Elections nominee faces fire
At hearing, Democrats criticize his role in Texas redistricting
Date: June 14, 2007
Paper: Dallas Morning News, The (TX)
WASHINGTON - A nominee to the Federal Election Commission hit a wall over Texasredistricting during his confirmation hearing Wednesday.
Democrats accused Hans von Spakovsky of injecting politics into the Justice Department's analysis of a 2003 Texas congressional redistricting map when he was a top lawyer at the department.
Eight career lawyers and election law experts who served under Mr. Spakovsky in the civil rights division signed a letter urging senators to reject his nomination. They said he and other Bush political appointees had no good reason to overturn a unanimous staff recommendation to reject the Texasredistricting plan, which they said clearly violated minority voting rights in some districts - including the Dallas-based 24th District long held by Democrat Martin Frost.
Mr. Frost was among the half-dozen Texas Democrats who lost House seats after the remap orchestrated in the Legislature by Tom DeLay, who was U.S. House majority leader at the time.
"You corrupted practices within the department," Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate rules committee, told Mr. von Spakovsky during a two-hour confirmation hearing. "It is really problematic for this body to vote for someone with this letter on the record."
Democratic House members from Texas also urged the Senate to reject Mr. von Spakovsky's nomination.
"The damage he has done to voting rights and the democratic process in this nation in Texas and other states altogether invalidates his ability to serve in this capacity," they wrote.
Mr. von Spakovsky denied that politics influenced his judgment, attributing disagreements to "the different training and views that lawyers have."
He has been serving as an FEC commissioner since January 2006; President Bush sidestepped the Senate confirmation process by giving him a recess appointment. But a full term will require Senate approval.
Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah was among the Republicans who defended him Wednesday, saying he'd done a good job on the commission so far.
Backlash against Mr. von Spakovsky stems not just from the Texas case but from the Justice Department's approval of a voter ID law adopted in Georgia. Civil rights experts called the law a new form of poll tax because minority voters are less likely to have driver's licenses or other official identification. A federal court agreed and threw it out.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip and a member of the rules committee, called the voter ID law "a national disgrace."
Mr. von Spakovsky said the Justice Department had made the right call, though he also emphasized that higher-ranking lawyers had made that call, not him.
In the Texasredistricting case, he argued that the department's finding was vindicated when federal courts - including the Supreme Court - upheld most of the map despite allegations that black voters in the Frost district and others would see their clout unlawfully diminished.
"Subsequent events ... show that the decision made by the department was the correct one," he said.
A federal court did end up redrawing several South Texas districts over concerns about dilution of Hispanic voting power.
As for the complaints from former underlings in the civil rights division, Mr. von Spakovsky said, "I think they have a sort of political agenda."
Caption:
PHOTO(S): (RICK McKAY/Cox Newspapers) From left: Hans von Spakovsky, David Mason, Robert Lenhard and Steven Walter were sworn in Wednesday at the start of their Senate confirmation hearing.
Copyright 2007 The Dallas Morning News
Author: TODD J. GILLMAN
Section: NEWS
Page: 9A
Copyright 2007 The Dallas Morning News
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