May 3, 2005
By Steve Jordahl
Family News in Focus
A coalition of groups advocating Senate action on the president's judicial nominees is launching a national ad campaign to raise awareness and solicit public support.
The coalition will spend $3.3 million on the campaign and will begin airing ads this week in states whose senators could be swayed by a large public outpouring.
"If you think judges should be fair and well qualified, look at these women," the narrator says in one commercial.
The timing of the campaign is no accident. The Senate is not in session - lawmakers are home facing their constituents.
"Urge your senators to vote - up or down. Enough is enough," said Brian McCabe, president of Progress for America. "This week we're running in six target states: Alaska, Arkansas, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota and Rhode Island. Next week we take the campaign national,"
The first ad introduces nominees Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown to America.
"There's been a lot of discussion over the last couple weeks about process," McCabe said, "and we wanted to introduce the personalities into the debate." Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network said her organization is working on the second part of the campaign.
"We have grass-roots efforts going on where state leaders are organizing citizens to call their senators, fax their senators, e-mail their senators and ask them to stand up for a vote on judges," she said.
"It truly does matter for senators who are wavering or senators who are in the middle, or frankly even senators who've announced that they won't support an up or down vote on these nominees," Long added. "We're not giving up on anybody."
The effort will continue, she added, until all the nominees get an up-or-down vote likely only when the filibusters are broken.
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