Chavez Ends Nomination, Cites ‘Search and Destroy’ Politics

WASHINGTON —  Moving to end President-elect George W. Bush’s first major political embarrassment, Linda Chavez withdrew her nomination as Labor secretary Tuesday amid new questions about whether she had employed an illegal Guatemalan immigrant in the early 1990s.

Though Bush had voiced his confidence in her a day earlier, Chavez’s prospects withered Tuesday after disclosures that the FBI was trying to determine if she had tried to influence what a former neighbor would tell investigators about the immigrant during a background check of Chavez.

“I have decided that I am becoming a distraction. And therefore I have asked President Bush to withdraw my name for secretary of Labor,” Chavez said at a news conference at Bush’s transition headquarters. Decrying the “politics of personal destruction,” she said the media had distorted her attempts to help the Guatemalan woman, Marta Mercado, start a new life in the United States after an abusive relationship.

“So long as the game in Washington is a game of search and destroy, I think we will have few people who are willing to do what I did, which was to put myself through this in order to serve,” Chavez said. With her on the dais were five other people whom she said she had helped with housing or other support, including a young man who fled Vietnam in 1979.

The withdrawal marked a major stumble in a Cabinet selection process that the Bush team has sought to portray as speedy, thorough and professional. It also left political strategists trying to sort out the implications for the upcoming confirmation battle over John Ashcroft, Bush’s choice for attorney general.

Chavez offered a forceful defense of her assistance to Mercado, whom she said had fled from an abusive relationship and a country embroiled in political turmoil.

“I will be very frank with you,” she said at her news conference. “I think I always knew that she was here illegally. I don’t check green cards when I see a woman who is battered and who has no place to live and nothing to eat and no way to get on her feet.”

A conservative columnist, Chavez, 53, had been bitterly opposed by labor, civil rights and liberal groups because of her opposition to affirmative action, a higher minimum wage and other worker protection laws that she would have been charged with enforcing as Labor secretary. Now, her critics are free to devote their energies to blocking Ashcroft, an opponent of abortion rights, gun control and other liberal causes.

The Chavez withdrawal will “concentrate an even stronger focus and organizational effort on the opposition to Ashcroft,” said Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, part of an anti-Ashcroft coalition. “It concentrates the mind.”

But Democratic senators may be loath to deprive Bush of more than one Cabinet choice, a Democratic operative suggested. And Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.), a member of the committee that will conduct hearings on the Labor nomination, said further attacks on Bush nominees could boomerang on liberals and Democrats.

“Public patience has a limit on these things,” Hutchinson said. “The public is going to be less sympathetic if you’re pulling out the knives on every nominee.” Others said that the Chavez withdrawal would anger conservative groups, prompting them to boost their efforts on Ashcroft’s behalf.

The Chavez nomination had become a major distraction to a Bush team that has tried to show itself focused on national defense and the economic slowdown. Still, a senior Bush advisor said that Chavez decided on her own to withdraw.

Chavez confirmed that no Bush official had asked her to step aside. But in a Cable News Network interview, she also said: “I’ve been around this town long enough to know that if no one is calling and saying, ‘Hang in there,’ that’s an indication” of lack of support.

Bush, in a statement after her withdrawal, offered: “Linda is a good person with a great deal of compassion for people from all walks of life. . . . I am disappointed that Linda Chavez will not become our nation’s next secretary of Labor.”

Mercado Says Money Was Not Salary

Mercado, now a legal resident who lives in Beltsville, Md., said that she had lived in the Chavez home from 1991 to 1993 after entering the country illegally from Guatemala, and that Chavez knew of her illegal status. She said she performed household chores, such as vacuuming and laundry, and that Chavez gave her “several hundred dollars every few weeks.”

But she did not consider the money to be a salary and she did not consider herself to be an employee.

Still, Chavez opponents said that Mercado appeared to be an employee, and they noted that under federal law a person can be deemed an employee if given room and board in exchange for work. It is a violation of law to employ an illegal worker or to fail to pay Social Security taxes on behalf of any worker. If Mercado was an employee, Chavez might also have violated the law requiring employers to pay the minimum wage--a law that Chavez would have had to enforce as Labor secretary.

Moreover, it is illegal to knowingly “harbor” an illegal immigrant. The law is usually applied only to those who smuggle people into the country or conceal them from law enforcement.

In the CNN interview, Chavez reiterated her belief that she had “done nothing illegal in offering Marta help.”

Still, critics of Chavez said that, as a potential Labor secretary, she should be held to the highest standards of compliance.

Chavez said that she did not initially volunteer information about Mercado to the Bush team but gave full details once the story became public. She would have told Bush officials more about Mercado initially if the time for choosing Cabinet officials had not been cut short by the uncertainty of who won last year’s presidential election, she said.

Surprised by news of the Mercado arrangement, which first surfaced in a television report Sunday, Bush officials in recent days offered conflicting accounts of whether Chavez knew of Mercado’s illegal status when she allowed her to live in her home. More embarrassment came Tuesday, when the Bush team was forced to contend with reports of an FBI inquiry into whether Chavez had tried to influence what a former neighbor, Margaret Zwisler, would tell the FBI during a background check.

An FBI interview with Zwisler revealed that Chavez called her former neighbor in late December and discussed how Chavez once had recommended Mercado for a job doing housework, according to a government official with knowledge of the situation. Chavez gave her recollection of the incident and asked Zwisler what her own memory was, this person said.

The call prompted investigators to wonder whether Chavez had violated a federal law against attempting to influence witness testimony, the official said.

Chavez on Tuesday denied trying to influence Zwisler. “No, absolutely not,” Chavez said on CNN. “I called her in part to refresh my memory. . . . I told her, if the FBI came to talk to her, that she should tell the truth.” She also said that Zwisler is an attorney.

Chavez Displays Her History of Generosity

Suggesting that her aid to Mercado was part of a long history of generosity to immigrants, Chavez brought forward each of the five people at her news conference to speak about their relationship with her. Among them was Benson Bui, who said that Chavez helped him go to school and learn American customs after he left Vietnam in 1979. Ada Iturrino said that Chavez had encouraged her to return to school and had helped with her children’s educations.

Margarita Valladares said that she “hardly spoke any English” when she met Chavez. “I was starting my life in this country, so she supported me in all the ways. She encouraged me to go to school. She encouraged me also to become a citizen. She also helped me to get my first job in the federal government.”

With Chavez gone from the stage, attention turned quickly to whether the incident had damaged Bush and to the next nominee for Labor secretary.

Some See Risk of Bush Appearing Weak

Some Republicans said that Bush risked appearing weak for allowing the nomination to falter and that it will be important for him to reassert himself with strong support for his other nominees.

“If he seems to be cowed by it, it will hurt. By cowed, I mean if he nominates a conspicuously less conservative successor,” said William Kristol, a conservative strategist who is editor of the Weekly Standard.

Some also argued that the controversy showed the Bush team to be skilled at one important tool of political survival: damage control. “Now the challenge is to have a replacement on which everyone sings his praises,” said Marshall Wittmann, a conservative political analyst at the Hudson Institute.

Congressional sources said that candidates for the Labor post include retiring Rep. James M. Talent (R-Mo.), who ran unsuccessfully for Missouri governor this year, and Eloise Anderson, a welfare reform advocate who was California Gov. Pete Wilson’s director of social services.

Also thought to be in the running are former Republican National Committee chairman Rich Bond and Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who was a Transportation Department official in the previous Bush administration. Another possibility is Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.), though Bush officials may be hesitant to remove her from the House, where the GOP holds only a slim majority.

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Times staff writers Janet Hook, Nick Anderson and Ronald Brownstein contributed to this story.