July 1, 2005
By Paul Singer and Lisa Caruso
National Journal
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.
For months now -- and, in some cases, years -- activist groups on the political left and right have been preparing for the Supreme Court nomination battle that has begun with the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Even before the vacancy was announced, groups on both sides had prepared talking points, press releases, research reports, and advertising messages. Conservatives aired their first television ads in late June, before the Court had even completed its term, warning that liberals will attack any candidate the president nominates.
Both sides come to the upcoming battle better prepared, better organized, and better funded than in any previous Supreme Court nomination fight. This is also the first nomination in the era of the Internet, the 24-hour cable news cycle, and the "blogosphere," all of which provide new tools to help partisans spread their messages quickly and loudly. And both sides say that the recent Senate fight over judicial filibusters -- which culminated in May in a compromise that averted a showdown -- energized their core supporters and provided a test run of their ability to generate thousands of grassroots contacts with lawmakers.
Following are lists of the key groups and individuals who are likely to be leading the arguments for each side. These lists are illustrative, not exhaustive. Leaders on both sides note that once the president selects a nominee, dozens of additional groups may join the public fray, and many may operate independent of any organized coalition.
On The Left
Notwithstanding the reputation of the political Left for being garrulous and disorderly, the liberal coalition preparing for a battle over Supreme Court nominations is remarkably unified and organized.
The primary organizing vehicle is the Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary, an alliance of more than 70 organizations covering an array of interests -- abortion-rights activists, civil libertarians, disability advocates, environmentalists, faith-based organizations, racial and ethnic minorities, and labor unions -- many of which have been meeting weekly for much of the past five years. Coalition members say they expect dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of additional organizations to join their alliance when a nominee is named.
The coalition has assembled four task forces -- focusing on communications, lobbying, grassroots, and research -- and has hired some top Democratic political and media consultants, including former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart and Jeff Blattner, former Judiciary Committee Counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
Here are the key groups and players on the left:
People for the American Way
With one of the largest grassroots operations among the participating groups, PFAW is probably first among equals in the judicial coalition. President Ralph Neas, a former Republican congressional staffer, is a veteran of previous Supreme Court battles; he chaired the coalition that helped defeat Reagan nominee Robert Bork in 1987.
Recently, PFAW spent $5 million in the campaign to forestall the so-called "nuclear option" in the Senate and to preserve Democrats' ability to filibuster judicial nominees. Neas asserts that the advertisements and appeals to members aired by PFAW and its coalition partners generated 2 million citizen contacts with senators in the days leading up to the compromise agreement that averted a vote on the filibuster issue. He says the groups are prepared to raise and spend an even larger sum in a battle over a high court nominee.
"President Bush promised years ago to be a uniter not a divider," Neas said. "Unfortunately, he has been a divider, and he has gone out of his way to stick his finger in the eye of the Democrats on judicial nominations for four and a half years. But I hope and pray he surprises me. I hope he comes up with a consensus candidate and there is no confirmation battle at all."
Founded in 1981 by TV sitcom pioneer Norman Lear to counter what he saw as the rising influence of conservative Christian televangelists, PFAW claims about 750,000 "members and supporters." Much has been written about the group's "war room" -- a 2,500 square-foot space, equipped with computer terminals and telephone lines, that will be staffed with volunteers to mobilize the grassroots.
The Alliance for Justice
Led since 1979 by its founder, Nan Aron, the alliance remains in the forefront of liberal groups providing research on the background of judicial nominees. Aron, like Neas, has a long history of Supreme Court nomination campaigns, including helping to lead the fight over the Bork nomination, as well as the 1991 battle over Justice Clarence Thomas. The alliance has had a "Judicial Selection Project" since 1985.
Staff members have assembled in-depth research reports on the candidates they believe President Bush is most likely to choose. Coalition members will use those reports to frame talking points once a nominee is announced.
The alliance is itself a coalition of groups working on civil-rights issues, including the Children's Defense Fund, the National Education Association and the Violence Policy Center, which advocates gun control. Aron said there is no specific budget for the Supreme Court project but added that the alliance will raise money as necessary. The group has hired GMMB, the advertising and political consulting firm run by Democratic consultants Frank Greer and Jim Margolis, to work on the Supreme Court campaign.
On June 24, Aron released a list of four judges appointed by Republicans who could be "consensus nominees" for the Supreme Court, potentially able to win support from both Republican and Democrats. But her group stopped short of fully endorsing even these candidates, saying that it would continue to research their backgrounds before offering support.
Aron said, "The American public wants and deserves moderate justices who have an exemplary judicial record, an open-minded approach to the law, [and] a commitment to equal justice for all Americans."
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
The conference, a 55-year-old coalition of nearly 200 member groups, has a long history of organizing for civil-rights causes, including passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The LCCR was among the organizers of the historic 1963 March on Washington at which Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
Collectively, the organizations of the LCCR have millions of members and years of experience in grassroots organizing; they include AARP, the NAACP, and the National Council of La Raza. Executive Director Wade Henderson is the former Washington bureau director of the NAACP.
Henderson said the current judicial coalition has been meeting in various forms since the battle over John Ashcroft's nomination to be attorney general in 2001. Ashcroft won confirmation, but Henderson credits the fight with keeping Ashcroft off the list of possible Supreme Court nominees.
The conference spent $3.7 million on the recent battle over the filibuster, but a staff member said it is too soon to say how much it might raise for a Supreme Court fight, particularly since the coalition is taking the long view, foreseeing a three- or four-year campaign to block unacceptable judges rather than a short-term campaign to block just the next high court nominee.
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Alliance for Justice, and People for the American Way are described by most activists and participants as the lead conveners of the progressive coalition.
MoveOn
Founded in 1998 as an Internet-based petition drive to urge Republicans to drop impeachment efforts against President Clinton, MoveOn.org is less an organization than a massive political list-serve. With a staff of about a dozen people organizing contacts with as many as 3 million members, the group has demonstrated an ability to generate large turnouts -- and, just as important, significant media coverage -- for specific campaigns.
Advocacy Director Ben Brandzel said that during the debate over the filibuster, MoveOn members generated 110,000 phone calls to members of Congress, 60,000 letters to the media, and $1.3 million to pay for ads and other activities. In the progressive coalition, MoveOn is the group most likely to test unique ways of rallying supporters, such as "self-organized, leaderless rallies" in which local activists meet at a prescribed time and place and make their own speeches. The group has not yet begun raising money for a Supreme Court fight, according to Brandzell. He said that the background of the nominee will drive the group's strategy.
The Sierra Club
Leaders of the liberal coalition point to the Sierra Club as an example of the wide range of groups that they expect to take part in the nomination debate. With a grassroots strength of about 750,000 people, the club is increasingly focusing attention on the role of the courts in upholding environmental laws that Sierra Club members hold dear. Spokesman David Willett notes that the club has activists around the country who are practiced at lobbying members of Congress and at "informing and educating the public at large" about environmental issues. Several recent high-profile environmental cases -- including the failed attempt by citizen groups to force the White House to release information about Vice President Cheney's energy task force -- underscore the group's argument that environmentalists should be concerned about the makeup of the Supreme Court.
The AFL-CIO
For brute force of numbers and organizing know-how, few groups in the liberal coalition can match organized labor. The Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary lists several major unions among its members, including the umbrella AFL-CIO, as well as the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union. The unions rallied their members against the "nuclear option," and targeted states with swing-vote senators, generating thousands of e-mails and letters. But a Supreme Court nomination fight could come at a bad time for the AFL-CIO, which is facing a secession threat from several of its largest member unions, including the Teamsters and the SEUI, which are seeking the ouster of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney at a late-July union gathering in Chicago.
NARAL Pro-Choice America
NARAL, formerly called the National Abortion Rights Action League, has long been focused on the Supreme Court. Among the liberals' "issue-focused" groups, NARAL's membership is probably the most prepared for a fight over high court nominee. The group has already been stoking the flames with its "Choose Justice" campaign, running an online satirical poll for members to vote on whom Bush should nominate (winner: Darth Vader), and recruiting more than 30,000 members to become "rapid responders" who will take up arms -- with petitions, talking points, and bumper stickers -- as soon as a retirement is announced. NARAL has local chapters in 27 states, which already have activist networks with experience in lobbying local elected officials. For NARAL members, Roe v. Wade is totemic, and they are well aware that Roe was a Supreme Court decision.
The National Council of Jewish Women
One of several faith-based groups in the liberal coalition, the council launched its "Benchmark" campaign in 2001 to "educate and mobilize its membership and the larger Jewish community to advocate for a judiciary that will protect a woman's right to choose." The council serves as co-chair of the grassroots task force of the Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary, and was one of the first faith-based groups to sign up, said the council's director of Washington Operations, Sammie Moshenberg. For the council's members, "this issue is about values," Moshenberg said. "It's about religious freedom," a central theme for the group's 90,000 members.
Other Players
Among the other groups that may play a visible role in the liberals' effort are ADA Watch, a disability-rights organization that led efforts among people with disabilities to block Bush's appointment of Jeff Sutton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit on the grounds that his advocacy of limited government would hamper limit implementation of the Americans With Disabilities Act; Hispanics for a Fair and Independent Judiciary, a newly formed coalition of civil-rights activists that will attempt to rally Hispanics to oppose a conservative nominee -- a task that may be complicated if Bush picks a Latino nominee such as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; and the American Civil Liberties Union, which abandoned its traditional neutrality to oppose the Bork appointment but requires a vote of its 50-plus board members before it can take a position on any nominee.
On The Right
Groups on the right see their role as primarily defensive, providing rapid responses to charges leveled against the president's nominee. No single organization is spearheading the conservative campaign. Instead, a handful of groups focused solely or primarily on the judicial confirmation issues are leading the charge; grassroots coalitions and family, libertarian, and business groups are providing backup. Administration supporters have also assembled a stable of party elders and legal experts to serve as pundits.
Progress for America
Only four years old, PFA has emerged as Republicans' deep-pocketed answer to liberal "527" groups and as the Bush administration's informally anointed defender. Created by political consultant (and Karl Rove friend) Tony Feather, PFA kicked into fundraising overdrive last year to help re-elect Bush, raising almost $50 million, by its own accounting, to support the president's agenda.
Having already spent $11.1 million this year to promote Bush's Social Security agenda and Senate Republicans' effort to end judicial filibusters, PFA says it plans to shell out $18 million to defend whomever Bush nominates to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. The campaign will include radio, television, and Internet banner ads, direct mail and phone banks, and grassroots teams in 22 states. The group will also line up interviews, speaking engagements, and other activities for pro-administration legal experts, including former Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese, now at the Heritage Foundation; actor and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson; and former National Republican Campaign Committee and New York Rep. Bill Paxon, now a lobbyist with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Progress for America sponsors a weekly Monday conference call with several allied organizations to gear up for the likely fight, and it is laying the groundwork for its defense of the eventual nominee. The group has produced a detailed, 26-page opposition research memo, "Tar and Feather, Inc. A 10-Step Plan for Judicial Character Assassination," that outlines the tactics it expects the Left to employ, based on past campaigns against Judges Robert Bork, David Souter, and Clarence Thomas. And in late June, PFA spent $700,000 on its first TV and radio ads. Called "Get Ready," they warn the public that "liberals and some Democrats will unleash a disinformation campaign with distorted attacks against any judicial nominee."
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
The legal conservatives and libertarians of the Federalist Society supply intellectual firepower and scholarly gravitas to the conservative side. Among the legal eagles whom the group is making available to the media for analysis and commentary are former Supreme Court clerks, law professors, and scholars.
In addition, Executive Vice President Leonard Leo is considered one of a handful of conservative legal wise men whose counsel is sought by the White House. That inner circle also includes Meese; former Bush I White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray; who chairs the Committee for Justice; and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice. The group also convenes its own weekly Monday morning conference call, mostly to network with D.C.-based legal types.
The Third Branch Conference
A wide-ranging coalition of groups from across the conservative movement, the conference was created early this year by Manuel Miranda, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's former counsel, who resigned under pressure from the leader's office last year for accessing Judiciary Committee Democrats' strategy memos on blocking Bush's nominees.
Initially called the National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters, the coalition was formed to pressure Senate Republicans to move forward with the filibuster fight. It also gives its member groups, many of which had not previously gotten involved in the nomination debate, a vehicle to weigh in on the matter, Miranda explained. The day after Senate moderates of both parties negotiated the compromise over judicial filibusters, the group resolved to live on, and rechristened itself the Third Branch Conference.
The coalition holds a weekly call to provide information and strategic guidance to help "grasstops" leaders across the country mobilize in the states. It also serves as a forum for more than 200 organizations, which include economic conservatives, social conservatives, libertarians, conservative legal groups, and religious organizations.
The Committee for Justice
Led by founder and Chairman C. Boyden Gray, a partner at the firm of Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, and by executive director Sean Rushton, the committee is the Right's information clearinghouse and central communications operation on judicial nominations. Rushton said his group monitors and responds to the liberal umbrella group Alliance for Justice. It also hosts a weekly strategy meeting and conference call and keeps the other groups -- and the national media -- informed about development through daily e-mails and its Web site. The groups stresses that it advocates "constitutionalist," as opposed to "activist," judges.
The committee has strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill. It was founded in 2002 with the blessing of then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and White House adviser Karl Rove in response to the Senate fight over the ultimately unsuccessful federal appeals court nomination of Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering. The group is made up of Washington insiders and power lawyers, including lobbyist and former Florida Sen. Connie Mack; lobbyist Lanny Griffith of Barbour Griffith & Rogers; National Association of Manufacturers President and former Michigan Gov. John Engler; and Republican uber-lawyer Fred Fielding.
The Judicial Confirmation Network
On the conservative side, the network has the second-largest budget (after Progress for America) earmarked for a nomination fight -- $3 million for radio and TV ads, phone banks, and other grassroots tools. Representing more than 70 right-leaning national and local organizations, the network was formed last November specifically to gin up activity at the state level to pressure senators to support President Bush's judicial nominees.
The network is run by Executive Director Gary Marx in Washington and Counsel Wendy Long, a New York City-based lawyer with Kirkland & Ellis and a former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. Marx, who is also president of Principium Consulting, is steeped in the Christian conservative movement, having gotten his start in 1999 as executive director of the Virginia Christian Coalition.
He has also worked for former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed at Century Strategies, and at the Virginia affiliate of Focus on the Family. He ran outreach to social conservatives for Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
The network has paid field staff in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Nebraska, and Virginia, and is prepared to add staff in three or four more states if needed. It has established a coalition in every state of "grasstops" leaders of pro-family organizations, business groups, conservative lawyers and jurists, and other conservative and libertarian organizations that stand ready to influence public opinion. "We want to make sure that at the state level, senators are seeing an engagement," Marx said. "I think it resonates with a little more power than the voice of some lobbyist in the halls of Congress."
The group started building its network in early February, and was able to test drive it during the Senate fight over judicial filibusters. For that fight, the Judicial Confirmation Network made a $250,000 ad buy.
The Coalition for a Fair Judiciary
This coalition of 70-to-80 center-right grassroots groups is dedicated solely to advocating for conservative federal judicial nominees, from the Supreme Court down to the district courts. It was founded in 2001 by conservative activist and communications pro Kay Daly as the loosely organized Americans for Ashcroft, to support the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Unlike the Judicial Confirmation Network or the Third Branch Conference, which focus on "grasstops" leaders, the coalition is strictly aimed at directly informing and mobilizing the grassroots. Efforts include encouraging supporters to write letters to the editor and op-ed pieces for local newspapers, to call in to talk-radio shows, and to contact senators' offices. The group also runs ads, coordinates rallies, and flies in supporters from nominees' home states to pack Washington confirmation hearings with friendly faces. For Miguel Estrada's confirmation proceedings, Daly filled the cavernous Senate hearing room with Salvadoran immigrants who supported their countryman. Said one conservative veteran of the judicial nominations fight, "Kay's ability is grassroots activism -- organizing bodies on Capitol Hill to the hearings and into the hallways," where senators can see them.
The American Center for Law and Justice
Even in conservative circles, the center is far better known as "Jay Sekulow's group" than by its formal name. Although it was founded in 1990 by influential Christian broadcaster and Yale Law School graduate Pat Robertson expressly to litigate religious-rights and pro-family cases, the center's public face is Chief Counsel Sekulow.
A leading conservative lawyer, Sekulow has successfully argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court and has his own bully pulpit in the form of a daily radio call-in show, Jay Sekulow Live! as well as a nationally broadcast weekly television show called ACLJ This Week. Sekulow is a regular on the talking-head circuit, appearing frequently to present the conservative legal position on the major national broadcast and cable networks, and he is regularly quoted in the press. He is also among the handful of GOP legal experts in close contact with the White House.
Social Conservative and Libertarian Groups
Pro-family social-conservative groups such as the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America, as well as libertarian groups such Americans for Tax Reform, the Free Congress Foundation, and Americans for Limited Government all have extensive grassroots networks they can fire up at a moment's notice. Most are part of larger coalitions or umbrella groups, although the Christian Coalition is running its own nominations operation.
The coalition's newly formed Judicial Task Force aims to rally Christian activists to work the phones, the fax machines, and the Internet through coordinators in all 50 states, explained coalition President Roberta Combs. The 2 million-member group is building a national "first-response network" to quickly mobilize the grassroots, as well as a national "life prayer network" of Christians to pray for pro-life judges. She said her group has also set its sights on amassing a $1 million war chest to fight for socially conservative judges through petitions, letter-writing campaigns, phone banks, blast faxes and e-mails, mass mailings, and ads in the home states of senators considered potential swing votes.
Business Groups
Although not active players in the judicial filibuster fight, leading business groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce intend to jump into the Supreme Court nomination fray. Both organizations plan to review the nominee's record and decide whether to issue an endorsement. The NAM plans to direct its staff of lobbyists to push for the nominee on the Hill, and to call on its member companies to do their part from beyond the Beltway, by actively lobbying for the nominee themselves, and by involving their employees. The chamber "reserves the right" to lobby on behalf of a nominee it backs, according to Stanton Anderson, the group's executive vice president and chief legal officer, although it has not yet committed to do so.
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