With President Joe Biden poised to nominate the first black woman to the Supreme Court to succeed retiring Justice Stephen Breyer by the end of February, the White House has been in contact with a trio of Republican senators in hopes of gaining bipartisan support.
The White House has been in direct communication with Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, all of whom have voted for at least 60% of Biden’s judicial nominees. Biden’s Supreme Court nominee would not necessarily need Republican votes to be confirmed, assuming all 50 senators in the Democratic Caucus support her, along with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. But a least some Republican support would bolster the bipartisan bona fides of Biden, the former two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator, including a long stint as Judiciary Committee chairman.
Collins, Graham, and Murkowski also voted for Biden’s nominee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is seen as a contender to succeed Breyer.
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However, Murkowski said last month that a “yes” vote over a lower court position does not indicate she would support the same person if nominated to the Supreme Court. There is a “pretty tangible difference” between serving on an appeals court and serving as a justice, Murkowski said, according to Alaska radio station KDLL.
Other more hard-line Republicans such as Sen. Josh Hawley, who hasn’t supported any of Biden’s judicial selections, argued candidates the president has selected in past nominations have been “left-wing activists,” falling in line with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s warning against Biden sourcing his selection to the “radical left.”
But Graham has been a vocal supporter for Biden to nominate South Carolina federal judge J. Michelle Childs, who is also a high-profile contender through Biden’s selection process. On Sunday, Graham told ABC’s This Week he believed Childs could “bring the Senate together and probably get more than 60 votes.”
McConnell spoke to Biden on a phone call last week where he pledged he would give Biden’s forthcoming nominee a “fair look,” though the Kentuckian is viewed as unlikely to support the president’s choice along with other GOP hard-line senators.
The most recent confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 marked the first time in more than 150 years a candidate for Supreme Court did not receive a vote from a member of the minority party. Both Collins and Graham voted for Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor following former President Barack Obama’s nominations in 2009 and 2010, though Murkowski voted no for both justices.
“I recognize that these are not judges that a Republican president would name … but we don’t have a Republican president and the president, it’s his right to send these names forward,” Murkowski said last week in regards to Biden’s forthcoming Supreme Court pick.
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Biden began meeting with Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and told the press he had narrowed his scope of “incredibly well-qualified and documented” candidates to “about four” potential selections to succeed Breyer.
Breyer announced his retirement from the high court last month and plans to remain on the bench until the end of the summer term.
