‘You've Got One F***ing Foot in the Grave’

How Carlos Bea won Barbara Boxer's support

We’re in the dog days of summer, so I’ll keep this one short.

My account of how Ninth Circuit nominee Milan Smith Jr. received positive blue slips from California’s Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer in 2006 reminds me of the much more colorful story that Judge Carlos Bea has often recounted of his similar success three years earlier.

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I can’t discuss Carlos Bea without taking note of his extraordinary life. Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, in 1934. After the Civil War exploded in Spain, his widowed mother moved with him and his older brother to Paris. When World War II broke out in 1939, they fled via Lisbon to Cuba (where his father had been born), and then to Miami, and they then drove for two months across the country to Los Angeles, only to make the long return trip to Cuba in late 1941. Two years later (when Bea was nine or so), Bea and his brother persuaded their mother to allow them to move with their nanny back to Los Angeles. In 1951, the legendary John Wooden recruited Bea to play basketball at UCLA, but he decided to go to Stanford instead, and at age 18 played for the Cuban national team at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.

And that’s just a sketch of his first 18 years. For those interested in more, I recommend this series of interviews that Bea did for the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society in 2019.

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Bea was 68 (just one week short of 69) when George W. Bush nominated him to a seat on the Ninth Circuit in April 2003. Bea was confident that he would win Feinstein’s support. He had a good relationship with her daughter Katherine, who was a colleague of his on the San Francisco County superior court and who had taken a course in litigation advocacy from him when she was in law school.

Judge Carlos Bea

Boxer was a different story. Bea didn’t know her at all. But he was friendly with John Burton, a former (and future) chairman of the state Democratic party. So he called Burton and asked for his help with Boxer. To Bea’s surprise, Burton responded: “I’ve already done that. I’ve talked to her chief assistant, and you are cleared.”

Bea thanked Burton, but couldn’t resist asking him: “John, you and I disagree on a lot of political issues. Indeed, you even admire Fidel Castro. Why did you help me out?”

Burton responded:

Carlos, you are the best that [expletive] Bush is going to give us, and you’ve got one f***ing foot in the grave, so we’ll soon get the seat back!

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Judge Bea, I am pleased to say, is still very much with us at age 91. And Democrats don’t seem likely to “get the seat back” any time soon.

After 16 years in active service on the Ninth Circuit, Bea took senior status in 2019. President Donald Trump appointed Patrick Bumatay, then 41 years old, to his seat. Bumatay himself won’t be eligible to take senior status until 2043.