Bill McMorris of the Washington Free Beacon details one strategy designed to boost support for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
A major conservative judicial activist hopes to give Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch a boost in his confirmation battle by targeting Democrats up for reelection in Republican states.
The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) plans to spend $10 million on targeted advertisements to boost Gorsuch’s bid to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the court.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing Democrats to obstruct the nomination. Several senators have already said they support filibustering Gorsuch, who was unanimously confirmed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006.
JCN President Carrie Severino, a former clerk of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, said that this obstruction would be unprecedented in a Supreme Court nomination process. She pointed out that her former boss’s famously contentious nomination battle 25 years ago, which featured unsubstantiated allegations of sexual harassment before the Senate confirmed him by a 52-48 vote, did not involve the filibuster.
“If filibustering a Supreme Court nominee was an acceptable thing, they would have used it with Clarence Thomas,” she said. “They used the dirtiest tactics ever, but filibustering was so far off the map that it didn’t occur to them to use it. We’ve really reached a new low.”
Severino said her group aims to peel off enough red state Democrats to take the filibuster off the table. Ten Democrats are running for reelection in states that Trump carried in 2016.
“We want to show them that following Chuck Schumer into a state of gridlock is not good for the courts, not good for their states, and unpopular with voters,” Severino said.
