GOP senators push to vote on controversial nominee

WASHINGTON — Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, led by Chairman Orrin Hatch, on Thursday pushed through to the Senate floor a once-rejected judicial nominee whom Democrats paint as racist.

Hatch, R-Utah, said the 10-9 party-line vote won was "to correct the injustice done last year" to 5th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Charles W. Pickering. Then, Democrats — who had the majority — rejected him, also on a 10-9 vote. When Republicans won back the majority after elections last year, President Bush renominated Pickering.

"The people who know him best support him," said Hatch, who had invited into the audience black civil rights leaders and Democrats from Mississippi who support Pickering to watch the rancorous, three-hour debate.

But Democrats invited leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP, who say Pickering hurts civil rights, to also sit there. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., even said Pickering's renomination "is a thumb in the eye of the black community."

For example, Schumer said, "He improperly intervened with the Justice Department to get a lighter sentence for a man convicted of burning a cross on an interracial family's lawn."

Hatch and Republicans, however, said Pickering was seeking to ensure the three men guilty of the crime received roughly equal punishment. Two who had accepted a plea bargain faced no jail time, but the third who was convicted in a trial faced 7 1/2 years under federal guidelines. They say Pickering tried to reduce it to two years.

Hatch also said it was "ludicrous" to accuse Pickering of racism because he testified against the Grand Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in a 1967 murder case, when such action could threaten his family. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., told Democrats, "Do you have any idea what courage that took? Shame on you."

But Hillary Shelton, director of the Washington Bureau of the NAACP, wrote to the committee saying that Pickering merely "testified under subpoena and limited his testimony to saying the Klan leader had a bad reputation and attended Sunday School."

Republicans fumed at the racism allegations.

"There is nothing worse you can say about a southern white person than he is a racist," Graham said. "We live with that all the time." He added such allegations have left Pickering and his family "under siege for the past two years. . . . It's been hell."

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said the allegations of racism were "loathsome character assassination" and "race-baiting, political trash talk."