Bishops call on Baldwin not to block Giampietro
Candidate wrote ‘calls for diversity’ mean ‘relaxed standards’
Wisconsin’s Catholic bishops have called on Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin not to block the nomination of Gordon Giampietro, who has been picked by President Donald Trump to become a federal district court judge in Milwaukee.
The dramatic intervention came in a letter from the five bishops to Baldwin dated Feb. 20.
It was sent days after the website BuzzFeed published what it said were “disparaging comments about diversity, same-sex relationships, and birth control,” made by Giampietro during two radio interviews and an online post. A Baldwin spokesperson expressed reservations about Giampietro in the BuzzFeed story.
Separately, Giampietro sent an email to Baldwin Tuesday defending his record, rejecting a suggestion he “intentionally concealed material information” from Wisconsin’s federal nominating commission or the Senate Judiciary Committee, and asking to meet the senator. He disclosed the radio interviews in forms filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“In short, the BuzzFeed article reads like an attack on my Catholic Faith,” Giampietro said.
Meanwhile, a member of the state nominating commission, Milwaukee labor lawyer Barbara Quindel, said the group would not have forwarded Giampietro’s name had they known of his “bigoted” views. Giampietro was among four finalists recommended by the commission and the names were sent by Baldwin and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson to the White House.
“Had we had that information, I do not think his name would have been forwarded,” Quindel said Tuesday, adding that she was surprised by Giampietro’s statements in the BuzzFeed story. Quindel added, “He’s a very smooth guy.”
Another commission member, Rick Esenberg, defended Giampietro over his dealings with the commission and said the nominee
did not have bigoted views.
“You may disagree with the position of the Roman Catholic Church with respect to the nature of marriage, but the other thing Gordon has made clear is if he sits as a judge, he’ll apply the law and not his personal religious views,” said Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
Giampietro, a former federal prosecutor who is currently an assistant general counsel at Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., would be replacing conservative U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa, who died in 2016 after more than two decades on the bench.
Giampietro clerked for three years for Randa after receiving undergraduate and law degrees from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
In their letter to Baldwin, the bishops said they “are troubled by the assessment that Gordon Giampietro is not receiving a fair hearing because of his Catholic faith.”
“The teachings of the Catholic Church in the areas of marriage, family life and human sexuality are very clear. Catholic’s (sic) who practice their faith understand and are able to articulate them. We believe that Catholics are capable of offering fair and impartial decisions when applying the law.
“We urge that you do not deny the possibility of a fair and intelligent person such as Gordon Giampietro for potentially serving in the judiciary,” the letter said.
The letter was signed by Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee, and bishops in Madison, La Crosse, Green Bay and Superior.
Baldwin has not yet turned in a blue slip for Giampietro’s nomination, a move that could block his path to the bench. She met with the nominee earlier this month and is open to doing so again, a spokeswoman for Baldwin said, adding that the senator’s objections to the nominee have nothing to do with his Catholic faith:
“These extremely troubling statements were not provided to the (commission) when it considered candidates for this vacancy. Both what was said, and the fact that it was not disclosed to the commission, raise serious questions about whether this nominee would be able to serve as a fair and impartial judge on a federal court.”
Johnson backs the nominee.
“I certainly hope Senator Baldwin doesn’t hold up the confirmation of a highly qualified nominee just because he is a man of faith,” he said.
Giampietro’s nomination has become imperiled in the wake of the BuzzFeed report, which focused on a comment he once posted on a blog and two radio interviews.
On March 25, 2014, Giampietro wrote on the Catholic Thing website that “calls for diversity” are “code for relaxed standards (moral and intellectual).” He was responding to a blog post by Amherst College political scientist Hadley Arkes on U.S. Supreme Court arguments over the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate and government regulation of businesses.
“The Hobby Lobby cases — if we lose — will represent the end of the American experiment,” Giampietro wrote in a now-deleted comment.
In a July 24, 2015, interview on “The Lydia LoCoco Show,” a radio show about faith, marriage and family, Giampietro was sharply critical of the Supreme Court decision affirming the right to same-sex marriage.
He declared the ruling “worse” than the court’s Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion “because of the damage it does to civil society.” He characterized it as “an assault on the conscience rights of all Americans.”
In the same interview, he took aim at birth control pills, describing them as “an assault on nature.”
“Whenever you go against God’s plan, bad things are going to happen,” Giampietro said.