Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 4, 1993 TAG: 9302040094
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BALILES CONSIDERED FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL
President Clinton is considering a list of three candidates to serve as attorney general: federal Judge Kimba M. Wood, Washington lawyer Charles F.C. Ruff and former Virginia Gov. Gerald Baliles, administration sources said Wednesday.The sources said Clinton had narrowed the field to those choices and wants to make his decision by today. The FBI then would need a few days to conduct a background check, meaning that the appointment might be delayed until next week.
Clinton has concentrated on finding a female candidate to take the place of his first nominee, corporate lawyer Zoe E. Baird, who was forced to withdraw nearly two weeks ago in the face of a public outcry over her hiring of two illegal immigrants.
Some Clinton advisers are concerned that naming a man to the position, particularly in the face of the delay since Baird's withdrawal, would send the signal that only one woman in America was qualified to take the top law enforcement job.
There also is concern that the next candidate not be open to challenge about his or her qualifications to head the Justice Department, either on grounds of legal experience or personal integrity.
Within those constraints, each of the candidates possesses different strengths. Wood is a woman who has the cachet of being a federal judge and who was said to have favorably impressed both the president and Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was interviewed last week.
Ruff, former high-level Justice Department official and U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, is an experienced criminal lawyer who is highly regarded by women's legal groups.
Baliles brings the stature of a former governor and former state attorney general who is well-known to Clinton from their time as governors together and members of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.
Since leaving the governorship three years ago, Baliles, 52, has practiced international law with the Richmond-based firm of Hunton & Williams. During the transition, he was considered for other Cabinet-level posts, such as special trade representative. Before being elected governor in 1985, he served a four-year term as state attorney general.
Baliles once told an aide he realized that history would view him as a "sandwich" scrunched between two stars of the party, Robb, whom he succeeded as governor, and Gov. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor, who followed him into the governor's mansion in Richmond.
Baliles loves nothing better than immersing himself in policy reports on topics as disparate as transportation and foreign trade. Politically, he was, for a Southerner, a moderate-to-liberal governor, supporting abortion rights and attempting unsuccessfully to get Virginia Military Institute to drop its male-only status by naming persons to its board of visitors who favored admitting women.
Clinton and Baliles were governors at the same time and worked together on several projects of the National Governors Association, of which Baliles was chairman.
A native of Patrick County, Baliles is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the University of Virginia Law School.
Memo: slightly different version in state edition. note: below