And then there was none.
The last of three candidates hoping to become U.S. attorney for Colorado dropped out of contention Monday, saying he got word from the presidential administration that it wanted to consider other candidates.
“I had gotten a call from the White House indicating they had gone in a different direction,” said Jim Peters, who had been the district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, which includes Douglas, Arapahoe, Elbert and Lincoln counties.
Sean Conway, chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said the senator would probably forward a new list to the White House by the end of the week.
A contender for the job, Conway said, is Bill Leone, who has held the job on an interim basis for the past year.
Conway said the year-long delay since the contenders were announced is due to an extraordinarily busy year for White House lawyers who work on presidential nominations.
“What we got caught up in is a year that I don’t think anyone would have forecast,” Conway said.
The office has had to deal with three nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the failed bid of Harriet Miers, the chief White House lawyer who works on nominations. The office also worked on the nomination and confirmation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Colorado isn’t alone. In all, 17 such slots across the country are being filled on an interim basis.
Conway took issue with published suggestions that the holdup had something to do with a purported feud between the White House and Allard’s office over the administration’s alleged desire to nominate Bryan Cunningham, a Denver lawyer not on the list of three candidates.
Conway said Cunningham’s name came up briefly a year ago but has not been a topic of discussion since then.
Cunningham, a former counsel to the National Security Council, said Monday that he is not pursuing the job and is not aware of any dispute.
The other two candidates who have bowed out of consideration are Troy Eid, a lawyer and former counsel to Gov. Bill Owens, and Stu VanMeveren, former district attorney for the 8th Judicial District. Both said the year-long process had gone on too long.
The Colorado job came open more than a year ago when John Suthers said he was leaving the U.S. attorney job to become Colorado’s attorney general.
As Colorado’s senior senator of the same party as the president, Allard submitted a list of three names for President Bush’s consideration.
Typically, the White House and officials from the U.S. Justice Department check the candidates’ backgrounds and conduct interviews before a name is forwarded to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation proceedings.
White House representatives have said only that it’s an ongoing process.
Staff writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at 303-820-1930 or acaldwell@denverpost.com.
