Crapo criticizes judicial opposition
BOISE – Sen. Mike Crapo and other GOP leaders say President Bush’s move to revive the stalled nominations of two Idaho judges to the federal bench could prompt an election-year backlash against Senate Democrats who have blocked the judges’ confirmations.
“There has been this obstruction from the Democrats without justification for too long,” Crapo, R-Idaho, said on Thursday. “That obstruction is starting to have them pay a political price in advance of the election.”
On Wednesday, Bush renominated Boise attorney William Gerry Myers III and Idaho District Judge Norman Randy Smith to fill two vacant seats on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before their nominations expired.
The 28-judge panel oversees nine Western states, 75 percent of the nation’s Indian reservations and millions of acres of public land.
Myers is a former top lawyer at the Interior Department and lobbyist for mining and cattle interests. Democrats have blocked his nomination since 2003, railing against what they call his anti-environment agenda and an acrimonious past with American Indians.
Republicans have failed for three years to bring his confirmation to a vote to the Senate floor, narrowly falling shy of the 60 votes needed to scuttle the filibuster.
In a confirmation hearing last year, Myers apologized for some sharp comments, like a past barb where he complained of environmental groups “mountain biking to the courthouse as never before, bent on stopping human activity wherever it may promote health, safety and welfare.”
Nan Aron, president of the liberal judicial watchdog Alliance For Justice, said Bush’s persistence in pressing the Myers nomination is a political ploy aimed at rousing the Republican base for November’s elections.
She said a far-ranging coalition of environmentalists, American Indian groups and moderate jurists has amply demonstrated Myers’s pro-industry biases.
“Senator Crapo is dreaming if he thinks William Myers is close to being confirmed,” Aron said. “To renominate Myers, who the administration well knows is outside the mainstream, is simply an effort to gin up the base.”
Crapo disagreed, saying the Senate Judiciary Committee will promptly launch hearings for Myers, Smith and three other judges whose nominations were revived by Bush on Wednesday.
If Democrats can successfully thwart a floor vote on Myers, Crapo said he would push the GOP leadership to invoke the so-called “nuclear option,” a parliamentary maneuver that would ban filibusters and allow judges to pass on a simple majority vote.
Meanwhile, Idaho remains locked in a turf battle with California over Smith, the other Idahoan up for a seat on the 9th circuit.
In February, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., blocked a vote on Smith, saying the nomination would give Idaho undue weight on the West’s top appellate court. California has 36 million people, compared with 1.5 million in Idaho.