Lani Guinier says fairness requires that she be allowed a Senate hearing on her troubled nomination as the nation's chief civil rights enforcer. But the White House, acknowledging strong opposition Thursday, said, "You have to be realistic about the situation."
"My own mother does not recognize me in terms of the press and the media that I've been receiving," Guinier said on ABC-TV's "Nightline" program late Wednesday. "If there's a senator who only knows me through the media, I wouldn't blame" him for criticizing her.She vowed to continue to fight for her nomination.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was among those pressuring Clinton to withdraw the nomination.
"In her writings, professor Guinier evinces a fundamental hostility to the American democratic system of government as presently constituted," Hatch said in a statement released Thursday.
"In particular, her hostility focuses on the principle of majority rule as it is practiced in the United States," he said.
"She believes democracy is unfair unless racial minorities receive a quota of legislation favorable to minorities, as she defines what is favorable."
Guinier's TV appearance came shortly after a senior administration official said Clinton had told top aides he believed growing Senate opposition had doomed the nomination.
"The president said this nomination had no future," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The aide added that Clinton did not say outright that he would withdraw the nomination, even though that was the implication.
Roy Neel, deputy chief of staff at the White House, defended Guinier Thursday morning, saying on CBS that "her writings have been misunderstood and taken out of context."
But Neel, in a later appearance on Fox Morning News, said, "You have to be realistic about the situation. If there is severe opposition, you have to step back and figure out what's going on with that, figure out how much of it is real and how much is just air.
"We're doing that right now. She's working hard to state her case on this," Neel said.
The statements followed days of news reports that Clinton would drop Guinier. Those reports continued Thursday, with The New York Times quoting unidentified White House officials as saying Clinton decided Wednesday evening to withdraw the nomination. Only the timing and manner of her withdrawal needed to be worked out, the Times said.
Guinier, a 43-year-old University of Pennsylvania law professor who led the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's voting rights project for 71/2 years in the 1980s, has been attacked as a "quota queen" and "far out of the mainstream" on issues such as affirmative action. Critics say she has espoused extreme race-based positions in her writings on the Voting Rights Act.
In her writings, Guinier has said:
- The federal Voting Rights Act can be used to guarantee not only the right to vote, but the right to effective representation in government.
- That can be accomplished by different election procedures, a "minority veto" in legislatures, or rotating leadership positions.
"The Voting Rights Act should be used to monitor all aspects of the political process to challenge the right of the majority to its monopoly of power at the executive and legislative, not just the electoral, level," she wrote in an article for the Brookings Institution last year.
- Some blacks, particularly those elected by whites, may not be considered "authentic" representatives of minority needs.
On ABC, she denied she favored quotas and said she should be allowed a forum to "correct the record."
"Fairness requires that I be given an opportunity to present my views to the Senate" at a confirmation hearing, Guinier said at what was a rare public appearance for an administration nominee.