PORTLAND – Bob Hirshon left Tuesday for Washington to lobby Republican senators in hopes of reversing President Bush’s decision to end a 48-year practice of having the American Bar Association evaluate judicial nominees.

Hirshon, a Portland lawyer who is the ABA’s president-elect, plans to focus his attention on Republican senators. He is targeting senators because they approve or reject the president’s choices for the bench.

Many believe Bush’s decision to stop having the ABA’s Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary review candidates before they are nominated is meant to appease conservatives, who see the organization as liberal.

“It is important for the public to understand,” Hirshon said Monday before departing, “that of the 2,000 reviews that have been conducted by this committee since 1960, there have been 26 unfavorable.”

Only three of the 26, he said, were directed at Republican presidents’ potential nominees.

The ABA began reviewing prospective judicial nominees at President Eisenhower’s request in 1953. Since then, the ABA’s committee has evaluated potential judges before their names have been made public.

The White House announced last Thursday that it no longer would give the ABA advance word on names under consideration. Instead, the nation’s largest lawyers’ group will have to do its research after nominations become public, as do other organizations.