U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, last week said the time might have passed already for the White House to successfully nominate candidates for a vacancy on the U.S. District Court in Providence and for the vacant 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seat long held by a Rhode Islander.

But at the same time, Political Scene has heard that the White House might be getting close to nominating people for those vacancies, which were created when former Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres and former Circuit Judge Bruce M. Selya left full-time service and assumed senior status about 10 months ago.

Those seen as front-runners for the 1st Circuit seat include U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente and District Court Judge William E. Smith. Those seen as front-runners for the District Court judgeship include Corrente and U.S. Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond, son of former Republican Gov. Lincoln C. Almond.

Whitehouse, a former U.S. Attorney and Rhode Island attorney general, spoke at the Roger Williams University School of Law last week, and afterward he was asked if the Bush administration had reached the point at which it’s too late to make those appointments.

“I think we’ve reached it, particularly based on the process we’ve gone through so far,” Whitehouse replied. “There has been zero meaningful discussion between the White House and the Senate on these appointments.”

With the presidential elections coming up in November 2008, some question whether Senate Democrats would confirm a Bush nominee at this point. Also, senators have the ability to block or “blue-slip” nominees from their home state, so the administration would need support from Whitehouse and Democratic Sen. Jack Reed.

Whitehouse said, “There are new people at the White House who may be interested in compromise, but so far we have not seen any signs of their being interested in working on a consensus candidate for the 1st Circuit or for the District Court. And when you consider that time is as short as it is, why we would consider a lifetime appointment for a Bush appointee in the waning days of the administration when they haven’t even worked with us, just doesn’t make sense.”

In March 2006, Torres and Selya announced that they would step down from full-time service in December 2006. Just a few days after Selya’s announcement, then-Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee held a news conference at his Providence office to announce that he was recommending former state Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Flanders Jr. for the 1st Circuit vacancy. But the White House never nominated Flanders or anyone else for the 1st Circuit or District Court seats. And Chafee, who was then a Republican, lost the November election to Whitehouse.

The 1st Circuit vacancy has been declared a “judicial emergency” by the Judicial Conference of the United States, which is the governing body that sets federal court policy and speaks on behalf of the U.S. judicial system. Also, Selya, who for years was the only Rhode Islander on the 1st Circuit, has spoken about the importance of having a Rhode Islander on the Boston-based appellate court and of filling the District Court vacancy.

When reached on Friday, Selya said, “I’m really very disappointed in the senator’s remarks. This is not a political game. The courts and the country and the state need these judges, and the question ought to be not who makes these nominations but the quality of the nominees.”

Selya, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, said, “If this president or any future president nominates a first-class person, then that man or woman deserves to be considered on the merits and not held up because someone is waiting for some kind of political accommodation to be made.”

Democrats jockeying

for the governorship

For most voters, 2010 is a long way away. But for the inside players, there is already a spirited contest among Democratic adherents of Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, Lt.Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline and General Treasurer Frank Caprio.

All four of these statewide elected officials have been mentioned as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010. No Rhode Island Democrat has held the governorship since Bruce Sundlun in the early 1990s.

The latest Brown University public opinion survey, released earlier in the month, shows that all the putative candidates have fairly good ratings. To some extent, the job approval ratings depend on how well known they are and how long they have been in office. Thus, Cicilline (64 percent approval) and Lynch (48 percent approval) have higher ratings than Roberts or Caprio do.

Cicilline has consistently had high job approval ratings since his election as mayor in 2002. His 64 percent is down three points — an insignificant drop from the 67-approval rating he had in the January 2007 Brown poll. Lynch’s rating is up 8 points from January, when his approval rating was at 40.

Roberts and Caprio have identical 37 percent approval ratings. In January, Caprio had a 22 percent approval rating and Roberts stood at 28 percent.

“The numbers for the newly elected officials are pretty impressive,” said Brown Prof. Darrell West, who supervised the poll. (Rhode Island’s new U.S. Senator, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, has a 41 percent approval rating, up from 32 percent in January.) “The trends for Roberts, Caprio, Whitehouse and Lynch are all impressive,” said West.

The poll was done Sept. 8 and 9 at Brown. It was based on a statewide sample of 571 registered voters in Rhode Island. The survey carries an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The laggard among statewide elected officials is Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, whose job approval rating is only 23 percent.

Live polling at next

Cities and Towns meeting

The Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns’ executive director, Dan Beardsley, has decided to introduce a little live polling action at his group’s annual meeting on Thursday.

With a small hand-held device at their place settings, each attendee will be able to vote their gambling and budget-balancing preferences, along with their choices for president in 2008 and governor in 2010. The results will register immediately on big screens at the front of the Crowne Plaza reception room, and an excited Beardsley says the audience response technology will allow him to break down the results by gender, county and other variables.

Beardsley isn’t willing to give away all his questions in advance, but he said a sample question might be: What is the single most important thing Rhode Island can do to improve education? Among the possible answers: establish an “equitable and predictable” school-aid formula, replace collective bargaining for teachers with a single statewide teachers contract, have the state take over K through 12.

Another likely question: If you have absolute power to fix the state’s persistent budget imbalance, what would you do: tighten eligibility for entitlement programs, lower the rate while expanding the reach of the state’s 7-percent sales tax, privatize every possible state service, lay off 5,000 state employees, allow 24/7 gambling at Newport Grand and the former Lincoln Park, now known as Twin River?

And, of course: What, if anything, should Rhode Island do if lawmakers in Massachusetts embrace Governor Patrick’s casino-gambling plan: allow full-scale casino gambling in Lincoln and Newport? Strike an agreement that enables the Narragansett Indians to move forward on their long-sought casino, or do nothing as there is already enough gambling in Rhode Island?

Asked the impetus, Beardsley said after attending more “boring meetings” of one sort or another than he can count, he was both grateful and amused to see how the technology enlivened the last big National League of Cities and Towns meeting he attended.

Whitehouse knows why

Chafee left the GOP

Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says he can understand why former Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee decided to leave the Republican Party.

Whitehouse — who beat Chafee last year, running on the theme that a Democratic majority was needed in Congress to counter President Bush — was asked about Chafee’s decision prior to giving a speech last week at the Roger Williams University School of Law.

“I can understand why he did it,” Whitehouse said. “They don’t have much to offer to people who are moderate and sensible. Republicans in New England are becoming an increasingly scarce breed as the party itself moves to a more doctrinaire, right-wing ideological posture.”

Laffey’s ex-press secretary

working for Club for Growth

On the Stephen Laffey front:

The oft-quoted press secretary for his failed ’06 Republican primary challenge to then-U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee is now working for his single biggest backer: the conservative Washington-based Club for Growth.

In a brief interview earlier this week, former Laffey spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik said “it was kind of a natural transition. Obviously, I share their values and their ideals. I was familiar with the Club for Growth and they were familiar with me somewhat from the campaign and they were looking for a press person and that happens to be what I do.”

Soloveichik, 27, joined the Laffey bid for the U.S. Senate after graduating from the University of Chicago with a master’s degree in public policy, and a stint as an assistant to the general counsel at the American Jewish Congress. She went to work for the CFG, which funneled more than $366,000 from its support-base into Laffey’s coffers, last January.

Laffey still appears prominently and often on the Club for Growth’s Web site. But whether the group — which favors such far-right Republican precepts as “school choice” and the replacement of Social Security with private, individual retirement accounts — would back him in another race is certain. “I know there is talk about [Laffey] running for governor. We almost never do governor’s races,” Soloveichik said.

Political Scene, meanwhile, has obtained a copy of previously unavailable documents the Federal Elections Commission sent former Chafee campaign manager Ian Lang on the results of its investigation Lang had requested into alleged Laffey campaign violations during last year’s primary contest.

As previously reported, Laffey agreed to pay a $25,000 civil penalty for failing to disclose, on his publicly filed fundraising reports, the Club for Growth’s role as a conduit for more than $366,000 in campaign contributions.

Lang also alleged a prohibited corporate campaign contribution by Laffey supporter and fundraiser Vincent Indeglia. The charge focused on a letter Indeglia circulated among the employees of his company, American Labor Services Inc., that not only advocated Laffey’s election but also asked each to provide the name, address and telephone number “of every Hispanic citizen he or she knows is not registered to vote . . . so that they may be registered as Republican voters.”

The FEC concluded the company “made a prohibited corporate expenditure,” but opted to “admonish” Indeglia and his company rather than pursue a case since the cost to produce the letters was “likely de minimis and the actual dissemination was very limited.”

Local Obama backers

seeking volunteers

Calling all those “Obama curious.”

The local volunteer group, GObama RI, plans to host a series of informational happy hour events beginning this week to discuss the Democratic presidential candidate.

“The happy hours will be very casual — just drop in, have a drink, learn a little about Obama. There’ll be a suggested donation, which goes back to the campaign, but no hassling!” GObama volunteer Jill Harrington told Political Scene. “We want to increase understanding of Sen. Obama and his campaign, raise a little money, and bring together people who want to get involved but might not know how.”

The group primarily consists of young professionals and students, Harrington says. One of GObama RI’s immediate goals will be finding volunteers to work for the campaign in New Hampshire.

The first happy hour is scheduled Thursday from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at the Local 121 on Washington Street in Providence — yes, that’s the new restaurant owned by state Sen. Joshua Miller, D-Cranston. The second happy hour is set for Thursday, Oct. 11, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at Blaze on Thayer.

smackay@projo.com