President-elect George Bush's controversial choice for the post of attorney-general - the anti-abortion, pro-execution John Ashcroft - came under fierce attack yesterday from blacks and liberals, straining the new administration's promise to bring the spirit of bipartisan cooperation to Washington.

Mr Ashcroft is a rightwinger from Missouri who so enraged opponents in his home state that they came out in droves in November to elect a dead man (the Democrat, Mel Carnahan, who died in a plane crash during the campaign), in his place.

The anti-Ashcroft effort backfired however, as his defeat made the conservative politician available for the justice department, viewed by rightwing activists as the key prize in the cabinet.

Most Washington observers believe that Mr Ashcroft will survive his confirmation hearing in an evenly divided Senate, but it will not be without a fight.

"He is far and away the most troubling choice," Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said. "The question is: Will Senator Ashcroft enforce the law of the land on things that he is morally opposed to?"

Abortion rights campaigners have expressed doubts that Mr Ashcroft would pursue prosecutions against anti-abortion militants trying to prevent women attending family planning clinics.

They also fear he might add to the pressure on the supreme court to overturn the land mark Roe vs Wade verdict, guaranteeing the right to an abortion.

As a senator, Mr Ashcroft pushed for an amendment to the constitution which went further than the demands of many pro-life activists, banning abortions even in cases of incest or rape.

He won a courage and integrity award from the American Life League, one of the most militant anti-abortion groups which picket family planning clinics.

His critics also point out that he rented out his fundraising contacts list to Linda Tripp, a key prosecution witness in President Clinton's impeachment at a time when as a senator, he was technically a juror in Mr Clinton's trial.

But the most fervent opposition to Mr Ashcroft's nomination will come from black American groups who accuse him of playing the race card in Missouri. They will make the case of Ronnie White the central exhibit in the confirmation process.

Mr White was the first black member of the Missouri supreme court, and was widely expected to rise to a place on a federal district court in 1999, until Senator Ashcroft launched an all-out campaign against him, denouncing him as pro-criminal. Mr Ashcroft went as far as to say the judge had shown "a tremendous bent toward criminal activity".

Even by Missouri's standards, Mr White was fairly hawkish on crime, voting to uphold the death penalty in 41 out of 52 appeals.

In 10 other cases he voted with the majority of the court to reverse a sentence because of legal errors in the original trial.

Senator Ashcroft focused on the one capital case in which Justice White had been the lone dissenter.

The case involved a black Vietnam veteran, Brian Kinder, who was convicted of killing three police officers and a sheriff's wife in what he said was a post-traumatic flashback. Mr Kinder had demanded the trial judge, Earl Blackwell withdraw himself because he was up for re-election and had made some racially charged remarks to explain his defection from the Democratic to the Republican party.

Despite the fact that Mr White had won the endorsement of the Missouri police association, Mr Ashcroft predicted that if he was allowed to sit on a federal court, the judge would "use his lifetime appointment to push law in a pro-criminal direction".

The New York Times columnist, Anthony Lewis, has argued that Senator Ashcroft characterisations of Justice White's career were "vicious falsehoods", and that he was therefore unfit to hold the office of attorney-general.

Nan Aron, the head of the Alliance for Justice, a civil rights pressure group, promised: "Ronnie White will figure prominently in this debate. this was an example of Ashcroft engaging essentially in a hate crime against an eminently qualified African-American solely for political gain."

The Bush transition has taken the precaution of putting together a dossier on the White case, defending Senator Ashcroft's actions.

"He is very well respected by his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, " Ari Fleischer, the Bush White House spokesman, said. "We're very confident on full consideration when people hear Mr Ashcroft, he's going to be in good shape. "

Mr Ashcroft has refused to comment on the issue, saving his remarks for the stormy confirmation hearings. But he published a fierce defence of his record on race issues last year, arguing he had supported numerous black causes.

His critics however, point to the fact that he is a fervent opponent of affirmative action and has accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, a Protestant fundamentalist college in South Carolina which banned interracial dating until recently.

In 1988 he was one of two members of a 40-member civil rights commission who refused to sign the panel's final report, which advocated more government effort to alleviate the plight of minorities.

In a 1998 interview he also hailed a rightwing magazine, Southern Partisan, for its "heritage of defending Southern patriots" and for "helping to set the record straight" on the Civil War.

The magazine specialises in articles by apologists for the slave-owning Confederate states in the Civil War, and once marketed a T-shirt emblazoned with Abraham Lincoln's portrait and the words of his assassin: "Thus always to tyrants."

During the Republican primary elections, the Bush campaign criticised a consultant in the John McCain camp for contributing to the same magazine.

The nomination of judges and judicial officials often provides the most contested battlefields in the formative months of a presidency.

Congress has blocked most of President Clinton's judicial nominations since Republicans seized control of the legislature in 1994.

Earlier, Democrats united to block one of President Reagan's nominees to the US supreme court, Robert Bork, and later tried unsuccessfully to stop President Bush's equally conservative nominee, Clarence Thomas.

It looks as if they may fail again this time around. Mr Ashcroft's southern charm has won some friends across the aisle, like senators Joseph Biden and Russ Feingold, who have already said they would back him.

But the fight is almost certain to cast a bitter pall over a presidency which Mr Bush has promised will help mend the nation's ideological divides.