Kavanaugh looks confirmed
Supreme Court nominee: Key support for judge secured on frenzied Friday at Capitol Senate voting Saturday: GOP’s Collins and Flake, Dems’ Manchin OK with Trump pick
WASHINGTON» A bitterly divided Senate cleared the way for Brett Kavanaugh to become the next Supreme Court justice as President Donald Trump’s nominee secured the support of a handful of wavering senators in a tumultuous confirmation fight.
During a frenzied Friday on Capitol Hill, two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona — and one Democrat — Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — said they would vote for Kavanaugh, whose confirmation seemed in peril three weeks ago over allegations against him of sexual misconduct.
Another lawmaker, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, RAlaska, broke with her party, saying Kavanaugh was a good man but “not the right man for the court at this time.”
Their pronouncements turned Saturday’s confirmation vote into a fait accompli, and one that will reverberate for the judiciary, the Senate and the nationwide #MeToo movement.
Kavanaugh, 53, would cement a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court as he replaces the swing vote of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy. But the federal appeals court judge will take the ninth seat under a cloud of controversy.
The acrimonious battle is certain to influence next month’s midterm elections, pitting energized female voters angered by the treatment of Kavanaugh’s accusers against conservatives who see him as a man wrongly accused.
Confirmation would be a win for Trump, who gets two justices on the Supreme Court, and a crowning achievement for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, RKy., who has long prized a conservative transformation of the federal judiciary and has found an eager partner in not only Trump but also White House counsel Donald McGahn.
McConnell blocked President Barack Obama’s final Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, from getting a vote in 2016 and muscled many appeals and district court nominees through the Senate, in addition to the confirmation of nowJustice Neil Gorsuch, under the Trump presidency.
In a key procedural vote earlier Friday, Flake, Collins and Manchin joined with nearly all Republicans on a 51to49 vote to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination. After the vote, Flake said he will vote to confirm Kavanaugh on Saturday “unless something big changes,” which he said he did not expect.
Collins delivered a forceful, pointbypoint defense of Kavanaugh, his judicial record and his personal character in a 44minute speech that was applauded by nearly two dozen of her GOP colleagues.
“We’ve heard a lot of charges and countercharges about Judge Kavanaugh, but as those who have known him best have attested, he has been an exemplary public servant, judge, teacher, coach, husband and father,” Collins said. “Despite the turbulent, bitter fight surrounding his nomination, my fervent hope is that Brett Kavanaugh will work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have far fewer 54 decisions and so that public confidence in our judiciary and our highest court is restored.”
In a near echo of Trump, Collins raised questions about the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who alleged Kavanaugh drunkenly pinned her to a bed, groped her and put his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams as he tried to take off her clothes at a gathering at a house in the early 1980s.
“I found her testimony to be sincere, painful and compelling. I believe that she is a survivor of a sexual assault and that this trauma has upended her life,” Collins said. “Nevertheless, the four witnesses she named could not corroborate any of the events of that evening gathering where she says the assault occurred; none of the individuals Professor Ford says were at the party has any recollection at all of that night.”
Manchin, a redstate Democrat up for reelection in a deeply conservative state next month, said shortly after Collins concluded her speech that while he had reservations, he believed Ka vanaugh was qualified enough to sit on the nation’s most powerful court.
“I do hope that Judge Kavanaugh will not allow the partisan nature this process took to follow him onto the court,” Manchin said.
Moments after he issued that statement, Manchin emerged from his office to talk to reporters assembled outside. But furious protesters drowned out the journalists, screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “Think of your daughters!” Manchin told the protesters that he believes Ford. But the protesters responded: “Liar!”
The final vote is set for late Saturday afternoon and needs just a simple majority in the 51to49 GOP Senate.
Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July to succeed Kennedy, a move that triggered an intense partisan battle over the court’s future well before the allegation of misconduct from Ford. But that accusation, as well as subsequent claims by other women, led the nomination fight to collide with the emotional #MeToo movement that has upended politics, the media and other industries long dominated by men.
Friday’s vote came after Trump mocked Ford at a political rally in Mississippi this week and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee issued a statement purportedly describing the sex life of another accuser — attacks decried by victims’ advocates.
Opposition to Kavanaugh largely unified Senate Democrats and has electrified an already furious Democratic base. Underscoring the strength of Democratic opposition, Minority Leader Charles Schumer, DN.Y., called Kavanaugh’s nomination “one of the saddest, most sordid chapters in the long history of the federal judiciary.”
Murkowski was the only GOP senator to break with her party. She said she made up her mind to vote against advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination as she entered the chamber to vote Friday, and detailed her opposition in a speech Friday night, delivered to a nearempty cham ber, that focused heavily on her concerns about Kavanaugh’s temperament.
“Even in the face of the worst thing that could happen — a sexual assault allegation — even in the face of an overly and overtly political process, a politicized process, and even when one side of this chamber is absolutely dead set on defeating his nomination from the very getgo, before he was even named, even in these situations, the standard is that a judge must act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, impartiality of the judiciary and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety,” she said.