Maine’s two senators both announced they would support John Ashcroft for attorney general without waiting until the Senate Judiciary Committee has conducted its confirmation hearing. Their early decisions weren’t needed and raise questions about the openness of the Senate process.

Sen. Susan Collins met with him for 20 minutes recently and promptly endorsed him. Sen. Olympia Snowe withheld a formal endorsement after meeting with Mr. Ashcroft the next day but issued a statement praising him without reservation.

The Ashcroft nomination is shaping up as the most contentious in the proposed new Cabinet. Real questions of fact must be determined about Mr. Ashcroft’s record as Missouri attorney general, governor and senator. His supporters and his critics differ 180 degrees on point after point. By coming out in his favor before both sides have been heard, Maine’s Republican senators have done their party a great service. Known as moderates and supporters of abortion rights, they have helped create an impression that any fair-minded person would approve of the nomination and that it will be a shoo-in.

But at the same time they have short-circuited their constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on presidential appointments. President-elect George Bush late last week said he expects tough questions for his nominee, but he expected the Senate to provide a fair hearing. That’s what the public should want, but what is the use of a hearing if senators make up their minds before the first question is asked. Equally premature was Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, who announced she would oppose the nomination.

Sens. Snowe and Collins both expressed confidence that Mr. Ashcroft would enforce present laws, which include a ban on violence against abortion clinics. Critics, however, emphasize that he co-sponsored the most extreme form of a constitutional ban on abortions. It would have outlawed all abortions except when necessary to save the mother’s life. Rape, incest and a threat to the mother’s health would not have escaped the ban.

Abortion rights also figured in Mr. Ashcroft’s successful lobbying effort to deny a federal judgeship last year to Justice Ronnie White of the Missouri Supreme Court. Mr. Ashcroft said at the time that he opposed the nomination because Justice White was a “pro-criminal” judge who often dissented on the death penalty for violent offenders.

Perhaps more important, he also objected to Justice White’s involvement in killing a Missouri anti-abortion bill in 1992, when he was a state representative. Justice White has said he wants to appear as a witness against Mr. Ashcroft.

The committee may also hear about Mr. Ashcroft’s so far unpublished speech in 1999 when he received an honorary degree from the conservative Bob Jones University, and about his adamant opposition to voluntary school desegregation plans in St. Louis and Kansas City.

The struggle over the Ashcroft nomination is just beginning. True moderates will listen to the testimony, appraise the information and reach a considered decision whether Mr. Ashcroft represents American mainstream thinking, as his supporters contend, or whether he represents extremist views, as his critics maintain.