3 Dems tread carefully around pick for court
The opening on the Supreme Court has created a dilemma for Democratic senators up for re-election this year in the states that President Donald Trump won in 2016.
The choice on whether to support the upcoming nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy will be a test for several Democrats in tough races. It could be particularly difficult for Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin.
They’ve sought to show their independence from the Democratic Party and their ability to work with the president, such as by trying to roll back some of the rules for small and medium-sized banks in the DoddFrank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law in 2010.
They’ve also broken with the vast majority of Democrats when it comes to some of Trump’s most important nominations. They were the only Democrats to have voted for Trump’s first Supreme Court selection, Neil Gorsuch. They also were the first three Democrats to announce that they would be voting for Mike Pompeo as secretary of state.
But opposing Trump’s Supreme Court nomination could dissolve some of the goodwill they’ve built up with Trump supporters — who just so happen to represent most voters in their state. Trump won West Virginia by 42 percentage points in the 2016 election, North Dakota by 36 percentage points and Indiana by more than 19 percentage points.
“For voters in deep-red states who support Trump, this will be the litmus-test vote for whether you have President Trump’s back or not,” said Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, a campaign group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. An affiliated group began running ads Thursday in 10 states that Trump won in 2016 where Democratic senators are now up for re-election.
Supporting Trump’s nominee would bring its own political peril for the Democrats. That move would risk alienating donors and the party’s base, potentially depressing voter turnout.
“There is an absolute meltdown on the left now about blocking this nomination,” said Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who is leading the GOP’s national Senate race efforts. “This is an incredibly difficult thing for them to try to address, and it’s going to create quite a bit of division.”
The president met with Heitkamp, Donnelly and Manchin on Thursday night to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.