BY NOW, RALPH NEAS, head of the liberal group People for the American Way (PFAW), must be used to hyperbolic appraisals of his influence from both friend and foe. The "101st senator," Ted Kennedy once called him on the Senate floor. "When it comes to judicial nominations," opined the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, "Mr. Neas might as well be the one and only Senator. The 10 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee salute and follow [his] orders."
Neas takes this all in stride. "I've been attacked, I believe, 53 times by the Wall Street Journal editorial board," he laughs, and he deems it a source of "great pride" for PFAW. As for the Journal's exaggerated estimate of his power, he adds, "I can't think of anything more absurd."
He needn't be so modest. Along with Alliance for Justice chief Nan Aron and Leadership Conference on Civil Rights boss Wade Henderson, Neas is one of Washington's three most powerful liberal activists in the judicial wars. Whatever their personal sway over Senate Democrats, Neas, Aron, and Henderson sit atop a vast assembly of nationally known progressive interest groups, including NOW, NARAL, the National Women's Law Center, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, and the Sierra Club.
Aron's Alliance and Henderson's Leadership Conference are both umbrella organizations, the latter being the oldest and largest such civil rights association in America. But along with PFAW, they're also the principal helmsmen of the Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary. According to Neas, the coalition boasts "about 70 active organizations,"
and they function together like a well-oiled machine. Over the past few years, Neas says, there has been a coalition meeting "almost every day." The steering committee meets "at least once a week," as do various legislative and legal task forces. And coalition members are in daily communication by phone.
PFAW and the Alliance for Justice have done much of the intellectual spadework for those who are mounting the opposition to President Bush's more conservative judicial nominees. PFAW has published multiple editions of Courting Disaster, its analysis of how a Supreme Court dominated by the likes of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas might affect American law. The Alliance for Justice, meanwhile, has kept a close eye on the bench through its Judicial Selection Project, which Aron spearheaded in 1985. Both groups have provided exhaustive research on such appellate court picks as Charles Pickering, Miguel Estrada, and Priscilla Owen.
But that was all just warm-up for the Big One: the fight over the next Supreme Court nominee, which may well come in the fall, should Chief Justice William Rehnquist's health force him to retire. The coalition's network of some 70 active groups may soon balloon. "If there's a Supreme Court nomination," Neas predicts, "there'll be many more organizations involved."
He would know. In 1987, Neas, Aron, Henderson, and other liberal bigwigs piloted the 300-member "Block Bork" coalition, a motley alliance of local and national advocacy groups. "Block Bork" was of course successful, though similar efforts in 1991 failed to keep Justice Thomas off the bench. During the Thomas hearings, irate Republicans claimed PFAW and the Alliance for Justice were feeding anti-Thomas dirt to the offices of Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee. The Washington Post even reported on an "increasingly symbiotic relationship between committee staffers, liberal interest groups and the news media."
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