The Miers They Missed

Friends Say the Public Never Saw The Person Behind the Nominee

Jerry Clements was getting ready yesterday to tape a television commercial supporting the confirmation of her friend and former law partner, Harriet Miers, as a Supreme Court justice when she heard Charles Gibson announcing Miers's withdrawal on "Good Morning America." Enraged, Clements canceled an afternoon flight to Austin, deciding instead to drive and to use the time on the open road to blow off steam.

"I was incredibly saddened and disappointed that this person who had devoted her life to the legal profession never had a chance to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee and get a hearing," Clements said from her car.

Darrell Jordan, a prominent Dallas attorney and loyal Republican, also had planned to appear in the commercial. Instead, he spent the time fielding call after call from infuriated fellow lawyers and civic leaders, including one who declared, "I'm proud to be a Democrat because of the way you Republicans acted on this."

"The process she was going through completely misunderstood the person she was," said Jordan, who preceded Miers as president of the Dallas and Texas bars. "The stories of Harriet Miers's compassion and willingness to help the small people are legendary in Dallas. I think that ability to listen and to lead with character would've made her very important on the court."

Their anger sprang from a feeling that the White House never introduced the Harriet Miers they know to the Senate or the country. That Miers is an accomplished lawyer with a deeply personal sense of justice that she acts out on a daily basis, they said. Selling her to the Republican right primarily as a Christian conservative simply didn't do her justice, they said.

For example, no senators ever heard about Caroline Ware. The single mother of nine came to Miers in the 1970s as a pro bono client who needed help with a name change. Miers did the paperwork, but what Ware, now 62, most remembers was what came afterward.

When Ware, a nurse's aide, was wrongfully arrested on a charge of forging an elderly client's name on a check, Miers came to the Dallas jail in the middle of the night, bailed her out and got the charge dropped. When Ware and her children were threatened with eviction, Miers put down $700 of her own money to keep them off the streets. When Ware was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, Miers hired a registered nurse to care for her children. And then there was Christmas, when Miers would arrive with clothes and coats for each of Ware's children -- "and they were new!" Ware said.

"I was just lost, really losing my mind, and she brought me back," Ware said from the living room of her small brick house in working-class west Dallas.

Miers's close friends, partners and relatives said in interviews that she never told them about Ware or other pro bono clients, although they said they were not surprised by the story. Ware's name came to light in one of Miers's responses to a Judiciary Committee questionnaire. (She cited Ware v. Schweiker -- an unsuccessful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to secure federal disability benefits for Ware -- as evidence of her federal appellate experience.)

Nor did Washington hear from young associates at Miers's law firm -- notably minority and female lawyers whom she mentored ever so subtly, pulling them in on major cases and often staying late to critique their legal memos. "Some partners would say, 'You should join the black chamber of commerce,' but Harriet was always about helping you enter the mainstream," said Julia Simon, now vice president for legal resources at Mary Kay Inc., the Dallas-based cosmetics company.

Conservatives in Washington complained that Miers had not articulated a coherent judicial philosophy. But friends and colleagues in Dallas said she was respected precisely because she rarely talked about herself, preferring actions to words. Law partners said she never called for racial or gender quotas, although they witnessed her commitment to diversifying the firm daily. Partner Don Glendenning said it was not unusual to walk into meetings with major clients and notice a young Hispanic or African American or female associate seated next to managing partner Miers.

"Harriet worked very hard 30 years ago to get the good old white boys to treat her like one of the men, so creating that atmosphere of normalcy for women and Hispanics and African Americans was very important to her," Glendenning said.