One wonders what the conversation was like around the Katherine Leonard-Ian Sandison dining room table Tuesday night in the aftermath of her long state Senate confirmation hearing at the Capitol.

“Mom, how could people say you have no leadership and administrative skills?” one can imagine son Ian, a Boy Scout, asking his mother. “You’re an assistant scout leader!”

“They surely meant no harm,” Leonard may have responded. “You’ll understand all this one day.”

The Leonard-Sandison family deserves its privacy, of course.

But Leonard’s life and career is now very much in the public eye, and her fate is in the hands of the members of the Judiciary and Government Operations Committee, who will advise the full Senate.

Tuesday’s hearing gave senators a lot to think about.

Leonard’s husband, a partner at Carlsmith Ball, and son sat dutifully next to her in Senate Committee Room 229 Tuesday, both wearing aloha shirts and young Ian with a kukui nut lei. At one point, Leonard’s husband brought her a bottled water.

Not far from Leonard in the front row sat Robert Klein, the former associate justice, for whom Leonard worked as a law clerk. Behind her sat attorney Bill McCorriston, a former bar association president. Both are strong supporters of Leonard’s nomination to replace Chief Justice Ronald Moon when he retires Sept. 4.

In fact, nearly everyone who testified — in writing and in person — on Gov. Linda Lingle‘s nomination of Leonard, a judge on Hawaii’s Intermediate Court of Appeals, was in strong support of her becoming the next “CJ.”

They included law clerks, professors and a dean, former classmates and law firm partners, female attorneys and attorneys general, public defenders and prosecutors, Lingle cabinet members, past presidents of the Hawaii State Bar Association, leaders of key Native Hawaiian organizations, and — yes — Scout masters and even parents of Scouts.

The witnesses did not include Lingle herself; that job fell to Attorney General Mark Bennett, who said Leonard was picked because she was the best candidate, not merely because she is a woman. Leonard, 50, would be the first woman chief justice and the first graduate of the University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law to serve on the court.

In describing Leonard, her supporters used words that would have earned merit badges in another context: “tireless worker,” “very humble,” “highly intelligent” and “born leader” who has “impeccable professional credentials,” “solid morals and ethics” and “the patience of a saint.”

Critics: “Leonard Not a Leader”

Glowing testimony about a judicial nominee is common. But senators sometimes accentuate the negative in evaluating nominees, especially to high office, the way some did Tuesday.

The words used to describe Leonard by opponents like Marie Milks, a retired District and Circuit court judge, were damning: “no history of demonstrating administrative ability” and “yet to demonstrate leadership…They are absent in the nominee.”

Milks said a nominee to lead the third branch of government, one who must work directly with the executive and legislative branches, must have “proven leadership capabilities.” Milks said Leonard has not earned that “highly regarded reputation.”

Hugh Jones Jr., the bar association president, defended the bar’s rating process — which protects the identity of the group’s 4,600 members — and reiterated that the bar’s board stood by its “unqualified” evaluation of Leonard. He did not disclose much else.

Many witnesses, however, took the bar to task for its behind-the-scenes deliberations, including attorneys like McCorriston.

How the Senate Judiciary and Government Operations Committee will rule won’t be known until Thursday, in advance of a full Senate vote Friday.

The committee’s recommendation is not essential for confirmation but would certainly weigh heavily with other senators. As it is likely will the bar association’s rating, which senators have pointed to in shooting down previous Lingle judicial nominees.

The importance of the Leonard nomination was underscored by the fact that senators not on the judiciary committee were in attendance Tuesday.

Judging from the questioning of Leonard, some senators remain worried about the charge of lack of administrative experience, others about Leonard’s sensitivity to issues important to Native Hawaiians and a favoring of big business over individuals, as Sen. Clayton Hee put it. (However she also had support from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and a Native Hawaiian leader.)

Hee, who is not on the judiciary committee but formerly chaired it, showed up late to Leonard’s hearing and left early, wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots and sunglasses. He did appear to have read Leonard’s opinions, however, and pointedly grilled Leonard over them.

Some doubt whether Leonard can fill the shoes of Moon, Richardson, and the two other men who have been chief justice.

But Leonard had a defender in Sam Slom, the lone Republican on the judiciary. In his questioning of Leonard, Slom sought to skewer the bar association’s rating process and to bolster Leonard’s management skills.

Leonard: “I Love My Work”

Leonard herself sat composed throughout the process, speaking in a flat Midwestern voice and looking a little like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Her father worked in a Wisconsin factory and belonged to a union, picking up part-time work at a car wash and gas stations. Her mother was a homemaker who babysat to supplement the family’s income. Neither went to college.

Leonard’s first job in Hawaii was tending to orchids in a Waimanalo nursery. The University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law was the only law school she applied to, and she became editor of the law review there.

Leonard left the firm Carlsmith Ball because she wanted to enter public service, though her salary would be cut in half. (The CJ is paid around $190,000.)

“The Intermediate Court of Appeals was a dream come true,” she told senators. “I love my life there. I love my work as a judge.”

At the end of the hearing, Leonard responded to the knock on her experience: “I believe the concerns expressed are misplaced. But I truly respect the right to raise those before the committee. Perhaps, in a quiet and different way than some, I do believe I have administrative leadership.”

During a hearing recess, in another Senate hearing room provided for the overflow crowds, father and son counted the testimony about their loved one. By their count (and mine), it was overwhelmingly in support of the nominee, by a ratio exceeding 20-to-1.

But the only count that matters — the one that will determine whether Katherine Leonard leads the highest court in the state for 10 years — will come down to five men on the judiciary committee and 23 members of the state Senate.