Democrats Block Senate Panel Vote on Rights Nominee

WASHINGTON —  Facing certain defeat, Democrats blocked a Senate Judiciary Committee vote Thursday on the nomination of Los Angeles lawyer Bill Lann Lee as the nation’s top civil rights enforcer, leaving it up to President Clinton to decide whether to renominate him next year.

With only Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) breaking ranks, the committee’s nine other Republicans said that they would have voted against Lee. And they opposed even sending his name to the Senate floor without recommendation, as Democrats had urged.

The eight Democrats and Specter would have provided nine votes for Lee on the 18-member committee, producing a tie vote, which loses under committee rules.

The two-hour committee meeting on the Senate’s last scheduled session of the year was marked by drama, with Specter warning that defeating the first Asian American nominated for the Justice Department post “will make it harder for us to elect a Republican president in the year 2000.”

But Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), whose recent decision to oppose Lee was the crucial blow for the nomination, declared: “We’re tired of preferring one group over another, of preferring groups over individuals.”

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Hatch based his opposition to Lee on the nominee’s support of affirmative action in general and Lee’s specific criticism of California’s Proposition 209, which prohibits such programs at the state and local levels.

During the hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pleaded with her GOP colleagues on the panel at least to support a move to send Lee’s nomination to the full Senate for a vote.

“I think this nomination is really a big deal because, if Bill Lann Lee can’t be confirmed for this post, I don’t really believe that anyone can be confirmed . . . who believes that there are civil rights injustices still being done in this country.”

After the session, the Rev. Jesse Jackson accused Hatch of “using race” to derail Lee’s nomination. “This is not good leadership,” he told Hatch as the two took turns at news microphones. “It’s a radical step backwards.”

But Hatch, who denied inside the committee room that race played any part in his thinking, insisted that his opposition to preferential treatment accurately echoed the nation’s prevailing view. “Jesse, if we don’t face this issue, we are never going to face it. It is doing what the Senate should do if we believe the way we believe.”

At the Justice Department, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said: “We remain firmly committed to seeing Bill Lann Lee confirmed as the head of the Civil Rights Division.”

But White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry sidestepped the question of whether Clinton would resubmit Lee’s nomination as assistant attorney general after the Senate returns to work in January, saying that it would take a “parliamentarian” to respond.

He also repeatedly declined to speculate on whether Clinton would respond with a stopgap maneuver--a “recess appointment” of Lee.

With the Senate adjourned, such an appointment would give Lee the office through 1998 without need of Senate confirmation. But Justice Department officials have raised concerns about doing that, saying that it could add to the strain of already taut relations with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s GOP members.

Hatch and the other Republicans on the panel opposing Lee made it clear they would prefer that Clinton simply jettison Lee. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the Republicans said: “We believe the administration should reconsider any plans it might have to renominate Mr. Lee. The next several months might be better served were an effort undertaken to find another nominee.”

In addition to Hatch, the Republicans opposing Lee were Sens. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Mike DeWine of Ohio, John Ashcroft of Missouri, Spencer Abraham of Michigan and Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s ranking Democrat, challenged the GOP members to “just let the Senate vote. Let all 100 senators stand up and be counted in the full view of the American people and let them know their stand.”

Like other Democrats, Leahy predicted that Lee would win such a vote. Specter agreed, adding that he did not think “it would be a particularly close vote.”

Hatch disagreed, saying: “What would happen on the floor of the Senate, nobody knows.”