1 Boring Old Man

Missouri attorney a focus in firings
Senate bypassed in appointment of Schlozman

By Charlie Savage, Boston Globe Staff

Todd Graves brought just four misdemeanor voter fraud indictments during his five years as the US attorney for western Missouri — even though some of his fellow Republicans in the closely divided state wanted stricter oversight of Democratic efforts to sign up new voters.

Then, in March 2006, Graves was replaced by a new US attorney — one who had no prosecutorial experience and bypassed Senate confirmation. Bradley Schlozman moved aggressively where Graves had not, announcing felony indictments of four workers for a liberal activist group on voter registration fraud charges less than a week before the 2006 election.

Republicans, who had been pushing for restrictive new voting laws, applauded. But critics said Schlozman violated a department policy to wait until after an election to bring voter fraud indictments if the case could affect the outcome, either by becoming a campaign issue or by scaring legitimate voters into staying home.

Schlozman is emerging as a focal point of the investigation into the firing of eight US attorneys last year — and as a symbol of broader complaints that the Bush administration has misused its stewardship of law enforcement to give Republicans an electoral edge.

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No stranger to election law controversy, Schlozman previously spent three years as a political appointee in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where he supervised the voting rights section.

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There, he came into conflict with veteran staff over his decisions to approve a Texas redistricting plan and a Georgia photo-ID voting law, both of which benefited Republicans. He also hired many new career lawyers with strong conservative credentials, in what critics say was an attempt to reduce enforcement of laws designed to eliminate obstacles to voting by minorities.

"Schlozman was reshaping the Civil Rights Division," said Joe Rich , who was chief of the voting rights section until taking a buyout in 2005, in an interview. "Schlozman didn’t know anything about voting law…. All he knew is he wanted to be sure that the Republicans were going to win."

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As the controversy over the US attorney firings started building, the Bush administration picked someone else to be western Missouri’s US attorney. Unlike with Schlozman, the administration first sent the nominee to the Senate for confirmation.

In April, when his replacement was confirmed, Schlozman got a new job. He now works in the Justice Department office that supervises all 93 US attorneys, where he is handling sentencing matters and cybercrime.