3 GOP senators buck party to back Biden court pick
WASHINGTON (AP) — By announcing they will vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, three Republican senators are marking the historical moment by building legacies of their own.
Every senator has a voice, and some choose to use theirs. The three Republican senators — Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney — have broken with their party at critical junctures, despite the political risks of standing alone.
The three said separately that they don’t expect to agree with all of Jackson’s rulings from the bench. President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer will likely join the liberal wing of the high court, and is not expected to tilt its 6-3 balance toward conservatives. But the senators also indicated the Harvard-educated judge is more than just likable, well-qualified and possessing the judicial temperament to do the job. They said she is deserving of confirmation.
As the other Republican senators line up to oppose Jackson, the support from the three outliers gives Biden the bipartisan backing he was seeking for the historic choice, but may do little to shield them from the blowback of party leaders and activists back home.
The votes from Collins, Murkowski and Romney also serve as a rejection of the soft-on-crime attacks leveled at Jackson, some tapping into dangerous conspiracy theories, reminiscent of racist arguments senators made against the first Black nominee to the court, Thurgood Marshall, a half century ago.
Voting for the “historic nomination,” Murkowski said it was not only worth the political risk, but a rejection of a Senate process that “is growing worse and more detached from reality.”
It’s a measure of the nation’s polarizing times that what could be seen as a milestone for the country — the first time in the court’s 233-year history it won’t be made up of mostly white men — has devolved into another bitter, grievance- laden, political brawl.
Jackson’s nomination is advancing through procedural hurdles, including another vote Tuesday, and is on a glide path to confirmation in the Senate by week’s end.
While Democrats hold a narrow majority in the 50- 50 chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break a tie, her vote is unlikely to be needed.
“The confirmation of the nation’s first Black woman to the highest court in the land will resonate for the rest of our nation’s history,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D- N. Y., said Tuesday as he launched the weeklong procedural steps toward confirmation.
It wasn’t always guaranteed that Jackson, who was confirmed by the Senate to be a federal appellate judge just a year ago, would win over Republicans this time.