He could be the next Supreme Court justice Alberto Gonzales has become a rising star by defending President Bush's conservative policies. He also has alienated key Democrats whose support he would need to be confirmed.

By Joan Biskupic
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- When Texas state Sen. David Sibley was curious about the thinking inside then-Gov. George W. Bush's administration a few years ago, he would try to corner Alberto Gonzales, the governor's lawyer.

''We good ol' boys 'ping' for information,'' says Sibley, a Republican from Waco, comparing his pursuit to using sonar. When a ''ping'' hits a target, it returns an echo -- or in Sibley's case, a clue as to which way the political winds are blowing.

''But with Al, you'd ping and nothing would come back,'' Sibley says. ''I'd say, 'Wow, Bush was really mad at that guy.' Al would say, 'Oh.' Or I'd say, 'I'm thinking of adding this to a bill,' and he'd say, 'Ah.' ''

For Gonzales, now the White House counsel, the road to Washington was paved with discretion and loyalty to the man who would be president. As counsel to the governor, as Texas secretary of state and as a Texas Supreme Court justice -- jobs given to him by Bush -- Gonzales was cautious and had a knack for avoiding partisan conflicts. Those traits, along with his ties to Bush, helped land him on an informal GOP list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees even before he got here last year.

Now, White House sources and legal analysts say, Gonzales has emerged as a front-runner for a future Supreme Court nomination in an administration that is interested in appointing the nation's first Hispanic justice.

Gonzales' stock is up, the sources say, because in defending White House policies he has become an increasingly bold political player, impressing many influential Republicans who had questioned his conservative credentials.

''A lot of people thought, 'Who is this Gonzales guy? He's going to come to Washington and Washington will chew him up,' '' says Charles Cooper, an assistant attorney general under President Reagan. ''But he has done a great job . . . with Bush's very conservative outlook.''

But Gonzales' actions also have led him into conflicts with Senate Democrats who oversee judicial nominations -- and who could play key roles in any confirmation for a Supreme Court nominee. It's all added a new plot line to the never-ending speculation here about when there might be an opening on the court and how Bush might change the court.

Bush's voice on the law

Since becoming White House counsel last year, Gonzales:

* Has annoyed Senate Democrats, who say he has given little ground in the White House's campaign to stock federal appeals and trial courts with conservatives who could influence the law for years to come. He also ended a half-century White House tradition of using the American Bar Association to screen nominees. (Republicans had long accused the ABA of being too liberal.)

* Has been a key promoter of Bush's anti-terrorism agenda, staunchly defending plans to use military tribunals to try foreign terrorism suspects. He crafted the legal rationale limiting the rights of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters held in Cuba by classifying them as battlefield detainees, rather than prisoners of war.

* Become the point man for the administration's vigorous efforts to keep information secret and preserve presidential prerogatives.

That has included backing Vice President Cheney in his clash with the General Accounting Office. Cheney has refused to turn over records of meetings from a task force that devised national energy policy. At issue is the extent to which the policy was shaped by energy executives, among them some from troubled Enron Corp.

Gonzales also has surrounded himself with ideologically conservative lawyers who have been active in GOP causes. Among them: deputy counsel Timothy Flanigan, who clerked for former U.S. chief justice Warren Burger and was an assistant attorney general in the first Bush administration.

Such moves have won Gonzales support among conservative Republicans such as Orrin Hatch of Utah, the GOP's ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Gonzales would need his backing to ascend to the high court.

''I simply could not be more impressed,'' Hatch says.

Some Republicans initially feared that Gonzales might be a ''stealth liberal'' like David Souter, who was named to the Supreme Court 12 years ago by Bush's father. To the dismay of many Republicans, Souter, 62, has become one of the four liberal justices on the nine-member court.

There has been no indication that anyone on the court will retire soon, but most speculation focuses on the three oldest justices.

Sandra Day O'Connor, 71, the court's swing vote because she is the conservative most likely to vote with the liberals, recently said her retirement is not imminent. Conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 77, has said that he has considered leaving but does not seem to have slowed down. Liberal justice John Paul Stevens, 81, has said nothing about retirement.

The court is deeply split on issues such as abortion, affirmative action and religious liberties, and any change among the justices could mean a difference in the law.

Besides Gonzales, those mentioned most frequently by GOP sources include U.S. appeals court judges J. Michael Luttig and J. Harvie Wilkinson III of Virginia, Emilio Garza of Texas, and Samuel Alito of New Jersey. Another candidate would be U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who represented Bush in the Florida election dispute and whose wife, Barbara, died aboard a hijacked jet on Sept. 11.

Several factors -- which justice retires first and the political currents of the day, as well as recent moves of potential nominees -- could alter the dynamics of any selection process. If Rehnquist were to retire first, for example, the White House might seek a more experienced lawyer than Gonzales to replace the chief. But for now, many insiders believe Gonzales is on deck for a nomination.

Gonzales, the son of migrant farm workers who worked his way up to Harvard Law School, is ''in as good of a position as anyone,'' says C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel to Bush's father.

''We think he's a leading contender,'' says Elliot Mincberg of the liberal People for the American Way.

''We're watching him.''

Playing it close to the vest

Gonzales, 46, declined to be interviewed. He and other administration officials are reluctant to discuss anyone's prospects for the court. However, Gonzales acknowledged in an interview last year that it would be foolish for the White House not to be preparing for a vacancy on the court.

As Texas lawmakers such as Sibley learned, Gonzales is not easy to penetrate. In scripted speeches he has delivered recently, it's clear that despite his higher profile, the hard-to-read Al Gonzales lives on: the slight smile, the non-committal nod, the one-sentence answers.

In the interview last year, he was careful when discussing judicial philosophy. He declined to answer specific questions on controversial issues that inevitably confront Supreme Court nominees, such as abortion and affirmative action. He emphasized that his personal views might be different from how he would vote on a case.

Gonzales' two-year tenure on Texas' Supreme Court, which ended when he resigned so he could follow Bush to Washington, was too brief to offer much insight into his attitudes as a jurist. Texas lawyers regarded him as a moderate on a generally conservative court.

In Washington, Gonzales' close-to-the-vest manner hasn't always played well, particularly among Democrats who are pressing the administration for a more ideologically diverse roster of nominees for federal courts.

He has had a strong hand in crafting a roster of nationally recognized advocates for conservative causes. They include Jeffrey Sutton, an Ohio lawyer who has successfully argued several states' right cases at the high court, and Paul Cassell, a University of Utah professor known for his work against the ''Miranda'' rights that police read to crime suspects.

For months, Gonzales and Democrats have been at loggerheads over nominees to several courts, particularly in Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic states. Many Democrats report a pattern in their dealings with Gonzales: He is pleasant. He suggests differences can be worked out. Everyone walks away optimistic. Then nothing happens.

''I have heard of too many situations, involving too many reasonable home-state senators, in which the White House has shown no willingness to work cooperatively'' on judicial nominees, says Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

GOP senators counter that it's Democrats who have been inflexible. Gonzales says the Democrat-led Senate ''has not done enough to meet its constitutional responsibility'' of voting on judicial nominees. He criticizes the Senate for not holding hearings on some nominees from last spring and says that he has been meeting with senators to break standoffs.

In the interview last year, Gonzales said he looks at character when he screens potential nominees for trial and appeals courts.

''Is this a good person? That's very important to this president.''

He said the White House also focuses on competence and conservative judicial philosophy. He said society's problems are for elected lawmakers, not judges, to solve.

Gonzales was born in San Antonio to Pablo and Maria Gonzales, the second of their eight children. His parents, both children of Mexican immigrants, met as teenage farm workers. Pablo had finished only the second grade; Maria had made it to sixth grade.

The family settled in Houston, where Pablo became a construction worker. They lived in a two-bedroom house with no hot running water. Gonzales began dreaming of college when he helped with a neighbor's soda concession business at Rice University's football stadium. But with no money after high school graduation in 1973, Gonzales enlisted in the Air Force.

Stationed at Fort Yukon, Alaska, he met Air Force Academy graduates who urged him to apply to the academy in Colorado Springs. Gonzales was admitted in 1975 but left the academy for Rice in 1977, one of a string of occasions in which he reached a difficult goal, then left for another challenge.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1982, Gonzales went to work for the Houston-based law firm Vinson & Elkins, which long represented the energy giant Enron. (As a state court judge, Gonzales, like many Texas candidates, received campaign contributions from Enron).

Gonzales rejected a job offer from the first President Bush in 1988 to try to become one of Vinson & Elkins' first minority partners. He was made a partner in 1991, then left for Austin in 1995 to become the governor's counsel.

Got Bush off jury duty

One of Gonzales' most controversial actions in that post was helping to get George W. Bush excused from jury duty in 1996, a situation that could have required the governor to disclose his then-secret 1976 conviction for drunken driving in Maine. Gonzales suggested to the judge and defense lawyer that if Bush served, he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the defendant in the future.

Whether Gonzales' rapid rise in government culminates at the high court remains to be seen.

Last year, the Hispanic National Bar Association gave Gonzales a list of prominent Hispanic judges and lawyers to try to show that there is a large pool of Hispanic candidates for a Supreme Court seat. Gonzales' name was on the list.

Carlos Ortiz, a former president of the bar, says Gonzales told him to take it off, that he did not want a seat on the high court.

Looking back, Ortiz says, ''I wasn't sure whether he was really being serious or not.''