Trump Squeezes Senate GOP With Pre-Election Court Vote Demand

President Donald Trump said he wants his looming Supreme Court pick confirmed before the Nov. 3 election, escalating pressure on Senate Republicans and Mitch McConnell as the majority leader seeks to protect his most vulnerable members.

Trump said Monday that he’ll name a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by the end of the week and that he wants that followed quickly by hearings and a pre-election confirmation vote. He warned that any Republicans who buck him would pay at the ballot box.

“The vote, the final vote, should be taken frankly before the election, we have plenty of time for that,” he said on Fox News, referring to the election to decide control of the White House and Congress 43 days from now. “If you have the Senate, if you have the votes, you can sort of do what you want as long as you have it.”

Watch: Donald Trump is moving toward nominating Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.

(Source: Bloomberg)

Holding what’s likely to be rancorous confirmation hearings and a vote to replace Ginsburg, who died Friday, before the election could tie up crucial time that could otherwise be spent campaigning. It also would force endangered incumbents in swing states to cast a contentious vote before Election Day. But if Democrats sweep Republicans out of power, that may change the vote calculations in the Senate, with Democrats already talking of retaliation in that event.

McConnell has promised a vote on Trump’s nominee, but hasn’t set a timetable. Proceeding with the vetting, hearings and confirmation in less than 40 days would be an unusual feat, though two justices in modern times, John Paul Stevens in 1975 and Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981, were confirmed in shorter spans. The average confirmation process in that period took about 70 days.

“To get it done before Election Day, everything has to work, I think, pretty precisely,” Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, a member of GOP leadership, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program.

Senate Republicans, who currently control the chamber 53-47, are on the defensive in this election. There are 10 Senate seats now held by the GOP that are considered competitive, and three of those members are on the Judiciary Committee, including the chairman, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

People attend a vigil for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Sept. 19.

Photographer: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Bloomberg

Trump argued Monday that pressing ahead would aid the Republican candidates. “I think it’s going to help everybody,” he said on Fox News. “I think it would be good for everybody to get it over with because it’s always controversial,” he said.

On tactics in the Senate, the administration had been giving McConnell wide berth.

“We will certainly be in communication with Leader McConnell about that timetable, but he’s going to know where the votes are,” Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, told reporters on Sunday. “He’s going to know where the comfort levels of his members are on the timetable versus campaigning they have to do.”

McConnell can press ahead once he’s certain that at least 50 Republicans are on board. The vote count was bolstered on Sunday with Senator Lamar Alexander’s announcement that he’ll support going forward. Democrats had considered Alexander a potential “no” vote because he’s a moderate who is retiring and not running for re-election this year.

Democrats already had a slight edge in their drive to take control of the Senate for the first time in six years and they are using the confirmation fight to pressure vulnerable Republicans.

Mitch McConnell

Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomber

“We are going to make it clear that any Republican who is running this year has to understand that they will be made accountable at the ballot box if they support this heist of the Supreme Court seat,” Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts said in a Bloomberg Radio interview.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden pleaded with GOP senators not to rush through a new justice.

“Cool the flames that have been engulfing our country,” Biden said Sunday in Philadelphia. “We can’t keep rewriting history, scrambling norms, and ignoring our cherished system of checks and balances.”

So far that’s had limited effect.

Trump’s Coattails

Among the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Joni Ernst of Iowa have been narrowly trailing Democrats Cal Cunningham and Theresa Greenfield, respectively, in recent polls. Graham and Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison were tied in a poll last week, in a conservative state where Graham won his previous election by 16.5 percentage points.

Tillis and Graham have less support in their states than Trump, according to polls, as is the case for Senators Martha McSally in Arizona and Steve Daines in Montana. All are in races that are linked to Trump’s ability to draw Republican voters to the polls.

McSally was one of the first out of the gate to call for a confirmation vote Friday night, shortly after Ginsburg’s death at age 87 of complications from pancreatic cancer was announced. Tillis, Daines and Graham issued statements saying they looked forward to confirming Trump’s pick, even as Democrats called out Republicans for hypocrisy for arguing in 2016 that voters should have a say first. In that case, McConnell blocked a hearing for President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February of 2016.

Martha McSally

Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

One of the most endangered Senate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine, has suggested the Judiciary Committee could start consideration of Trump’s choice but said the winner of the presidential election should ultimately decide who should fill the seat. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who isn’t up for re-election until 2022, joined her in opposing going through with confirmation before the election.

Court Vote

Collins is in a particularly tough spot, since her 2018 vote in favor of Trump’s nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh incensed moderate swing voters in her state. Her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, is leading her by 6.2 percentage points in a RealClearPolitics average of polls taken between July 2 and Sept. 16.

“Collins’ race was already about the Supreme Court because of her vote for Brett Kavanaugh, and this puts the issue more into hyper-drive,” said Jessica Taylor, Senate editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Time to Pray

Like Collins, Colorado Senator Cory Gardner is running in a state Trump lost in 2016. At a weekend debate at Colorado Mesa University, Gardner declined to say when asked whether he stood by his position from 2016, when McConnell prevented consideration of Obama’s court nominee, that next president should fill a vacancy created in an election year.

“There is time for debate, there is time for politics, but the time for now is to pray for the family,” Gardner said of Ginsburg.

A Supreme Court confirmation will also nationalize Senate campaigns, countering efforts by incumbents like Ernst and Gardner to keep the focus on home-state issues, Taylor said.

“The Senate was very much in play before and there are a lot of senators now who are going to be put in a very untenable position,” Taylor said.

Republican voters typically are more energized by judicial appointments than Democrats, but there are signs that the latest court fight may change that.

ActBlue, a key fund-raising platform for the left including for Democratic Senate candidates, took in more than $103 million between the announcement of Ginsburg’s death and just after noon on Sunday. Republican groups said they also saw a surge in funds, but didn’t release details.

Several Democratic strategists said they expected the fight over the court to help the party consolidate their base and draw in more of the suburban voters who’ve been drifting toward them since Trump took office.

“This will be highly motivating for Democrats and progressives” said Jeff Link, a veteran Democratic strategist. “This is going to be a jolt for everyone to pay attention up and down the entire judiciary.”

(Updates with context on past confirmation timelines fifth paragraph)

--With assistance from Emily Wilkins, Josh Wingrove, Denise Pellegrini and Laura Davison.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;
Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net

Christopher Anstey

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