The conservative group Progress for America promotes Judge John Roberts' nomination on the radio and at a $493 lunch.

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, August 27, 2005

BY KATHERINE GREGG
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- A national campaign to win U.S. Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts sent two emissaries to Rhode Island yesterday to make their pitch to a handful of the state's GOP faithful over heaping plates of shrimp, lobster and calamari.

The luncheon guests were then treated by the advocacy group Progress for America to a second course of crab melts and lobster salad; a recitation of Roberts' personal and legal attributes ("He mows his own lawn"); and reminders of the relative ease with which Senate Republicans voted in 1993 to put on the high court Clinton nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal former ACLU lawyer who "never would have been their first choice."

Here to talk about "The Ginsburg Precedent" was Barbara Comstock, a former director of public affairs for the Department of Justice.

Comstock now works for Progress for America, which describes itself on its Web site as an advocacy group committed to "mobilizing conservative voters" and "setting the record straight about liberal groups like Moveon.org, AARP & the unions."

The message Comstock brought to Hemenway's restaurant in Providence: Roberts cannot answer the questions he will undoubtedly be asked during the confirmation hearings that begin Sept. 6 on where he stands, for example, on overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, without potentially disqualifying himself from future decisions.

"People will ask questions that can't be answered," she said. Roberts has already been the target of critical TV ads aired by the nation's leading abortion-rights group in Rhode Island and Maine, where a vote to confirm Roberts could put moderate Republicans Lincoln D. Chafee and Olympia Snowe in tough political spots.

Later, on radio station WHJJ, Comstock said: "When Justice Ginsburg was asked these very same types of questions in her confirmation, she pointed out, rightly so, that it would be inappropriate for her to answer." She added that Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat who was Senate Judiciary chairman at the time, "said she didn't have to."

Her comments drew this response from local lawyer Jeffrey Techentin, who accompanied onetime GOP congressional candidate Giovanni Cicione to the lunch: "No one questions if John Roberts is qualified. The question is whether he is too conservative or, if you are [GOP commentator] Ann Coulter, he is too liberal."

Techentin said the public would probably sympathize if Democrats ultimately complain they don't know enough about Roberts to vote for him, because he won't answer questions. "It's a complaint that resonates," he said.

But Comstock said: "You shouldn't know how he is going to rule."

At her side during yesterday's $493 lunch and media tour was Washington-based lawyer Greg Garre, who described himself as a longtime friend and former colleague of Roberts' in the solicitor general's office and the law firm Hogan & Hartson.

Their visit here was part of a two-week, 14-state campaign by friends, former colleagues and national Republican political operatives to respond to, and try to preempt before confirmation hearings begin, some of the criticism the Roberts' nomination has sparked.

Among those attending the small luncheon were former state Senate candidate and potential candidate for attorney general Lloyd Monroe; 1982 GOP gubernatorial candidate Vincent Marzullo; and lawyers Joseph White and Eugene Bernardo.

On radio, the response was cool. "Barbara of Scituate" called to say the spectacle of lobbying for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court upset her enough to make her want to "call my senator and say vote against the nomination."

Greg McCarthy, a spokesman for Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said Reed remains hopeful that "Judge Roberts' testimony before the committee will provide a clear understanding of his views on a number of issues." McCarthy also supplied excerpts of comments Justice Sandra Day O'Connor made during her own confirmation hearings: "I am opposed to abortion as a matter of birth control or otherwise." (Roberts has been nominated to replace O'Connor.)

Chafee spokesman Stephen Hourahan said the senator is keeping an open mind

But Sheldon Whitehouse, one of his two Democratic opponents, said: "I think there are some very serious questions that remain unanswered about this nominee . . . and where he stands with respect to Roe v. Wade, if he accepts there is even a right to privacy in the Constitution . . . and frankly, whether he intends to be part of a calculated effort to turn the Supreme Court into a right-wing advocacy political body."

Of yesterday's Progress for America lunch, Whitehouse quipped: "Are they going to eat their way to a confirmation?"

The other Democrat in the race, Secretary of State Matt Brown, was unavailable for comment.