The search for a Republican vote

Naming of Andrew J. McDonald to state Supreme Court faces uncertain Senate fate

For all of the drama building in the state Capitol as the Senate heads to its historic confrontation over the next chief justice of the Supreme Court, Republican senators are staying mum.

TV ads may beckon voters to “stop the smear campaign,” robocalls may ring throughout the state, the governor may dangle a potential Supreme Court seat, but Republicans have given a collective shrug.

A narrow partisan victory in the House of Representatives behind him, the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Andrew J. McDonald faces an uncertain Senate vote Tuesday. If all Democrats vote in favor of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s nominee, he would need at least one Republican vote to win approval.

Publicly, Republicans say they have open minds regarding McDonald, a jurist Democrats call eminently qualified, with experience in the legislative, executive and judicial branches.

“I haven’t changed my mind but I haven’t committed either way, either,” Sen. Michael A. McLachlan, of Danbury said, even though he already voted against McDonald once — when the Judiciary Committee considered the nomination.

Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, whose district includes Newtown and other suburbs that have become more politically active postSandy Hook, said he is still studying the issue.

“I feel like I am back at school, reading law cases,” Hwang said “Obviously it’s going to be a very important vote.”

Sen. Toni Boucher of Wilton, who is aiming for the governor’s

seat and may have to appeal to voters in Democratic precincts, hasn’t yet made up her mind.

“There are a few of us who don’t know how we’re going to vote,” she said.

And in Greenwich, where Democrats are a rising political force, Republican Sen. L. Scott Frantz said it’s a weighty decision.

“Every single person in our caucus is looking at the nomination objectively and thoroughly,” Frantz said. “Many minds are still not made up.”

Frantz, who, like Hwang, is seen in the Capitol as a possible vote for McDonald, said the party leadership has not tried to persuade GOP senators one way or the other.

Robocalls and digital ads

Republican Senate Leader Len Fasano seems to be leaning against his former Senate colleague.

One of three lawyers in the 18member GOP Senate caucus, Fasano doesn’t like the digital video ads alleging that McDonald is the victim of an anti-gay smear campaign. He blames the Democrats for politicizing the process.

“I’ve never seen robocalls for a judge or chief justice,” said Fasano. “I think that it has kind of backfired.”

“For four days in a row I came home to my answering machine that tells me what horrible human beings we are and I am supposed to call myself to tell me that,” said Boucher. “It’s disappointing. I have never been involved in anything so political.”

Decisions and opinions

Fasano has major issues with some of McDonald’s rulings, including a concurring opinion on the controversial 2015 Supreme Court decision that led to the end of capital punishment for the 11 killers on Death Row. But he supports other decisions and opinions.

“We have had Supreme Court judges retire, not get through the process, and all hell didn’t break out,” Fasano said. “This should be no different, if that’s the way this comes out.”

On Friday, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League of Connecticut, charged McDonald with “anti-Catholic bigotry” — referring to when, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, McDonald allowed legislation to be drafted for a public hearing that might have led to a change in incorporation law for churches. It followed two, million-dollar embezzlements by priests in Greenwich and Darien. McDonald canceled the hearing amid a hail of criticism from Catholic clergy.

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, himself a lawyer, said there is a lot more at stake than McDonald’s career.

A threat to independence

“It would be potentially quite damaging to the Judiciary and the way judicial nominations are handled,” said Looney, who expects good support from his caucus. “Unlike many states, we have avoided blatant partisanship.”

Sen. Gayle S. Slossberg, a Democrat from Milford, tipped the scales toward the GOP in the evenly split Senate by recusing herself.

Leslie C. Levin, an expert on legal ethics who holds the Joel Barlow Professor position at the UConn Law School, said support for McDonald goes well beyond academics and the large law firms.

“The truth is, he is currently on the Supreme Court and is only one vote in five or more,” Levin said. “I know many lawyers who are not even litigators, who do not even take cases up to the Supreme Court, because they understand it’s fundamentally dangerous to our separation of powers and our judicial independence.”

Tom Swan, a Democratic political operative who is executive director of the Connecticut Citizen’s Action Group, says the ultra-conservative factions in the Legislature have become emboldened, as illustrated by McDonald’s narrow 75-74 victory in the House earlier this month.

Roraback in the wings

If the Republican Senate caucus votes as a block in opposition to the nomination, McDonald will remain on the court, but he won’t become the first openly gay chief justice of a state supreme court in America.

Complicating the issue, on Thursday, Capitol sources told Hearst a former, well-liked state senator, now a Superior Court judge — Andrew W. Roraback of Goshen — would be nominated to a Supreme Court vacancy if McDonald were confirmed. Roraback did not reply to a request for comment.

“As far as I’m concerned, there was never any deal in the offering,” Fasano said, adding that he expects to get an idea of how the caucus feels on Monday.

McDonald