WASHINGTON — The fight over federal judicial nominees shifts this week from Capitol Hill to America's living rooms, with interest groups escalating an ad war in an effort to swing senators their way.
Progress for America, a conservative advocacy group, launched an ad Monday in the states of five Republican and five Democratic senators considered pivotal to whether the Senate changed its rules to prevent filibusters over some of President Bush's conservative nominees to the federal bench.
People for the American Way, a liberal group, is responding with an ad scheduled to begin running today in the same states. It portrays the filibuster -- a parliamentary tactic in which senators talk as long as they want to prevent a vote -- as an effective check against one party having too much power.
The group earlier this year sponsored an ad that featured perhaps the most famous, albeit fictional, filibuster -- the one led by Jimmy Stewart in the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."
The blitz comes as it becomes more likely that the Senate's GOP majority will try to bar use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees -- a rule change that has been dubbed by some the "nuclear option" because of the political rancor it would cause.
Senate Republican leaders say Democrats have abused the filibuster to unfairly deny votes on 10 of Bush's nominees to federal appellate courts. Democrats respond that they have allowed for votes on 215 of Bush's judicial nominees, blocking only those they regarded as extremists.
It takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster; under the rule change, Bush's judicial nominees would need 51 votes to win confirmation. Republicans hold 55 seats in the Senate.
The issue has gained importance because of the possibility that one or more Supreme Court seats might soon become vacant.
The Progress for America ad is running in Alaska, Arkansas, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota and Rhode Island.
It features two Bush judicial nominees filibustered by Democrats but resubmitted by the president for confirmation: California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown and Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla R. Owen. The ad praises Brown as the "daughter of Alabama sharecroppers" who "put herself through school and rose to become the first African American woman on the California Supreme Court."
The ad declares that "Senate Democrats have abused the rules and refused to even allow a vote" on the nominees. The ad urges the public to ask their senators to support barring the filibuster.
