Washington ? Judge Samuel Alito on Wednesday gained the American Bar Assn.’s highest rating for a Supreme Court nominee, giving him a boost before next week’s Senate confirmation hearings.

Interest groups now will try to help or hinder Alito’s chances by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on television, radio and Internet ads nationwide and in the states of key senators, before and during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings.

This is the second time the ABA, the nation’s largest lawyers’ organization, has rated Alito, who was nominated by President Bush on Oct. 31 as the replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The “well qualified” rating – the highest – is the same one that Alito earned in 1990 when President Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, nominated him to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Embracing the latest rating, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, “Leading Senate Democrats have said in the past that the ABA is the – quote – gold standard for evaluating judicial nominees.”

Democrats, the Senate’s minority party, contend Alito is too conservative and could undermine abortion rights. They are expected to be Alito’s toughest questioners at the hearings that begin Monday.

“The ABA ratings do not take into account whether a judge’s judicial philosophy and views are in or out of the broad mainstream,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “That is the $64,000 question with Judge Alito and we will have to wait for the hearings to get a better answer.”

For more than 50 years, the ABA has evaluated judicial nominees’ credentials, though the organization has no official standing in the process. In 2001, Bush ended the ABA’s preferential role in vetting prospective nominees and refused to give the group advance word on names under consideration.