Twice a Supreme Court runner-up, Hardiman is back at work in Pa.
The Associated Press
Judge Thomas Hardiman was in the Washington, D.C., area Monday, but it was for a meeting on court cybersecurity — not for a prime-time introduction as President Donald Trump’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was the second time in two years that Judge Hardiman of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia was one of Mr. Trump’s finalists. The federal appeals judge from Pittsburgh was a runnerup last year to now-Justice Neil Gorsuch and on Monday to Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, said Tuesday that Judge Hardiman was taking the letdown “very well.”
“He said to me, ‘When you grow up on the other side of the tracks, you’re used to takinga few bumps,’” Mr. Santorumsaid.
Judge Hardiman, who turned 53 last Sunday, has a working-class background. He spent the summer between graduating from Notre Dame and starting law school at Georgetown as a dispatcher and driver at his family’s cab company in Waltham, Mass.
Mr. Santorum, who has known Judge Hardiman for decades, said the twotime finalist was wondering if there was a reason he keeps missing out. Mr. Santorum blamed an “inside-the-Beltway mentality” that “you’ve got to pick someone from Yale” — as Mr. Trump did.
Mr. Santorum said he was more disappointed than Judge Hardiman, saying he “really thought Trump was going to do something different.”
A friend and former legal colleague, Duquesne University president Ken Gormley, said that by Tuesday morning, Judge Hardiman was “busy at work doing his work as judge.”
Mr. Gormley said Judge Hardiman texted him that he knows Judge Kavanaugh and that “he’s a great person and a great judge, and he thinks he’ll make a great justice. He was happy for him.”
Judge Hardiman hasn’t spoken publicly about his latest near-selection and didn’t return messages from The Associated Press.
In the hours before Mr. Trump’s announcement of then-Judge Gorsuch’s nomination Jan. 31, 2017, Judge Hardiman was driving from his home near Pittsburgh in the general direction of Washington, prompting scuttlebutt that he was being selected.
At one point during his travels, he was spotted by a cable news camera crew while filling his gas tank.
But the judge went only about 100 miles that day to the home of Judge D. Brooks Smith, the circuit’s chief judge, near Altoona. White House aides suggested that it was part of a plan to distract the news media.