Biden Fourth Circuit Pick Ryan Park Advances Amid GOP Ire (1)

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved President Joe Biden’s selection for a North Carolina seat on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit as the state’s Republican senators threaten to sink the nomination.

Ryan Park’s nomination advanced, 11-10, without GOP support on Thursday after committee member Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) lashed out again over White House vetting for the Raleigh seat.

Tillis said that he and fellow Republican North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd put forth four potential contenders, including a magistrate judge with a Democratic background, but that the White House rejected all the picks.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said the administration conducted an “extensive consultation process” with Tillis and Budd.

The nomination of Park, North Carolina’s solicitor general, now goes to the Senate floor where the Democrats are racing to confirm as many of Biden’s remaining judicial selections as possible before the clock runs out on their majority in January. Park is among more than two dozen pending nominations for district and circuit courts.

The Senate on Thursday also voted 49-44 to invoke cloture, or end debate, on Embry Kidd’s nomination to the Eleventh Circuit. A confirmation vote was scheduled for Nov. 18.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also filed cloture motions to end debate on trial court selections who’ve attracted conservative scrutiny. They include Mustafa Kasubhai for the District of Oregon, Sarah Russell for the District of Connecticut, and Rebecca Pennell for the Eastern District of Washington.

Democrats had pulled the procedural floor vote on Kasubhai in June due to attendance issues amid their narrow majority.

Competing Narratives

Unlike district court selections, circuit court picks don’t need home-state senator support to advance to the floor. Some Republican senators have complained openly about White House consultation on appellate nominations.

Tillis, who said Park has “no prayer” of getting confirmed absent a shortage of Republican votes when he comes up for consideration, expressed dissatisfaction with the White House process earlier this year.

He revived the matter on Thursday just before the committee voted on Park. Tillis said after the White House rejected the potential nominees that he advanced with Budd, the administration then forwarded four of its own names. The list included Budd’s Democratic challenger in the 2022 Senate race, Cheri Beasley, who was previously chief judge on the state’s Supreme Court, according to Tillis.

Bates said the White House consultation “far exceeded” what was afforded to Democrats during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term when Senate Republicans dropped the home-state lawmaker “blue slip” approval custom for appellate picks. That allowed Trump to appoint judges in states with two Democratic senators, whether or not they approved of president’s picks.

A source familiar with the process behind Park’s nomination said the White House began its consultation with the Republican senators starting in January, when Judge James Wynn announced his plans to semi-retire. That went until July 3, when the White House announced Park’s nomination.

The process included forwarding its own picks to the senators and interviewing and reviewing the records of candidates the two Republicans put forward, according to the source.

The White House also agreed to delay the process for Tillis and Budd to create a new judicial selection commission in February, one that would propose candidates for the vacancy.

That’s despite “no such commission had been used to fill the Fourth Circuit vacancy arising under the previous administration.” The commission didn’t interview candidates raised by the White House, the source said.

When asked about the competing narratives after the vote, Tillis told reporters that he “couldn’t care less about what the White House has to say” after forwarding Budd’s 2022 Democratic challenger as a candidate.

Floor Dynamics

Tillis wouldn’t disclose to reporters the names of colleagues that he’s convinced to reject Park’s nomination because if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “brings it to the floor, he’ll know.”

“That’s all that matters to me,” he later added.

Democrats control the chamber 51-49. Sen Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) previously vowed to vote against nominees who don’t have Republican support. But he told reporters Wednesday that’s he’s walked back that decision and will instead look at whether some nominees would get bipartisan support under normal circumstances but aren’t because of the election-year politics. He voted against Kidd’s cloture vote Thursday.

Trump has demanded that Senate Republicans not allow Democrats to “ram through” anymore Biden judicial picks since he won the Nov. 5 election.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who bucked Trump on Biden judicial confirmations this week, each voted no to advance Kidd.