Votes are now there
3 key senators say they plan to back Kavanaugh, assuring elevation
WASHINGTON — Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Friday secured the support needed to win Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court as two Republicans and a Democrat who had waited to announce their votes rallied to the side of President Donald Trump’s nominee.
The announcement of support by Susan Collins, R-Maine, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., capped a bitter partisan fight in which Kavanaugh fended off allegations of decadesold sexual misconduct.
In a key procedural vote earlier Friday, Collins, Flake and Manchin joined with the majority in a 51-49 vote to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination. Following the vote, all three senators
indicated they plan to support Kavanaugh’s confirmation in a final vote Saturday.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Collins said Kavanaugh had “received rave reviews” for his 12 years as a federal appeals court judge and that the misconduct allegations against him failed to meet a standard of “more likely than not.”
Manchin, a red-state Democrat up for re-election next month, said shortly afterward that while he had reservations, he “found Judge Kavanaugh to be a qualified jurist who will follow the Constitution and determine cases based on the legal findings before him.”
Earlier in the day, Flake also indicated that he plans to vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, which is scheduled for Saturday, “unless something big changes.”
The final confirmation vote needs support from at least 50 senators. The final tally for Kavanaugh's confirmation would be either 51-49 or 50-49, depending on whether Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., casts a ballot. He was planning to attend his daughter's wedding in his home state when the voting occurs. Vice President Mike Pence could cast the tie-breaking vote if necessary.
Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July to succeed retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, a move that triggered an intense partisan battle over the court’s future well before the first allegation of misconduct surfaced from Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a suburban Maryland home when they were teenagers in 1982.
The nomination collided with the #MeToo movement and midterm election politics and could alter the balance of power on the Supreme Court for a generation.
Friday’s vote came after Trump mocked Ford this week at a political rally and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee issued a statement purportedly describing the sex life of another accuser, attacks decried by advocates for victims.
Confirmation of Kavanaugh would be a crowning achievement for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who blocked a Democratic nominee to the court for more than a year and has muscled dozens of appeals and district court nominees through the Senate.
In Friday morning’s procedural votes, all Democrats but Manchin stood firm against elevating Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court.
Underscoring the strength of Democratic opposition, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called Kavanaugh’s nomination “one of the saddest, most sordid chapters in the long history of the federal judiciary.”
Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski was the only GOP senator to break with her party. Murkowski said she made up her mind to vote against advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination as she entered the chamber to vote Friday.
“I believe that Brett Kavanaugh is a good man,” she said. “I believe he is a good man. It just may be that in my view he’s not the right man for the court at this time.”
Drama escalated in the afternoon as senators awaited Collins’ floor speech.
McConnell swiveled his chair at his desk so he could watch Collins — who sits two rows behind him — during the entire speech. As she began to speak, protesters stood up in the gallery, yelling, “Vote no! Show up for Maine women!” Collins just looked down until all had been escorted away from the gallery.
Three Republican women — Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Jodi Ernst of Iowa and Cindy HydeSmith of Mississippi — sat behind her in a show of support, not sitting in their usual seats.
At the end of a nearly 45-minute speech, when Collins said she would vote to confirm Kavanaugh, McConnell led a standing ovation. He then went over and shook her hand, as did several other GOP senators. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who presided over Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, gave her a bear hug.
When Manchin emerged from his office soon afterward to talk to reporters, protesters were waiting and drowned him out shouting “shame, shame, shame,” “you betrayed us” and “think of your daughters,” among other things.
The last of the undecided votes began falling into place Friday after the senators reviewed a highly anticipated report from the FBI investigating allegations of misconduct against Kavanaugh while in high school and college in the early 1980s.
Republicans argued the report exonerated Kavanaugh of any wrongdoing, giving senators more confidence in voting to confirm him. But Democrats disputed the Republicans’ assertions, especially because, they argued, the scope of the investigation was too limited.
The FBI investigated the allegation brought by Ford, a psychology professor in California.
Agents also looked into the accusation brought by Deborah Ramirez that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party when they were students at Yale University. Kavanaugh adamantly denies both accusations.
The allegations of a third accuser, Julie Swetnick, were not a focus of the investigation. Swetnick, who is represented by celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, alleges that Kavanaugh was physically abusive toward girls in high school and was at a house party in 1982 where she says she was the victim of a gang rape. Kavanaugh called those allegations outlandish.
The FBI reached out to 10 witnesses, although nine were ultimately interviewed, according to senators and the White House. But lawyers for both Ford and Ramirez have said they offered the FBI numerous other witnesses who could potentially corroborate the women’s claims.
Earlier in the day Friday, it appeared Republicans were facing a complication with their plan to hold a Saturday vote confirming Kavanaugh.
Sen. Steve Daines, RMont., had announced plans to be at his daughter’s wedding back home on Saturday. Daines told reporters Friday that he would fly back late Saturday if he was needed for the vote. But with Collins and Manchin coming on board, it appeared his presence would not be necessary.
Kavanaugh, 53, has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2006 and previously worked in George W. Bush’s White House. He served as a clerk to Kennedy in the early 1990s alongside Justice Neil Gorsuch, whom Trump nominated for the Supreme Court last year.
The American Bar Association, which had issued a unanimous “well qualified” rating for Kavanaugh, said in a letter sent Friday that it would reopen its evaluation because of “new information of a material nature regarding temperament” that emerged from an emotional and combative hearing last week the featured testimony from Ford and Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh addressed his comportment at the hearing in an extraordinary op-ed in the Wall Street Journal published Thursday night, acknowledging that he was “very emotional” during his testimony and “I said a few things I should not have said.”
“Going forward, you can count on me to be the same kind of judge and person I have been for my entire 28-year legal career: hardworking, even-keeled, open-minded, independent and dedicated to the Constitution and the public good,” Kavanaugh wrote.