RICHMOND -- Claude A. Allen, nominated by President Bush last week to the nation's most conservative federal appeals court, was just out of college when he began to immerse himself in conservative policy and rough-and-tumble politics as the campaign pitchman for then-U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).
"Knowing him has shaped me in many ways in terms of my values and how I conduct myself, all for the good," Allen told the Raleigh News & Observer last year.
Claude Allen is one of two black nominees for the appeals court.
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Since leaving Helms's office, Allen's career in government has led him into the center of intensely political debates on public health policy.
Allen, 42, who is married and has three children who are home schooled, is one of several young, black, conservative politicians who have risen quickly through Republican administrations. He served as secretary of health and human resources for Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) during the late 1990s and is second-in-command at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
As Gilmore's point man on issues such as Medicaid, welfare and child health insurance, Allen went to war with representatives of health organizations and consumer groups and with lawmakers. In his federal job, he has become a prime target of sex education activists for promoting abstinence programs, to the detriment, they say, of safe-sex education.
Now, Allen is one of two African Americans nominated by Bush for vacancies on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, a powerful panel one stop short of the U.S. Supreme Court that handles cases from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the Carolinas. Republicans and Democrats have fought for years over the racial and political makeup of the court, which has but one black judge.
He faces a confirmation process in the U.S. Senate that could center on issues involving his legal skills and ideological history. Through a spokesman at HHS, Allen declined to comment. The spokesman said the White House did not want court nominees to speak publicly before confirmation hearings.
At Allen's hearing, supporters will present a nominee they see as a careful, measured thinker, while opponents will say he represents a right-wing fringe ideology.
Speaking about Allen's career last week, several of his University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fraternity brothers saw his service to Helms as a pivotal moment in his political life. The 1984 Senate race was brutal, a nasty contest between Helms and then-Gov. James B. Hunt. Campaign ads for Hunt accused Helms of drawing his support from "right-wing nuts." Allen responded for Helms by accusing Hunt's campaign of having links "with the queers," a disparaging reference to homosexuals that has dogged Allen throughout his career.
Donald Beeson, a fraternity brother who was working on the Hunt campaign that year, said Allen loved the raw politics of campaigns, once pointing out how brilliantly Helms, a longtime smoker, hid his cigarettes whenever a camera pointed his way.
"He talked about what a masterful politician Jesse Helms was," Beeson said, "how strategically Jesse Helms would think about what he did."
But Allen left the world of elective politics after Helms won and went to law school at Duke University, where he became president of the student bar association. His professors remember him fondly, though several who are listed by the White House as Allen "supporters" say they are in no position to endorse him for the judgeship.
One man on the White House list, Walter Dellinger, a law professor at Duke who served as U.S. solicitor general under President Bill Clinton, said he enjoyed having Allen in his class but has little knowledge of his subsequent career.
"I was not even aware that he was in the [Bush] administration," Dellinger said.
Serving in Virginia's state government, Allen opposed efforts by many health groups to expand Medicaid coverage of children, calling it an expansion of welfare. He clashed with lawmakers over right-to-die legislation and efforts to improve state mental hospitals.
"He was often at odds with the health care providers and consumers," said Del. Philip A. Hamilton (R-Newport News), chairman of the House Committee on Health, Welfare and Institutions.
Lawmakers said he could be friendly and affable but also vindictive and partisan. Relations became so bad that the assembly considered legislation requiring that Allen's department communicate effectively with all interested parties.
"He was a typical ideological, Gilmore appointee," said former state senator Joseph V. Gartlan Jr., a Fairfax County Democrat known as an expert on health care issues. "That's the worst kind of mind you could put on a court, in my opinion."
Allen's supporters dismiss the criticism as partisan name-calling and sour grapes from health care activists who didn't get their way.
"When you try to construct a better way, you have to change the system," said David Anderson, Gilmore's policy director and a friend of Allen's. "He was not afraid to challenge the status quo."
Del. Terrie L. Suit (R-Virginia Beach) said the Allen she knows is a relaxed, approachable person who responded well under the pressure of running a 16,000-person bureaucracy.
"Any time I had any issue, Claude was the one that would take the call," Suit said. "He would handle it personally."
At HHS, Allen argues on a national stage that the best way to prevent pregnancy and AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is to encourage young people to abstain from sex until they are married. He has pushed for a doubling of federal funds to pursue abstinence-only educational programs. That message infuriates advocates of sex education.
"There is no scientific evidence that [abstinence-only programs] have any impact," said Tamara Kreinin, president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. "They are shame- and fear-based. Most Americans are not for them."
In addition, Allen's abstinence message has angered gay and lesbian groups. They say "abstinence until marriage" is a not-so-subtle attack on their lifestyle.
In a statement issued last week, White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales said Allen "has led a distinguished legal career, serving in both the private and public sectors. He has a solid understanding of the law and has earned the respect and admiration of those who know him the best."
Bush's other nominee for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Allyson K. Duncan, served as a North Carolina judge, and her nomination has met little resistance. But some legal scholars and lawmakers question whether Allen has the appropriate legal credentials to be a high-level judge.
"He fits the profile of a young ideologue without much of a legal or practice paper trail," said Michael J. Gerhardt, a law professor at the College of William and Mary and an expert on judicial nominations.
Allen spent four years as a lawyer at Baker Botts, a D.C. firm, and three years in the Virginia attorney general's office, where he worked on special projects, according to Anderson, who was Allen's boss at the time.
"One [project] that immediately comes to mind was the work on church burning," Anderson said, referring a nationwide concern about arsons against churches. "We did a national conference on church burning. Claude was the key guy in putting that together."
Gerhardt said Allen's confirmation could get bogged down in the debate about what makes a good judge. "The [political] parties lack common ground or consensus on what would be good judicial experience," he said.
Hamilton, the Republican lawmaker in Virginia who clashed with Allen on health care issues, said "it seems to me that judicial bench experience would be a strong consideration."
But supporters said his lack of judicial experience should not be a strike against him.
"It's important to have fresh thinkers, who can think outside the box, who haven't been running through the traditional career path," Suit said.
Anderson, now in private practice, said Allen "has a tremendously good mind. He has a breadth of experience that would serve him well on the 4th Circuit."
Beeson, the Democrat who worked on the Hunt campaign, said he and most other members of the Chi Psi fraternity were more liberal than Allen. Several went on to work for Democrats, including one as a spokesman for now-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
"Many of us would probably be concerned if he were confirmed. But I always thought he was a wonderful person," Beeson said. "Sometimes we see individuals who are willing to alter their views to get ahead. I don't think Claude has ever been someone to alter what he believes. He follows his conservative values."
