Tim Donaher, Monroe County's new public defender, was greeted by outrage and shouts of protest - not because of his credentials, but because of the process used to pick him.

Donaher was approved by the Legislature on Tuesday night in a vote straight down party lines, 15-14. Republicans control the Legislature by one vote, and they stuck together. (See slideshow of the public defender meeting.)

Though the meeting started at 6 p.m., a crowd packed the lobby of the County Office Building by 5 p.m. The majority of the crowd was kept out of the meeting by sheriff's deputies, who, at 5:40 p.m., said the Legislature's meeting room was already filled to capacity. The crowd was instructed to go across the street to City Place, which was set up for a simulcast of the meeting.

Critics of the public-defender search say the process was loaded with partisan bile and designed to exclude community and minority representation. They wanted an independent screening panel that wasn't led by politicians. A meeting of the Legislature's Public Safety Committee on Saturday morning dissolved into chaos, culminating in the arrest Saturday of State Assemblyman David Gantt and two local leaders in the African-American community.

Law enforcement guarded stairways, doorways, and elevators at Tuesday night's meeting. Many people accused the county of conspiring to keep the public out of the meeting: the posted occupancy rate of the meeting room was allegedly lowered and some in attendance accused county officials of removing benches to reduce seating room. Members of the public who managed to get in to the meeting had to visit a screening table staffed by sheriff's deputies with hand-held metal detectors.

When Legislature President Wayne Zyra tried to start the meeting, State Assemblymember David Gantt yelled, "Let our people in!" Zyra immediately instructed deputies - about a dozen were present inside the chambers - to escort Gantt out. At one point, deputies also hustled Sister Grace Miller, a vocal advocate on many social issues, out of the room. Bob Bonn, who served on the 1977 public-defender search committee that recommended Ed Nowak, signed up to speak, but was escorted out of the room after exceeding his two-minute time limit. He kept speaking while being led out.

Shortly after 7 p.m., community activist Ray Scott spoke against the search, then led about 40 people out of the chambers. Scott and others yelled as they left, calling Lej Republicans "cowards."

When it came time to appoint Donaher, Democrats voiced their displeasure with the process, and with the tenor of the meeting. Legislator Willie Lightfoot said that what was once a matter of social class and economics, had become a matter of race.

"What I saw here tonight was about racism. I've never seen anything like that before in my life," he said.

Legislator Paul Haney, who served on City Council for 12 years in the 1970's and 1980's, said hundreds of people used to flock to City Hall to air their grievances.

"Through all the events I sat through in the 70's and  80's, I've never seen anything like tonight," he said.

Republican Majority Leader Dan Quatro said some of the process's critics had a chance to give input on the next public defender. The Monroe County Bar Association backed away from the original panel proposed by Zyra, thereby forfeiting any say it had in the search, Quatro said. Quatro defended the police presence, saying opponents had promised to disrupt the meeting.

"It's purely partisan politics, in my humble opinion," he said.