Reigniting their national campaign to kill the nomination of District Court Judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Democrats have called forth the usual, reliable constituency groups to come to the aid of their party. In Maine, this task has fallen to Winston McGill, Rachel Talbot Ross and Ethan Strimling, all of the NAACP (BDN op-ed, Feb. 6). All too predictably, this Portland troika has delivered a highly politicized dose of the “stream of rhetoric” it pretends to decry.

Once past their naked invective – Pickering “is simply a bad judge” whose nomination delights “cross burners everywhere” – two “arguments” emerge, both based on distortions.

First, Pickering is accused of suffering a “staggering number” of reversals. Would it matter to the authors that Pickering’s reversal rate is lower than the national average, indeed, lower than the average of his fellow district court judges in the Fifth Circuit?

Second, McGill, Ross and Strimling charge the judge with “zealous activism in reducing the mandatory sentence of a Mississippi cross-burner.” Here’s what really happened: In 1994 three Mississippi men were charged in a cross-burning case under the federal hate crimes statute. The Clinton-Reno Justice Department plea-bargained with two of the men, including the ringleader and those men got off with no-jail pleas. The third, Daniel Swan, was tried and found guilty. The Justice Department recommended that Swan be sentenced to a minimum of five years under one statute and 21/2 years under a separate law.

How, Pickering wondered, did it make sense that the most guilty defendant (the ringleader) got off with a no-jail plea and Swan receive a 71/2-year sentence? “The recommendation of the government in this instance is clearly the most egregious instance of disproportionate sentencing recommended by the government in any case pending before this court,” he wrote. Furthermore, Pickering doubted whether both sentencing statutes the government was citing were simultaneously applicable to the case, and he asked the Civil Rights Division whether the same sentencing standards were being applied in other

federal circuits.

The judge waited three months for an answer. Forced to delay the sentencing because he’d received no response, Pickering ordered prosecutors to respond to his questions, to personally take the matter up with Attorney General Janet Reno, and to report back to him within 10 days. Finally,

the prosecutors dropped the demand that Swan be given the five-year

portion of the recommended sentence.

Sentencing Swan to 27 months in jail, Judge Pickering said at the hearing: “You’re going to the penitentiary because of what you did. And it’s an area we’ve got to stamp out … we’ve got to learn to live, races among each other. And the type of conduct you exhibited cannot and will not be tolerated. …. You did that which does hinder good race relations and was a despicable act. …” Neither the judge’s reasoning nor his words reflect the heart and mind of a racist.

In their selective diatribe, McGill, Ross and Strimling also neglected to tell you that in l967, Charles Pickering testified in court at what was described as “great personal risk to himself and his family” against the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan for the firebombing and murder of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer.

The authors, in an otherwise collective repository of arrogance and error, are finally right about one thing: “We [and if they actually voted for either of these ladies I’ll eat my hat] elected Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for episodes just like this.”

The issues of civil rights and fairness are too important to be the special province of any state, party, interest group or community – even Portland. Through their votes, the people of Maine have placed their trust in Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe precisely because both have demonstrated their independence and fealty to justice without regard for political consequence. I support the Pickering nomination and believe I have shown why the charges made against him are without merit. But, I’m not “calling” on Sens. Collins or Snowe to do anything except what they’ve always done: bring their careful, considered

judgment to the case.

Debra Plowman, of Hampden, is a former Republican member of the Maine Legislature where she served eight years on the Joint Standing

Committee on the Judiciary.