The Boston Phoenix posted January 18, 2001

[This Just In]

The Ashcroft hearings

Ronnie White tells his side of the story

by Seth Gitell

"While minorities need to be represented, or [sic] course, I believe the time has come for us to place much more concern on the hard-working taxpayers in this country." -- Missouri Associate Circuit Court Judge Earl R. Blackwell, on his reasons for switching from the Democratic to Republican party.

WASHINGTON, DC -- The above line is what occupied members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, which is holding hearings to determine whether or not to confirm George W. "chief uniter-not-divider" Bush's pick for the nation's top law enforcement official, former Missouri Senator John Ashcroft. Today's star witness was Judge Ronnie White, a member of the Missouri judiciary nominated by President Bill Clinton to the federal district court for the Eastern District of Missouri in 1999. Ashcroft worked vigorously behind the scenes to derail the appointment, telling his Senate colleagues that White was "soft on crime" and "pro criminal."

One of the pieces of evidence marhsalled by Ashcroft at the time to support the "soft on crime" label was that White, an African-American, had dissented in a death penalty case (decided by Judge Blackwell) merely because Blackwell was "opposed to affirmative action." In his speech on the Senate floor and in a "Dear Colleague" letter to other Senators, Ashcroft charged that White had ruled that Brian Kinder, an African-American found guilty of murder, should get a new trial only because the trial judge was "opposed to affirmative action."

But during the Senate hearing today, White said he had dissented from upholding the death sentence because of statements made by Blackwell that came across as racist -- such as the one above which seems to exclude minorities from the broad category of "hard-working taxpayers." Indeed, in his dissent in State of Missouris v. Kinder White wrote: "no honest reading of this sentence can show that it says anything other than what it says: that minorities are not hard-working taxpayers" -- a description he described as a "pernicious, racial stereotype."

Senator Jefferson Sessions of Alabama, one of Ashcroft's most rigorous defenders at Thursday's hearing, seemed to defend the spirit of Ashcroft's initial critique. "I believe firmly we need to focus on guilt and innocence and [be] not so focused on errors at trial," he said, though added that the remarks about minorities by the trial judge were "insensitive."

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin lashed out at Sessions for his defense of Ashcroft. "This is a brief response to Senator Sessions: a direct trashing of miniorities is beyond insensitive."

Sessions replied, "They were insensitive at worst." And Feingold, in turn, charged: "I find it hard to describe these comments as `insensitive at worst.' The hardworking people of Wisconsin would find them far worse than `insensitive.' "

The Kinder episode lays bare why members of the African-American community, such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, are fighting so hard against Aschcroft's nomination. Who wouldn't oppose the nomination of a legislator to Attorney General who had interpreted genuine outrage over a racist statement as anger over the anti-affirmative action stance of a jurist? There are plenty of good arguments to be made on both sides in the debate over affirmative action, particularly quotas, but none of them involves excluding all minorites from the category of "hardworking taxpayers."

Beyond the debate over the Kinder case, the most significant thing about the White testimony was that it countered a key argument the Republicans have made in Ashcroft's defense in recent days -- that he is the victim of liberal character assassination. Ashcroft, after all, was the senator who allowed White's nomination to go forward, then worked behind the scenes to torpedo it without giving White the opportunity to answer to the charges he was spreading around the Senate. "I was obviously disturbed by the labelling and the name-calling, but what troubled me most was the lack of opportunity to talk about my record," White recalled during his testimony.

Senator Ted Kennedy brought this double standard home when he said to White: "There's been a lot of talk about the politics of personal destruction right now. What happened to you is 10 times worse than anything that happened to Senator Ashcroft."

It's still a long shot that the White's testimony will turn the tables on the Ashcroft nomination. But White got a chance to do something Ashcroft wouldn't let him do in 1999 -- defend himself. Leaving the hearing room, Kennedy told the Phoenix that "Ronnie White was spectacular. I think the US Senate now understands the real record."

Hopefully, it also has a better understanding of Ashcroft and the president-elect who selected him.