Latinos Push for a Seat on U.S. Bench : Law: Flexing rising political muscle, leaders lobby to fill federal court vacancy with a Mexican-American.

With one or two judgeships up for grabs at the San Diego federal court, Latino lawyers, judges, business and political leaders are waging a first-ever organized campaign to seat a Mexican-American on the bench.

Never has a Latino sat on the San Diego federal bench. It’s time, activists said in repeated interviews last week, stressing that qualified candidates stand ready to serve and that the nomination of a Latino offers the tantalizing prospect of instant political clout with San Diego’s fast-growing Latino community.

Those organizing the campaign argue the logic of it. They also note the underlying emotional question. With a caseload made up mostly of low-level smuggling and drug cases stemming from arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border, the San Diego court has been dispensing justice in San Diego and Imperial counties for 24 years. All that time--and not one Mexican-American judge.

“There’s a Mexican term: ‘Ya basta!’ It means, ‘Enough!’ ” said Luis Aragon, a San Diego County prosecutor. “I think we’re moving beyond affirmative action. We’re asking for affirmative fairness.”

For San Diego’s Latino community, the campaign also marks a new test of emerging political strength--and savvy. “It is clearly the No. 1 issue, for now, for right now,” said Jesse Navarro, a businessman who founded the San Diego County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Reflecting statewide trends, San Diego County’s population became more Latino during the 1980s, U.S. Census data shows. Latinos accounted for 20.4% of the county’s population, up 86% from the 1980 total, to 510,781 people, according to the 1990 Census.

In the city of San Diego, the Census counted 229,519 Latinos, a 76% increase since 1980 and 21% of the city’s 1990 total of 1.1 million, the figures indicate.

The growth in the city’s Latino community played a pivotal role in last year’s San Diego City Council redistricting process, resulting in the creation of the city’s first Hispanic-majority district.

Fresh from that victory, San Diego’s various Mexican-American communities have united again to urge the appointment of a Latino to the federal bench. With Hispanics making up 20% of the city and the county, it’s not too much to ask for one Hispanic judge among the eight on the federal bench in San Diego, activists said.

“I think that in a town that is 20% Hispanic the bench must reflect the community,” said Manuel Ramirez, a San Diego attorney and president of La Raza Lawyers Assn., a 40-attorney group. “There’s no excuse for it not to reflect the community,” he said.

In the past, activists said, Latinos used to hear that there were no qualified Latino lawyers in town. With Mexican-American lawyers now in the role of senior law firm partners and on the trial and appellate courts, that time has passed, activists said.

“We’re unanimous, regardless of where we are in the political spectrum, in saying, ‘It’s time somebody be appointed,’ ” said Jess Haro, a member of the board of directors of the Chicano Federation, a political advocacy group. “As far as I’m concerned, whether it’s the state or the federal bench, we’ve been deliberately overlooked.”

Late last month, the federal court welcomed its second female judge when Marilyn Huff, a partner at San Diego’s biggest law firm, Gray, Cary, Ames & Frye, was sworn in.

The court’s first female judge, Judith N. Keep, appointed 11 years ago, is now the court’s chief judge, meaning she not only decides cases, she serves as the court’s top administrator.

There is one black male on the San Diego federal court, Judge Earl B. Gilliam. The three other current full-time judges are white and male. The four senior, or part-time judges over age 65, are white and male.

Officially, the court has two vacancies. Last year, veteran San Diego trial lawyer James A. McIntyre, a white male, was recommended by then-U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) for one of those spots. No one has been nominated for the second seat.

The recommendation and nomination process is complex and highly political. A candidate is first recruited and screened informally by local committee, then recommended by a U.S. senator, then formally nominated by the President. He or she finally becomes a judge when confirmed by a majority vote of the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Sen. John R. Seymour (R-Calif.), who took Wilson’s spot, now has the job of making recommendations. Although Seymour is the state’s junior senator, the White House looks to him for recommendations because the state’s senior senator, Alan Cranston, is a Democrat.

Seymour must run for election in 1992. From the Latino perspective, it seems painfully obvious that it would be politically expedient for Seymour to tab a Mexican-American for the San Diego bench.

“Our community is coming of age when it comes to voting and being involved in the larger community,” said Raul Silva Martinez, a San Diego lawyer and head of Camino Real, a 38-member lobbying group made up of business people.

The panel is seeking a meeting with Seymour on this very issue, Martinez said. “I think an appointment would be extremely, extremely prestigious and important and would send the right message to us,” Martinez said.

Oscar Padilla, who runs a San Diego insurance agency, said, “I couldn’t promise (Seymour) a certain amount of money for his campaign and I couldn’t promise a certain number of votes--I don’t work that way. I don’t promise numbers or figures.

“But,” Padilla said, “I could promise loyalty and support in return for that candidate recognizing and being sensitive to the needs of the Hispanic community.”

Over the past few weeks, Latino community leaders have had quiet meetings with Seymour’s representatives and they, in turn, have met with potential candidates. “Several Hispanics have been contacted by members of the (screening) committee, to see if they would be interested in applying,” said a member of the committee who asked to remain unnamed.

Lawyer Victor A. Vilaplana took himself out of the running, saying he just became managing partner at his firm, Los Angeles-based Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. Judge Gilbert Nares, who sits in San Diego on the California 4th District Court of Appeal, also politely declined.

Other possibilities have emerged. Judge Jesus Rodriguez, who has sharply reduced the criminal backlog at the San Diego Superior Court, said he would be interested in the job. Rodriguez, the first Latino appointed to the Superior Court by former Gov. George Deukmejian, has wide support among the Latino bench and bar.

Irma Gonzalez, a federal magistrate who resigned a few months ago to become a Superior Court judge in Vista, also has her supporters. She applied for what turned out to be Huff’s job. She said she believes her application is still active but that she has not been in contact recently with anyone from Seymour’s office.

Having identified candidates, Latino groups plan in the next few weeks to court Seymour. Aside from the Camino Real group, the La Raza lawyers organization has been arranging a meeting, according to its president, Ramirez. A special 10-member committee founded by businessman Navarro is knocking on the door.

For Latinos, this kind of hands-on politics is a learning experience. “One of the things in our community that we have got to learn is that this is not a unique lobbying effort,” said Art Madrid, a Pacific Bell executive and mayor of La Mesa. “This is something that has to be done, and going through channels is the way it’s done.”

Even that’s no guarantee, however.

Consider McIntyre’s case. There’s been no action on the recommendation that his name go forward, and President Bush has not formally nominated him.

The reason is an apparent “turf battle” between Seymour and the U.S. Justice Department, which reviews recommendations on the President’s behalf, according to a source close to the process who asked to remain unnamed. Apparently, Justice Department officials “decided they want to be the ones to say yes or no,” the source said.

McIntyre said he had been told very little. “I’ve been told there are a number of recommendations of Wilson’s that haven’t moved forward,” he said. “I really don’t know what the reasons for it are.”

The result is that it’s unclear whether there is one opening on the San Diego bench, or two.

Latino activists said they are assuming it’s just one. But one is enough, activists said.

“The Republicans say they’re actively recruiting us to get into their party,” said Haro, of the Chicano Federation. With an eye toward reshaped congressional districts in the 1992 elections, Republicans embarked in early 1990 on a nationwide drive to recruit more minorities.

“The way to validate that is to do things like appointing us to the bench,” Haro said.

Seymour said recently that he was making it a priority to find even more women and minorities to recommend for judgeships.

In an April interview with a legal trade paper, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, Seymour said that when it came to picking judges, “I want to match the diversity of California’s population.”

Seymour did not return a phone call last week to his Washington, D.C., office. But in the interview with the Daily Journal, he also said he would “like greater diversity of ethnic background and more women on the bench.”

A source on the screening committee said it’s uncertain what those broad strokes really mean. There are no promises, the source said.

“We would all agree, we would all be glad to see a Hispanic come out exceptionally well qualified, at the top of the heap,” the source said. “If it happens, that would be wonderful. But it may not.

“I think the most important thing for any minority to know is that if they’re picked, they get it on the merits,” the source said. “I think that’s going to be the rules.”

In another twist, there seems little doubt that there is a further consideration, that Wilson, who is now governor of California, still has a hand in the selection process.

San Diego lawyer John G. Davies, who served as general chairman of the judicial screening committee for Wilson, is doing the same job for Seymour. So Wilson needs to be courted, too.

“Everybody in the legal community, including the senator, and Gov. Wilson, would like to see all minorities and females well represented on all courts,” Davies said.

So, for now, it’s time for politicking. “But this is the bottom line,” said businessman Navarro. “We sat in the past. We quietly crossed our hands in the past, saying, ‘It’s been our fault. There’s nobody else to blame but us.’

“This time we are not sitting down,” Navarro said. “If there are no positive results on this issue, we are going to politically and economically make a very significant dent and send a strong message to the person or persons responsible for not making an appointment when we have qualified persons available. We mean business.”