Reid will vote against Roberts’ nomination

WASHINGTON – The Senate Democratic leader, pressed by several allies to build as much opposition as possible to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts Jr., said Tuesday he will vote against President Bush’s choice for chief justice. But Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada conceded that Roberts will be confirmed easily next week and “will get plenty of votes” from his fellow Democrats.

Reid’s announcement, made in a closed party caucus luncheon and then a Senate speech, came as Democratic senators are struggling with the first chief justice confirmation in 19 years. Many party activists want them to show as much solidarity against Roberts as they can muster. Not only does Roberts’ conservative philosophy deserve it, they argue, but it also would serve as a warning to Bush that Democrats will fight vigorously if Bush names someone even further to the right to succeed centrist Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Reid said he decided to oppose Roberts because the nominee withheld too much information from senators and because government memos he wrote in the 1980s raised troubling questions about his views, especially on civil rights.

“I was prepared to look past these memos, and chalk them up to the folly of youth,” Reid said in his speech. But in last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing, he said, Roberts adopted “what I consider a disingenuous strategy of suggesting that the views expressed in those memos were not his views.”

Reid, an anti-abortion lawmaker from a state that Bush carried in 2000 and 2004, said he made clear to his colleagues that he was speaking as an individual senator, not as a minority leader trying to steer his caucus.

Roberts’ confirmation is a foregone conclusion in the Senate, where Republicans hold 55 of the 100 seats. The only question is how many Democrats will support him, and what political signal it will send. Party liberals hope no more than 15 Democrats, mostly from states Bush carried, will vote yes. That would result in a 70-30 vote to confirm.