Sending Consensus Nominees to Senate

Reality is setting in. With time dwindling for President George W. Bush to get his nominees through, he’s looking for compromise. Glen Conrad is just the latest example.

Last Thursday, Bush tapped Conrad, a U.S. district judge in Virginia’s Western District, to fill one of the remaining Virginia vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Conrad is the fifth appellate nominee this year and follows several others announced in breakthrough deals between the White House and the Senate.

Even Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice acknowledges that tapping Conrad from a bipartisan list drawn up by Virginia Sens. Jim Webb (D) and John Warner (R) made sense. “It’s so little time left that you really needed to get someone from the Webb-Warner list,” Levey says.

Also last week, two consensus candidates for the 6th Circuit — Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Helene White and Raymond Kethledge, a corporate defense lawyer at Bush Seyferth Kethledge & Paige in Troy, Mich. — had their confirmation hearings. Virginia Supreme Court Justice G. Steven Agee, another nominee for the 4th Circuit, had his hearing May 1. And Catharina Haynes, a former Baker Botts partner in Dallas, was confirmed April 10 for a 5th Circuit seat.

“The White House is being realistic knowing that it’s the end of the [presidential] term, and they are not going to get their people,” says Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond Law School professor. “Maybe it’s better to get somebody than nobody.”

Republicans, however, are still miffed that their preferred nominees are not getting hearings. Specifically, they point to Chief Judge Robert Conrad of the Western District of North Carolina and Steven Matthews of the Columbia, S.C., firm of Haynesworth Sinkler Boyd — both nominees for the 4th Circuit — and Sidley Austin partner Peter Keisler — a nominee for the D.C. Circuit.

They have kept up the pressure on Democrats by threatening to stall legislation. One of those standoffs led Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to announce on April 15 that the Senate would approve three more circuit court nominees by Memorial Day.

But despite what seems like a thaw in the cold war over nominees, Levey predicts more fights after the Memorial Day recess. “There’s still a lot of tension there,” he says.

Comments

[libhomo]

I find it disturbing that an extremist like Conrad could slip through because the Senate is too focussed on the campaign season to take its advise and consent responsibilities seriously.