KEY SENATORS BACK KAVANAUGH, PAVING HIS WAY FOR SUPREME COURT CONFIRMATION
Kavanaugh confirmation all but sure after pair of wavering senators say they will back him Saturday
WASHINGTON — After weeks of shocking accusations, hardball politics and rowdy Capitol protests, a pair of wavering senators declared Friday they will back Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, all but guaranteeing the deeply riven Senate will elevate the conservative jurist to the nation’s highest court on Saturday.
The announcements by Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia ended most of the suspense over a political battle that has transfixed the nation — though die-hard Democrats insisted on arguing through the night to a mostly empty Senate chamber.
Some of them continued raising concerns that Kavanaugh would push the court further to the right, including with possible sympathetic rulings for President Donald Trump, the man who nominated him. But the case against Kavanaugh had long since been taken over by allegations that he sexually abused women decades ago — accusations he emphatically denied.
Collins told fellow senators that Christine Blasey Ford’s dramatic testimony last week describing Kavanaugh’s alleged 1982 assault was “sincere, painful and compelling.” But she said the FBI had found no corroborating evidence from witnesses whose names Ford had provided.
“We will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be,” she said. “We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.”
Those passions were on full display this week. And the fight could well energize both parties’ voters in elections for control of Congress just five weeks away. The showdown drew raucous demonstrators — largely anti-Kavanaugh — to the Capitol, where they raised tensions by repeatedly confronting lawmakers despite an intensified police presence.
It’s all expected to conclude Saturday afternoon with a final roll call almost solidly along party lines. That would mark an anti-climactic finale to a tortuous clash that left Kavanaugh’s fate in doubt for weeks after accusations against him first emerged.
In the pivotal moment Friday, Collins, perhaps the chamber’s most moderate Republican, proclaimed her support for Kavanaugh at the end of a Senate floor speech that lasted nearly 45 minutes. While she was among a handful of Republicans who helped sink Trump’s quest to obliterate President Barack Obama’s health care law last year, this time she proved instrumental in Trump’s effort to send Kavanaugh to the court and cast it rightward.
Manchin, the only remaining undeclared lawmaker, used an emailed statement to announce his support for Kavanaugh moments after Collins finished talking, making him the only Democrat supporting the nominee. Manchin faces a competitive re-election race in a state Trump carried in 2016 by 42 percentage points.
Republicans control the Senate by a meager 51-49 margin. Support from Collins and Manchin would give Kavanaugh at least 51 votes. With the #MeToo movement and Trump’s unyielding support of the nominee as a backdrop, both parties hope the bitter struggle will bring their most loyal voters to the polls Nov. 6.
Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a fellow moderate and friend of Collins, became the only Republican to say she opposed Kavanaugh. She said on the Senate floor Friday evening that Kavanaugh is “a good man” but his “appearance of impropriety has become unavoidable.”
She added that with Supreme Court appointments lasting a lifetime, “Those who seek these seats must meet the highest standards in all respects, at all times. And that is hard.”
In a twist, Murkowski said she will state her opposition but vote “present” as a courtesy to Kavanaugh supporter Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who is attending his daughter’s wedding in Montana. Murkowski said she’d use an obscure procedure that lets one senator offset the absence of another without affecting the outcome. That would let Kavanaugh win by the same two-vote margin he’d have received had both senators voted.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who has repeatedly battled Trump and will retire in January, said he’d vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation “unless something big changes.”
In a procedural vote Friday that handed Republicans an initial victory, senators voted 51-49 to limit debate and send the nomination to the full Senate, defeating Democratic efforts to scuttle the nomination with endless delays.
“What left wing groups and their Democratic allies have done to Judge Kavanaugh is nothing short of monstrous,” Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa declared before the vote.
On the other side, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the fight “a sorry epilogue to the brazen theft of Justice Scalia’s seat.” That reflected Democrats’ umbrage over Republicans’ 2016 refusal to even consider Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia.