Alito garners top rating from ABA
Supporters and critics plan ad campaigns as Senate hearings near
WASHINGTON -- Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. yesterday gained the American Bar Association's highest rating for a Supreme Court nominee, giving him a boost before next week's Senate confirmation hearings.
Interest groups now will try to help or hinder Alito's chances by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on television, radio, and Internet advertising nationwide and in the states of key senators, before and during the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings.
This is the second time the ABA, the nation's largest lawyers' organization, has rated Alito, who was nominated by President Bush on Oct. 31 as the replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
The ''well qualified" rating, the organization's highest, is the same one that Alito received in 1990 when President Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, nominated him to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia.
Embracing the latest rating, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, ''Leading Senate Democrats have said in the past that the ABA is the, quote, 'gold standard' for evaluating judicial nominees."
Democrats, the Senate's minority party, contend that Alito is too conservative and could undermine abortion rights, a pivotal issue before the Supreme Court.
They are expected to be Alito's toughest questioners at the hearings, which begin Monday.
''The ABA ratings do not take into account whether a judge's judicial philosophy and views are in or out of the broad mainstream," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. ''That is the $64,000 question with Judge Alito, and we will have to wait for the hearings to get a better answer."
For more than 50 years, the ABA has evaluated judicial nominees' credentials, though the organization has no official standing in the process.
In 2001, Bush ended the ABA's preferential role in vetting prospective nominees and refused to give the group advance word on names under consideration.
The ABA's Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary came up with the rating after confidential interviews with hundreds of Alito's colleagues and a review of his writings. Their options were well qualified, qualified, and not qualified.
''The committee is of the unanimous opinion that Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. is well qualified," said Stephen L. Tober, chairman of the ABA panel.
One member of the committee abstained from voting, Tober said. He did not explain why that person did not vote. The group will testify during Alito's confirmation hearing about how it arrived at the rating.
The rating will not stop some people from attacking Alito, said Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ''Unfortunately, the hard left groups decided long before these ratings were announced that they would oppose his nomination," Cornyn said.
At least two liberal groups, MoveOn.org Political Action and IndependentCourt.org, plan to take to the airwaves this week to try to build public momentum against Alito.
MoveOn.org is spending $150,000 for an ad airing nationwide on CNN and in the home states of two Republican senators, Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island and Mike DeWine of Ohio, beginning Monday.
IndependentCourt.org, a coalition of dozens of liberal interest groups, is beginning a national television ad. The group refuses to say how much the ad buy will cost, but it is expected to be more than $100,000 on cable television.
The IndependentCourt.org's campaign also will have a local component tailored to Maine, the home of Senators Olympia J. Snowe and Susan M. Collins, both Republicans, and Arkansas, whose senators are Democrats Mark L. Pryor and Blanche L. Lincoln.
The conservative group Progress for America has spent more than other organizations, running national television ads from the first day of the Alito nomination. The group has said it would spend as much $18 million to push Bush's judicial nominees.
It is spending $500,000 on a television ad this week on CNN and the Fox News Channel and during ''Fox News Sunday." The ad will be seen, too, on cable stations in Louisiana, North Dakota, and Maine.
It will also target Senators Mary B. Landrieu of Louisiana and Kent Conrad and Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota. All three are Democrats.
All the groups say more ads are expected during Alito's scheduled two-week confirmation process, and many other organizations are buying less expensive radio and Internet advertisements.
Senate Republicans want a confirmation vote in the full Senate on Jan. 20.
