Positioned for a Call to Justice Positioned for a Call to Justice
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 10, 2001; Page C01
Al Gonzales is not entirely comfortable with the direction the discussion has taken. He's been White House counsel for a few months, and affirmative action -- the controversial policy giving preference to minorities -- is not something he's eager to discuss. Perhaps he is concerned that he may have spoken too freely. "I am not naive enough to think that race has never played a role in the opportunities given me," he has just said. Then he asks, "How do you define affirmative action?" At 45, Gonzales has lived the American dream, from inner-city poverty to Harvard Law School, from the first minority partner at a major Houston law firm to this elegant West Wing office at the White House.
And he's much talked about today as a potential nominee to the Supreme Court. The Republican Party has historically opposed racial preferences, and Gonzales wants to make it clear he's no radical on the subject. "If affirmative action is quotas, then I am not for it," he says. "If it means equal opportunity, then I say I support that. "But to ask for special treatment because of race, that bothers me. And that may seem sort of hypocritical from someone who has probably been helped because of his race."
'The conversation is interrupted by the roar of President Bush's chopper landing outside Gonzales' window. When it resumes, he chats enthusiastically about his two years on the Texas Supreme Court. There is no hint that this calm, soft-spoken man may be uneasy. But then . . . "Can I go back and make one final point about affirmative action?" he asks politely, noting that anything he says on the subject "will be really examined." "This is a very important point. If any discussion of affirmative action ends up in your story, I need you to say this: My own personal feelings about affirmative action are not indicative of how I might rule on affirmative action if I were ever given the opportunity to rule on it from the bench again." He pauses as the reporter takes down the quote. "Okay?"
Graduation Was a Triumph Before he is even asked, Gonzales declares in an interview that he has no Supreme Court aspirations. He is a Beltway novice, but he's catching on quickly. "I am not a candidate for the Supreme Court," he states emphatically. "I don't intend to be a candidate." Of course, he is already. Many believe that George W. Bush uprooted this father of three from Austin and brought him to Washington so that the party's right flank -- including the well-known conservative lawyers in Gonzales' own office -- could look him over.
It is also assumed in legal and political circles that Bush wants to appoint the first Hispanic to the high court, and that he likes and trusts Gonzales, a Mexican American. The president has clearly enjoyed publicly telling and retelling Gonzales' personal story of triumph over adversity, as he has promoted Gonzales' career from Texas to Washington. Alberto Gonzales was born in San Antonio in 1955 and raised in Houston, the second of eight children living in a two-bedroom house.
There was no hot running water and no telephone for most of his childhood. Gonzales views his success as part serendipity, part hard work, and part recognizing opportunity. One thing is certain: Little came easy for him in the beginning. His parents had met as young migrant farm workers in Texas. Maria was a homemaker with a sixth-grade education; Pablo was a construction worker who only finished second grade. He provided for his family but he was an alcoholic. The Gonzaleses, Roman Catholics, were strict and kept their brood on a short leash. When playing in the neighborhood, they had to report back home every 30 minutes.
"I always told them to respect their elders and their teachers, to tell the truth and to look out for each other," says Maria Gonzales. His neighborhood and his school -- Douglas MacArthur High School in north Houston -- were largely blue-collar and racially mixed. For that reason, Gonzales says, he doesn't recall experiencing "any expressed bias." (He admits that his Caucasian high school sweetheart's parents were not keen on the relationship.) "I do have memories in Texas -- you have to take state history, and a large part of the course is Mexico and the Battle of the Alamo," he says. "And I remember in class fidgeting very uncomfortably with talk about how Mexico had plotted against Davy Crockett.
It made me very uncomfortable." High school classmates and former teachers remember Gonzales as a popular athlete -- he played varsity football and baseball -- and a conscientious student who was in the National Honor Society. Gonzales worked at Rice University games on weekends as a soda vendor for pocket money and dreamed of one day attending the private college. But while many of his friends went on to college after graduation, Gonzales enlisted in the Air Force.
He says neither his parents nor the school ever suggested college to him, and he never took standardized college entrance tests in high school. "It was considered a victory just to get me graduated because my parents had not graduated from high school," he says. "All I remember is how much I enjoyed school and really feeling without much direction when I graduated . . . and not knowing what to do." The Air Force ended up being the next best thing to college. Stationed at Fort Yukon, Alaska, he met a couple of graduates from the Air Force Academy who encouraged him to apply to the school in Colorado Springs.
The Air Force flew him from Fort Yukon to an old gym at a base in Fairbanks to take his physical, and he recalls taking the ACT college entrance test with only a proctor in the room. Gonzales started at the academy in 1975. It was in Colorado that he met his first wife, Diane Clemens, who was attending a neighboring college. Within two years, he was homesick for Houston and he had decided that he wanted to be a lawyer. He transferred to Rice, graduating with a degree in political science in 1979 -- the only one of the eight Gonzales children who made it to college. Gonzales seems uncomfortable talking about his brothers and sisters, because, says someone close to him, he doesn't want to flaunt his high-profile success.
He is the only one of the seven living siblings who left Houston, and the only one who isn't able to go to his mother's home (Pablo Gonzales died on the job in 1982, when he fell from a rice silo) for every holiday. "I just try to keep it as normal as possible," he says about relating to his family. "I don't talk [with them] about myself or work unless specifically asked. "What's happening in my life is no more important that what's happening in my brother's life. It is difficult in the sense that it makes you painfully aware of the inequities in life. It does makes you wonder why a person who has grown up in exactly the same environment is able to succeed." 'We Know Very Little' Within weeks of Gonzales' arrival in Washington, advocacy groups on both the right and the left were well versed on his rŽsumŽ, his contributions to Texas's historically Democratic Hispanic community, and his rulings from the Texas Supreme Court.
But it is what court watchers do not know that troubles almost all of them. Liberals and conservatives alike view a Gonzales nomination to the Supreme Court as a challenge because he lacks a record either on the bench or through legal writings that might identify a specific ideology. Both sides also believe that, for this very reason, the Democratic takeover of the Senate has enhanced his chances, because President Bush is unlikely to nominate a conservative firebrand who could ignite a vitriolic confirmation battle. In stark contrast to more prominent conservative candidates for the high court, Gonzales has written little and has said less.
The Texas Supreme Court handles only civil and juvenile cases, and many of his opinions there dealt with business issues, making it difficult to discern his judicial philosophy. There were, however, a few rulings regarding abortion that infuriated antiabortion activists but did nothing to comfort Democrats. "Gonzales frightens groups like ours," says Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), which Cavendish says would oppose a Gonzales nomination. "It will be harder to mobilize opposition because he has such a scanty record. And if he ends up being the first Hispanic nominated, it will be considered a bold move, and harder for people devoted to progressive causes to convince senators to give him the same level of scrutiny."
Some conservatives are also skeptical, fearful that Gonzales could turn out to be another David Souter, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by the first President Bush but today is considered one of the more liberal members of the body. "We know very little about Judge Gonzales -- as an individual and as a public official," says Thomas Jipping, director of the conservative Free Congress Foundation's Judicial Selection Monitoring Project. Gonzales' friends and former law partners have long assumed that he is a pro-business fiscal conservative, and more moderate on social issues such as abortion.
But most concede that they've never discussed those issues with him. Gonzales paints himself as a largely apolitical lawyer, who began leaning toward the GOP only after joining the prestigious Houston firm of Vinson & Elkins. He says he votes for the person, not the party, adding that he would have supported George W. Bush even if he had been a Democrat. And he insists that when deciding cases, he is not guided by any ideology -- only the law. But his impartiality, he cautions, should never be confused with ambivalence. "While I may seem to be neutral, I have very strong convictions about issues," he says.
"But as a judge, I think it would be inappropriate to apply them." 'Sacrifices Had to Be Made' After graduating from Rice, Gonzales entered Harvard Law School. He says he pieced together various forms of financial aid to pay for the pricey private schools -- the GI Bill, student loans, scholarships. "My parents didn't pay a dime," he says. Gonzales kept a relatively low profile at Harvard, largely socializing with other married classmates. His friends recall that he simply wanted to return home to Houston and become a business lawyer -- which he did at Vinson & Elkins. "I was V&E's first minority partner," he says proudly.
When Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994, the local legal community knew he was looking for a Hispanic to become his staff legal counsel. And Gonzales was ready for something new. By then, he had spent more than a decade as a "transactional" lawyer, negotiating business contracts for clients, and his personal life had changed. He and his first wife had divorced amicably in 1985, and he had married a longtime friend, Rebecca Turner. They have three sons (one is from her previous marriage). Gonzales also devoted much of his free time in the '80s and early '90s to helping Houston's Hispanic community.
According to lawyers and activists, Gonzales felt a strong obligation to be a role model and believed that meant more than remaining at a prestigious law firm and earning a lucrative salary. "He started giving back early on," says Dorothy Caram, a prominent Hispanic activist in Houston. "He was committed to helping those coming up behind him." Says Gasper Mir, a Houston accountant: "He had a high incentive to help his community -- he felt he had a voice." Bush promptly hired him on the recommendation of a number of Gonzales' law partners. Rebecca -- who worked for the Texas comptroller's office before moving to Washington last month -- knew their lives would change in Austin. "It was very difficult for me to make the change, to go from a partner's salary to government salary," she says. "But it never caused Al a moment of anxiety. He knew we'd be fine. He knew the door had been opened for him and sacrifices had to be made. It was an easy choice."
If it was a future in public service Gonzales sought, he picked the right horse to ride. Bush, who prizes loyalty, immediately saw that the low-key Gonzales could be a trusted adviser, took him into the inner circle and repeatedly gave him opportunities as well as a nickname, "Fredo." It was Gonzales who in 1996, as Bush's gubernatorial counsel, got Bush out of jury duty on a drunken driving case, in which the governor might have had to disclose his own DWI arrest 20 years earlier. In late 1997, Bush appointed Gonzales Texas secretary of state, the official who maintains state records and serves as the chief election officer.
Just over a year later, Bush appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court, a controversial move because Gonzales had never served on a lower court. Gonzales confided to friends at the time that he wasn't sure it was the right job for him. He liked working in the governor's office, liked the action. But Gonzales says he grew to love the bench. To remain on the court, he had to run for election in 2000, something his wife says he thought was inappropriate for a judge because of the fundraising involved.
But Texans for Public Justice, a legal watchdog group, has criticized Gonzales for accepting money from parties with issues that might come before the court, such as Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a conservative group that gave Gonzales $20,000 and sent out a fundraising letter on his behalf. Gonzales raised close to $700,000 for his campaign. "He didn't want to know who gave the money," says Rebecca Gonzales. "His campaign staff would come up to him at a reception and say, 'Be nice to so-and-so, he gave a check,' and he'd say, 'I'm going to be nice to everyone.' He hated the money part of it; he hated the idea of judges having to raise money. It sickens him."
A View of the Court
Gonzales spends much of his time at the White House these days screening potential federal judges for an administration committed to putting its conservative imprint on the courts. One of his first moves in Washington was to eliminate the historic involvement of the American Bar Association -- considered liberal-leaning -- in the selection of federal judges, although Gonzales himself is a member of the ABA. Gonzales says he and Bush share the opinion that the role of federal judges should be "fairly limited, and that is to interpret the law and to resist the temptation -- and believe me, there is a temptation -- to legislate from the bench." He declines to comment on the Supreme Court involvement in the presidential election. Gonzales says the "biggest problem" with the government system today is that "too many of our social issues and problems are expected to be decided in the court." Historically, he notes, social issues were "debated and decided, appropriately in my opinion, in the legislature, churches, community groups, civil groups. And now because these community groups themselves are disintegrating, more and more is expected from judges, and we don't have the expertise."
Despite this view, Gonzales found himself ruling on intensely watched abortion cases on the Texas Supreme Court. Almost immediately after Texas passed a law requiring parental notification when a minor sought an abortion, the court was mired in appeals, trying to interpret the "bypass" provisions that would permit an abortion without such notice. In one prominent case, Gonzales agreed with the majority in ruling that one 17-year-old was "sufficiently well informed to have an abortion without parental notification." Antiabortion activists excoriated the decision. In that opinion, Gonzales wrote that while "the results of the court's decision here may be personally troubling to me as a parent, it is my obligation as a judge to impartially apply the laws of the state." Was he implying that he was against abortion, as some abortion rights advocates suspect? "I wasn't implying anything," he says.
"My moral views on these issues are immaterial." Gonzales declined to give his personal view on abortion, or on Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. He says he has never discussed his view of abortion with Bush. But he offers liberals some peace of mind when he says he supports the principle of following established legal precedent -- known in legal language as stare decisis. He says he agrees with Attorney General John Ashcroft when he said Roe v. Wade is settled law, and should be enforced as such. "You need to be careful about disregarding precedent," says Gonzales. "There are dangers in doing that. There are subtle expectations that arise, as a result of years of precedent, that I think should only be ignored under exceptional circumstances.
And I am willing to concede that there are exceptional circumstances. . . . But I think we have to be very careful." Moving North What has surprised him most about Washington, Gonzales says, is that "you can't keep a secret. Things are said and you figure they're said in confidence and the next thing you know, you read about them in the papers." Still, in an administration that has been known to freeze out the media, Gonzales has been comfortable talking to the press. Rebecca Gonzales, who just settled her family into their new home in Vienna, wrote in a recent e-mail that she hasn't really focused on the value placed on power in Washington and on how her life will change, "other than Al and I both being surprised to find out that of his three invitations to the White House Correspondents' Dinner, none of them included me.
In Austin, you would never invite someone to a black-tie event and not include their spouse. . . . It would just seem rude. I'm happy to say he declined all three invitations." As for Al Gonzales, he will not speculate about his future in Washington. In a telephone interview the other day during which the high court was, of course, mentioned, he stated once again, "I told you, I am not a candidate."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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