Guns trained on hardline Bush choices

WASHINGTON - Most of President-elect George W. Bush's finished cabinet appear headed for easy Senate confirmation, but three or four, led by conservative Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft, will face tough questions from Democrats.

Bush's choices are headed by experienced Republican heavy-hitters such as Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, veterans of previous Republican Administrations and old hands who should glide smoothly through the Senate confirmation process.

Even lesser-known choices such as Ann Veneman, the nominee to head the Agriculture Department, and Anthony Principi at Veterans' Affairs were high officials in those departments in the Administration of Bush's father, former President George Bush, and are well-known on Capitol Hill.

In the absence of fresh bombshells about hidden scandals, they are expected to roll quickly through their Senate hearings and win confirmation.

But several of the cabinet choices by Bush, who said during his campaign that he was "a uniter, not a divider," will face more pointed questions and heavy flak before they win expected Senate approval.

Analysts said at least four of the nominees, who thrilled conservatives and dismayed Democrats expecting Bush to move to the political centre after his narrow and disputed election triumph, will face a particularly close review.

"This will be a chance for the Senate to make the record clear and point out areas where the nominees should watch themselves," said Stephen Hess, an analyst at the Brookings Institution.

Heading the endangered list is Ashcroft, a prominent Christian conservative, abortion rights foe and former Missouri senator who angered civil rights groups with his successful battle to keep a black Missouri judge off the federal Bench.

The nominee to head the Interior Department, former Colorado Attorney-General Gale Norton, has rankled environmentalists with her criticisms of federal environmental regulations.

Environmentalists have also expressed concern about the choice of former Michigan senator Spencer Abraham to head the Energy Department.

Bush has angered unions with his choice of Linda Chavez, a former official in President Ronald Reagan's Administration and a strong opponent of affirmative action, to head the Labour Department.

Her nomination, said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, was "an insult to American working men and women."

Ashcroft faces an angry coalition of liberal, civil rights and abortion rights groups in what could be the toughest cabinet confirmation battle since 1989, when another former Republican senator, John Tower of Texas, was rejected as Defence Secretary under Bush's father.

Democrats have promised tough questioning over Ashcroft's effort to scuttle President Bill Clinton's nomination of Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White, the first black to serve on the state's high court, as a federal judge.

The Senate rejected White, whom Ashcroft labelled "pro-criminal" and soft on capital punishment.

Ashcroft lost his Senate re-election bid last November to dead Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, who was killed in a plane crash three weeks before the election.

But the Senate tends to look kindly on former members, and philosophical differences have not been enough in the past to sink a cabinet choice in the absence of scandal or real wrongdoing.

"I would hope that all of our nominations sail through, but that's not generally the way it goes," said Bush when announcing the last of his cabinet.

- REUTERS

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