At that moment it represented a triumph for Ashcroft. He'd dropped plans to win the 2000 Republican presidential nomination due to little support, and he'd made an equally lackluster run to become chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1993. So Ashcroft's ability to convince every one of his GOP colleagues to join with him in voting down the nomination of Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White -- the first time Republicans had publicly rejected one of President Clinton's judicial nominees -- signaled real influence within the Republican Party.

Standing on the floor of the Senate, Ashcroft seemed to go out of his way to belittle and ridicule White. The Missouri senator labeled the Democratic judge "pro-criminal," and cautioned colleagues that White would substitute "personal politics" for the law, and "improperly exercise his will" if confirmed. That, despite the fact that White's judicial record was not all that different from judges Ashcroft had appointed to the Missouri Supreme Court when he was governor.

After the vote Ashcroft crowed that White's defeat was a victory for Missouri law enforcement. Instead, the "victory" haunts Ashcroft to this day. It ended his elected political career last Nov. 7, when Ashcroft lost his first statewide runoff in more than two decades. And now it appears to be the only obstacle standing in the way of him becoming George W. Bush's attorney general, as critics prepare to use the White nomination to question both Ashcroft's racial tolerance and his sense of political fair play.

That's a high price to pay for opposing a district judge, which is why in retrospect Ashcroft's militant objection to White -- or his "marathon public crucifixion," as one of Ashcroft's own fund-raisers put it last year -- seems so puzzling, and oddly personal.

No doubt it was actually political. Ashcroft thought tarring White with the pro-crime brush, and defeating his nomination, would help him in his reelection battle with Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, who'd gotten into political hot water after he commuted a death sentence in 1999 at the behest of Pope John Paul II.

While White's defeat galvanized African-Americans, who believe Ashcroft's crusade had racial overtones, the Republican's grudge against the moderate Missouri judge may have had more to do with Ashcroft's extreme anti-abortion agenda than either race or purported concerns about White's toughness on crime. Ashcroft and White had battled over abortion in Missouri since the early 1990s, when White was a state legislator and Ashcroft was governor.

Why would the rabidly anti-abortion Ashcroft cloak his opposition to White's nomination in terms of concern about crime? Politics. In the normally collegial Senate, there's an unwritten agreement that abortion won't be used by either side as a litmus test to block nominees. Ashcroft may have also gambled, and lost, that a crusade against White based on abortion would cost him more politically than one based on concerns about crime -- which, when used against a black judge, couldn't help but have racial overtones.

Perhaps Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will certainly press Ashcroft about the White battle during his upcoming confirmation hearing, will have better luck figuring out exactly why the Republican fought his fellow Missourian's relatively low-level nomination so fiercely. In fact, White himself may appear before the committee. More than a year after White's rejection, many political observers in Missouri, who doubt that White is either a pro-criminal jurist or an anti-death penalty zealot, are still scratching their heads over Ashcroft's ill-conceived and ultimately self-destructive crusade.

"It's perplexing," says Ken Warren, professor of political science at St. Louis University. "Republicans and Democrats alike cannot understand Ashcroft's opposition to Ronnie White." For Ashcroft politically, "it was like injecting cyanide into his veins," says Warren.

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