WASHINGTON (AP) - Civil rights groups will publicly confront Democratic
senators and demand that they vote against their former Republican colleague,
John Ashcroft, for attorney general, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said Monday.

Jackson said the groups, joined by organized labor, will concentrate
their lobbying away from Washington and confront lawmakers at public
events such as Martin Luther King Day celebrations this month.

The effort also will try to defeat the nomination of New Jersey Gov.
Christie Whitman as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Ashcroft, a Missouri conservative, lost re-election to the Senate in
November; his Democratic opponent, Gov. Mel Carnahan, died in a plane
crash before the election, but his name remained on the ballot.

Ashcroft has been known for his staunch anti-abortion stand and for
leading a drive to kill the nomination Missouri Supreme Court Judge
Ronnie White, who is black, to the federal bench.

Whitman has drawn the ire of blacks because of racial profiling by the
New Jersey state police and because of a photograph of the governor
frisking a young black man detained by the police.

Jackson told The Associated Press that Democratic senators "will be
challenged very publicly. Those who are with the civil rights agenda
must not choose collegiality over civil rights and social justice."

The new Senate will be split 50-50, although incoming Vice President
Dick Cheney can break a tie. Senators are known for supporting
nominations of former colleagues - and Jackson's comment about
collegiality was aimed at that tradition.

Before the lobbying spreads around the nation, the effort kicks off with
a news conference Tuesday in Washington by the Black Leadership Forum,
an umbrella organization of civil rights groups.

On Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, there will by a rally in Tallahassee,
Fla., protesting the number of votes thrown out in minority precincts in
that state, in Chicago and other locations, Jackson said.

Ashcroft has countered the criticism by noting he supported 90 percent
of the black judicial nominees who came up for a vote.

As Missouri governor from 1985 to 1993, he signed into law a state
holiday honoring King; established musician Scott Joplin's house as
Missouri's only historic site honoring a black individual; created an
award honoring black educator George Washington Carver; named a black
woman to a state judgeship; and led a fight to save Lincoln University,
which was founded by black soldiers.

Whitman is a moderate who supports abortion rights.

She has repeatedly defended her administration by saying hers was the
first to admit to racial profiling and to take steps to eliminate it.

Last year, a picture was released showing her frisking a black youth
during a police tour in Camden, N.J., in 1996.

"Did I step over a line from being an observer to a participant that I
shouldn't have and didn't need to in that instance? Yes," Whitman said
in an interview last July. "But unfortunately that is my nature. When
they said, 'Do you want to do it,' I said sure, without thinking, and I
should have thought."