WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Thursday to confirm the nomination of former Alabama Atty. Gen. William H. Pryor Jr. to the federal appeals court in Atlanta, handing President Bush a trifecta of controversial judicial confirmations in advance of an expected Supreme Court vacancy.
Pryor, an outspoken opponent of abortion and champion of conservative causes, was confirmed by a vote of 53 to 45, mostly along party lines.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday June 21, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 47 words Type of Material: Correction
Judicial nomination -- A June 10 Section A article on President Bush's federal judicial nominations said former Alabama Atty. Gen. William H. Pryor Jr. was named in February 2004 to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor was appointed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"This is progress for the United States Senate. This is progress for the American people," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
Pryor is the third conservative judicial nominee to benefit from a pact between 14 moderate senators, seven from each party, that ended a Democratic filibuster of their confirmations. The others were Texas jurist Priscilla R. Owen, who was confirmed last month to a seat on the appellate court in New Orleans, and California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, who was confirmed Wednesday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Three moderate Republicans -- Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine -- broke ranks to oppose Pryor, and two centrist Democrats -- Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Ken Salazar of Colorado -- supported his confirmation.
Both California senators, Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, voted against his confirmation.
The three new judges were among 10 nominees blocked during Bush's first term by Democrats, who said the jurists held extremist views. Bush renominated seven of the 10 this year, and Democrats had threatened to again block confirmation votes.
In return for ending the three filibusters, Democrats won a promise from Republicans to retain the right of the minority party to use the maneuver to stall future nominees. Democrats considered it important to retain that right with the expectation that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has thyroid cancer, may retire shortly.
Republicans disputed that assessment, saying they would change the filibuster rules if Democrats attempted to use them to block a Supreme Court nominee. But for now, Frist said, the issue has been put on the sidelines.
Still, the question of what comes next in the conflict between Democrats and Republicans over the federal judiciary was clearly on the minds of senators as they voted.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, described the confirmation of the three judges as "bitter medicine."
