Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois on Friday became the first Republican senator to call for an up-or-down vote on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, saying on a Chicago radio show that his colleagues ought to “just man up and cast a vote.”
Meanwhile, a conservative legal group moved to counter a fierce Democratic push to target embattled incumbents such as Kirk, launching a multimillion television, radio and digital advertising campaign to block Garland’s consideration. The round of ads from the Judicial Crisis Network is the latest in an onslaught of opposition from conservative interest groups that are throwing money and opposition researchers aimed at halting the nomination process and discrediting Garland, the 63-year-old chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
That Kirk would be first to break with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and other GOP colleagues who think the next president should pick the replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia is not surprising: Kirk was one of two Republican senators, joined by Susan Collins of Maine, to call for confirmation hearings.
More important, Kirk faces what is perhaps the most difficult Senate reelection race in the nation – running during a presidential election year as a Republican in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican president since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
He is pitted against Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who has sought to tie Kirk to national Republicans, including presidential front-runner Donald Trump. Further complicating matters for Kirk is that Garland grew up in Illinois, in a Chicago suburb a few miles from the border of the congressional district Kirk used to represent.
Kirk, speaking on WLS-AM on Friday morning, said the Senate “should go through the process the Constitution has already laid out,” but he did not predicte that McConnell would relent before the election.
“I don’t see his view changing too much,” Kirk said. “Eventually, we will have an election, and we will have a new president, and the new president will come forward with a nomination.”
The Judicial Crisis Network ads are set to run for three weeks starting Monday, coinciding with a two-week Senate recess.
They will air in six states and target senators of both parties: Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire; Joe Manchin III, D-West Virginia; Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota; Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa; Michael F. Bennet, D-Colorado and Joe Donnelly, D-Indiana.
Ayotte and Bennet, along with Senate Judiciary Chairman Grassley, are up for reelection in November. Grassley, along with other Senate Republican leaders, has vowed not to hold hearings or a vote on any Supreme Court nominee until the next president is elected.
The ads targeting Manchin and Heitkamp aim to paint Garland as a liberal who would hurt the states’ coal and oil-and-gas industries, respectively.
Titled “Let the People Decide,” the ads are similar to a previous round the group put out shortly after Scalia’s death in February. They urge voters to support Republican senators who have promised not to move forward on confirmation hearings and to pressure Democratic senators who favor them to reconsider.
Among Senate Republicans, only Kirk and Collins have said they support holding hearings on Garland’s nomination. Several others have said they would grant a courtesy meeting but only to inform Garland of their position against considering his nomination. Kirk’s declaration Friday came three days before Democratic activists plan a nationwide day of action to protest Republican senators opposed to taking up Garland’s nomination.
Kirk, who said in the radio interview that he admired Scalia’s approach to the law, did not indicate he would necessarily vote for Garland. He said he would question the appeals court judge on whether “the Constitution is a total living document that can change quite a bit.”
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