News
Government
Feb. 22, 2002
Testing the Viability of Bipartisan Nominations
LOS ANGELES - Leaders of the state's bipartisan judicial selection committee are giving final consideration to two more candidates for U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, including another Democrat - a move that some see as a test of whether the bipartisan process will work.
The two candidates under consideration are Republican Orange County Superior Court Judge James V. Selna and Steven E. Zipperstein, Democrat and senior vice president and deputy general counsel for Verizon Communications in New York.
So far, the state bipartisan committee has referred only one Democrat to the White House for consideration: Munger Tolles & Olson partner Richard Drooyan, a former Los Angeles chief assistant U.S. attorney and political centrist who many expected would satisfy both parties.
The fact that the White House has not yet nominated Drooyan has led some local lawyers and judges to question the bipartisan nature of the process. They wonder whether there is a chance for a Democrat being nominated if Drooyan doesn't make the cut.
"Richard Drooyan has impeccable credentials, including prosecutorial credentials, and it is quite surprising that he wouldn't be nominated, and hopefully they are being bipartisan in the process," Mel Levine of Los Angeles' Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and a former Democratic congressman said.
Drooyan said he didn't believe it would be appropriate to comment on the status of his possible nomination. In addition to Drooyan, there are three Republican candidates whose names were forwarded to the White House who have not yet been nominated.
Levine, who spent 10 years as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that while he hasn't been involved in the judicial selection process, he has paid close attention to it over the years and believes it should be bipartisan.
Elwood Lui, chair of the Central District committee, said that he believes the committee is working and that none of the candidates, including Drooyan, had been rejected. Zipperstein did not return a phone call for comment, and Selna did not comment on his own chances for nomination.
Zipperstein and Selna have been approved by the Los Angeles subcommittee for the Central District and are undergoing final vetting by the chair of the state committee, Westside lawyer and Bush confidant Gerald L. Parsky, according to sources. If Parsky approves, their names will be submitted to the White House for possible nomination.
Like Drooyan, Zipperstein, 42, was previously chief assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles under former U.S. Attorney Nora Manella, now a federal judge. Selna, 57, was a partner for 20 years at Los Angeles' O'Melveny & Myers.
California has eight vacancies on the federal bench: six in the Los Angeles Central District, one in San Francisco's Northern District and one in Sacramento's Eastern District.
So far, President Bush has nominated two candidates from the seven names submitted last year by the committee: Republican John "Jack" F. Walter and Independent Percy Anderson. Both men previously received nominations by Bush's father, but their names were shelved in a squabble between the White House and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who at the time was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he remains a member.
A third judicial candidate whose name was sent to the White House was Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Debra Yang. She also applied to be U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, and the White House indicated it planned to name her to the latter post.
The remaining three candidates whose names were forwarded to the White House are Orange County Superior Court Judge Thierry P. Colaw, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter D. Lichtman and Latham & Watkins partner Gregory Lindstrom.
Committee members said all the unnominated candidates whose names have been sent to the White House remain under consideration. But some sources in the legal community have questioned that assumption. In addition, according to a source in the legal community, at least one of the unnominated candidates is no longer under consideration by the White House.
Howard Gantman, spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said it's still too early to read anything into the fact that no Democrat has been nominated.
"We have good panels established, and so far it is working," Gantman said. "We have two good nominations.
"We would be disturbed if it is an extremely long time before other nominations come forward, but at this point in time, it seems to be working very well."
Last April, in an attempt to avoid the partisan rancor often associated with judicial appointments, the state's two Democratic senators, Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, reached an agreement with the Bush administration to form a bipartisan selection committee. Since then, the balance of power in the Senate, which must confirm Bush's nominations, has tipped toward the Democrats.
The California selection committee consists of four subcommittees of six members each - three Democrats and three Republicans - from the four judicial districts. Four members of each subcommittee must approve a candidate for that person's name to be forwarded to committee chair Parsky and his deputy, Eric George, a partner at Browne & Woods in Beverly Hills. That duo decides which names will be sent to the White House.
The subcommittees are not involved in the selection of appellate judges. However, the three Republican-appointed members from each panel will help select U.S. attorneys and U.S. marshals in California, which are appointed to four-year terms.
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Susan Mcraen
Daily Journal Staff Writer
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