Challenge to Gonzales fails in Senate vote

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales survived a climactic no-confidence vote in the Senate on Monday and, with the support of the White House, appears to have weathered a monthslong storm of criticism and investigation that once imperiled his tenure at the Justice Department.

Most Republicans, even those who had been critical of Gonzales, closed ranks, and Democrats fell well short of winning the votes necessary to move forward with a resolution declaring that the Senate and the "American people" had lost confidence in him. Senate Democrats' attempt to bring up the resolution received 53 of the 60 votes needed.

Democrats vowed to continue their investigation into whether Gonzales, in tandem with the White House, had politicized hiring decisions and various investigations at the Justice Department in ways that would benefit Republicans.

But the no-confidence vote suggests that the Democrats do not have the political might to force the issue.

Gonzales already had won a vote of confidence from President Bush weeks ago. "There is only one vote that matters, and he's got it," said Charles Black, a Republican political consultant.

The Justice Department issued a statement after the vote declaring that Gonzales "remains focused on the important issues that the American people expect him to address." Observing that his term expires with Bush's in 18 months, Gonzales told reporters in Miami on Monday that he was planning on "sprinting to the finish line."

"The department is not going to stumble, nor crawl to the finish line," Gonzales said after speaking at a nuclear-terrorism conference.

Hours before the debate, Bush, winding up a European tour before returning to Washington, dismissed the vote as a "meaningless resolution" that would not chase his attorney general — and longtime friend and adviser — from office.

How effective Gonzales can be for the balance of the Bush presidency is far from clear, however. With Democrats holding the purse strings, it is unlikely that Congress will be backing major new Justice Department initiatives.

The investigation exposed what lawmakers view as serious credibility problems with Gonzales and raised questions about his management of the department.

Beginning with the politically charged firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year, the probe since has expanded to include whether politics affected the hiring of career employees throughout the department, including in its civil-rights divisions. Investigators are also examining whether there was a conscious effort to pursue cases of vote fraud in battleground states that could benefit Republican candidates.

The Justice Department also has launched an internal review into whether department regulations and civil-service laws were broken in the hiring of career personnel under Gonzales.

In two hours of debate Monday, few Republicans offered an outright endorsement of the attorney general. Rather, they cast the no-confidence vote as a political ploy by Democrats that took time from debate over such important issues as immigration overhaul and gasoline prices.

"Is this what the business of the Senate is really about? A non-binding resolution proving what? Nothing," said Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss. "That is not our job. We don't have the authority to make that determination."

But Democrats said that the Justice Department had lost its way under Gonzales, and that he had lost credibility with Congress and the public.

A leader of the effort to oust Gonzales, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said comments by Republicans that focused on the business of the Senate, rather than Gonzales' job performance, were telling.

"There was not a single word uttered in defense of the attorney general," Schumer said. "They know the attorney general has failed miserably in his job."

Schumer conceded that it was rare to stage such a vote but said Gonzales' conduct warranted it. "It is unusual to have a no-confidence resolution. But it is more unusual to have an attorney general ... not in charge of his department."