the Fifth Circuit vacated by Judge Charles W. Pickering, who retired in 2004. Bush had previously elevated Pickering to the Fifth Circuit with a recess appointment in January of 2004, after Senate Democrats blocked two previous attempts to appoint Pickering in 2001 and 2003. In December of 2004, Pickering announced that he would retire from the federal bench and would not seek a nomination for a permanent seat on the Fifth Circuit. Originally, Bush nominated Mississippi attorney Michael B. Wallace in the 109th Congress to replace Pickering, but his nomination also became stalled due to fierce opposition from Senate Democrats. Upon the Democratic takeover of Congress in the November 2006 elections, Wallace asked President Bush not to re-nominate him in the 110th Congress. Finding itself without a nominee to a judgeship that had already sat vacant for two years, the White House turned to Southwick, then a nominee to a vacancy on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. Bush had nominated him on June 9, 2006 to fill a vacancy on that court left by Judge William H. Barbour Jr., who retired on February 4, 2006. Southwick had a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 19, 2006 and was reported favorably to the floor of the Senate by the Committee on September 29, 2006. However, Southwick, like many other judicial nominees, failed to receive a vote by the full Senate before the 109th Congress adjourned for good on December 9, 2006. Pursuant to Senate rules of procedure, his nomination, along with many others, was returned to the President. Southwick's successive federal nominations within seven months of each other, though unusual, were not unprecedented. In May of 2006, the Bush White House similarly nominated Jerome A. Holmes to a vacancy on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit after nominating him to a vacancy on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma in February of 2006. The Senate Judiciary Committee of the 110th Congress held a hearing on Southwick's nomination to the Fifth Circuit on May 10, 2007. The hearing was chaired by Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. Just prior to the hearing, controversy arose over the nomination. Southwick's nomination was opposed by the People for the American Way, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Congressional Black Caucus, who alleged that Southwick was racially intolerant and homophobic.