Daines lined up private jet to fly to D.C. if necessary
WASHINGTON — Sen. Steve Daines was prepared to take a private jet back to Washington on his daughter’s wedding day if Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court came down to his vote, the Montana Republican said early Friday.
Later in the day, it became apparent that Daines won’t need the jet after all.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-alaska, said she will use a quirky Senate procedure in Saturday’s confirmation vote to help Daines.
The procedure, which involves Murkowski being recorded as “present” in the vote as opposed to “no,” is unusual enough that Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell’s office issued an explanation to reporters on Friday night.
“When a senator is necessarily absent (for example, attending their daughter’s wedding), they can ‘pair’ with another senator who is voting the opposite way,” Don Stewart, a Mcconnell spokesman, said in a statement.
“I have extended this as a courtesy to my friend. It will not change the outcome of the vote” Murkowski said on the Senate floor on Friday night. “But I do hope that it reminds us that we can take very small, very small steps to be gracious with one another and maybe those small, gracious steps can lead to more.”
Under the pairing arrangement, the senator in the duo who is present and voting — in this case Murkowski — announces that she or he has “a pair” with the senator not in attendance. Murkowski then would announce how Daines would have voted and that she voted the opposite way “and that they therefore withdraw their vote and are instead recorded as present,” Stewart said.
“This allows the vote to occur with the same margin as would have occurred without the absence,” Stewart added in in an email, which had the subject line “procedural nerd stuff.”
Daines earlier had made arrangements to use Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte’s private jet to return to Washington after the wedding ceremony.
Daines and Gianforte have been friends since the 1990s, and the two men and their families have camped and hiked together. Daines worked as an executive in Gianforte’s software company, Rightnow Technologies, until 2012, when he won the U.S. House seat that Gianforte now occupies.