As seven long-awaited Georgia federal judicial nominees move toward possible confirmation, liberal groups are stepping up their attacks on one controversial judge while U.S. Rep. John Lewis is backing off his criticism.
A high-stakes committee hearing expected next week will test state Court of Appeals Judge Michael Boggs, who has come under fire for his votes while serving as a Democratic state legislator from Waycross in the early 2000s.
Lewis joined fellow civil rights leaders and Georgia Democrats at Ebenezer Baptist Church in December to denounce the then-slate of six nominees negotiated among White House officials and Georgia's Republican U.S. senators.
But in a brief interview Wednesday, Lewis said he is no longer trying to throw a wrench into the confirmation process as he speaks with senators about it — a key shift from the influential figure.
“(I have) not necessarily changed my mind,” Lewis said. “I’m just letting the process take place.”
Since December, the White House has shown it is not backing off of Boggs in the face of attacks based on his legislative record. He sponsored or voted for measures to keep the Confederate battle emblem on the state flag, display the Ten Commandments at county courthouses and allow voters to approve an amendment to the Georgia Constitution banning same-sex marriage.
Boggs is nominated to be a judge on the U.S. District Court bench in Atlanta, along with Atlanta attorney Leigh Martin May, DeKalb County State Court Judge Eleanor Ross and Atlanta attorney Mark Cohen.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Julie Carnes was picked to serve on the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, joining pending 11th Circuit nominee Jill Pryor, an Atlanta attorney.
Georgia Democrats were peeved that Ross was the only African-American in the group and that they were not given more say.
In March, the White House nominated Atlanta federal prosecutor Leslie Joyce Abrams — an African-American and the sister of state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams — to sit on the U.S. District Court bench in Macon. That move met approval from Democrats and Republicans. If both Ross and Abrams are confirmed by the Senate, they will be the first black women to serve in such a position in Georgia.
Last week, Georgia’s two senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, turned in their “blue slips” to the Senate Judiciary Committee, giving approval for all seven nominees to appear at a hearing expected next week, with a vote to follow perhaps a week later.
Each nominee faces an individual vote in committee, with Boggs’ record under the most scrutiny from Democrats — who control the Senate.
In January, Boggs submitted a 54-page document answering questions posed to all nominees by the committee. Last month, however, he sent a 26-page letter to the committee in which he apologized for omitting certain information.
Boggs’ new submissions are sure to give his left-leaning critics more ammunition.
Among them: a video of Boggs’ speech on the House floor calling for the amendment banning gay marriage; his sponsorship of legislation putting the national motto, “In God We Trust,” in government buildings and public schools; his support for “Choose Life” license plates; his co-sponsorship of a bill requiring parental notification and ID requirements for girls seeking abortions; and his support for a resolution urging Congress to reaffirm that the U.S. is a “Judeo-Christian nation.”
Boggs also went the extra mile to make sure he could find any reports of speeches and talks he gave while a state legislator.
Because his local newspapers do not have electronic archives, Boggs said, he obtained bound volumes of 515 editions of the Blackshear Times, the Charlton County Herald and the Pierce County Press and spent five days reviewing more than 8,000 pages. He also hired a journalist at the Waycross Journal-Herald/South Georgia Journal to look over 20,000 pages of that newspaper. Through that research, Boggs identified 48 speeches and talks he gave from 2001 through 2004 and provided the committee brief summaries of them.
After the new questionnaire was published, NARAL Pro-Choice America urged its members to “help us flood Senate offices now with calls.”
“It turns out that judicial nominee Michael Boggs is even worse than we thought,” NARAL President Ilyse Hogue wrote in the email. “We just uncovered evidence that Boggs voted for a bill that would have laid the groundwork for ‘personhood,’ which is one step away from overturning Roe v. Wade.”
Isakson and Chambliss, meanwhile, are individually courting committee Democrats, as they need two to join all the Republicans in order to move Boggs.
Ian Koski, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Coons has not made up his mind and is trying to meet with Boggs. Coons and Isakson have worked closely on foreign policy in Africa and other issues.
Boggs is “receiving additional consideration because of Senator Coons’ great respect for Senator Isakson,” Koski said.
If the nominees clear the committee, they head to the Senate floor, where they are subject to the whims of leadership and a shrinking window of time for final approval. The judicial nomination process typically shuts down by the end of summer in an election year, and the pace of nominations has ebbed and flowed amid procedural fights between the parties. Boggs also could present a politically challenging vote for vulnerable Democrats.
As a new general counsel is set to take over this month, replacing the one who negotiated the judges deal with Chambliss and Isakson, the White House is standing by Boggs.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s “blue-slip” process has allowed senators to halt judicial nominees in the form of a silent, unaccountable veto, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Wednesday. For this reason, the White House reached a compromise with Georgia’s GOP senators and included Boggs in the package of nominees because it would be “grossly irresponsible” to keep the vacancies unfilled.
“And based on Boggs’ 10-year track record as a state trial and appellate court judge, the president believes he is qualified for the federal bench,” Schultz said. “Of all the recent criticisms offered against Michael Boggs, not one is based on his record as a judge.”
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