WASHINGTON (CN) — Senate Democrats boycotted the vote to advance Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court to the full Senate on Thursday, saying they will not give the process “further legitimacy” less than two weeks out from a presidential election that is already underway.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham made clear he planned to proceed with or without his Democratic colleagues. The Republicans reported Barrett out of committee unanimously, with a heavy silence hanging briefly as the clerk taking the roll called the names of Democratic senators.
“All I can say is that Judge Gorsuch was filibustered two or three times, requiring us to change the rules,” Graham said Thursday. “They started this, not me.”
From the steps of the Capitol, however, Democrats said that — amid the coronavirus pandemic that has killed over 220,000 Americans, and with tens of millions of ballots already cast through early and mail-in voting — Republicans should be focused on passing more Covid-19 relief and allow voters to choose the president who will select the next justice.
To call the process illegitimate would be too kind, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, emphasizing that it was Graham, not Democrats, who violated the Senate rules.
“The rules require two members of the minority to be present to vote anyone out of committee. But Chairman Graham just steamrolled over them,” he said.
Still, Graham argued that it was in 2013 that the judicial nomination process took a “dark turn.” That year, he said, Senate Democrats seeking to pack the D.C. Circuit with Obama-appointed judges changed the rules so that only a simple majority vote was needed for district and circuit court nominees.
“What the hell happened?" Graham asked Thursday, saying Democrats injured precedent beginning with Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 and continuing with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. "It crescendoed with Kavanugh,” Graham added.
But it was Republicans who reached for the so-called nuclear option four years ago in response to a Democratic filibusterer of then-Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, changing the Senate rules to end the floor debate with a simple majority vote and then confirm the nominee.
Graham similarly ignored committee tradition last week when Democrats sought to delay the procedural vote to schedule Thursday’s vote.
The move wasn’t entirely unprecedented, Graham’s spokeswoman indicated Wednesday night, saying on seven occasions since 2006 the committee has conducted business and held over judicial nominees with only a majority of senators in the room, rather than a minimum of two members of the minority present. But the high-profile panel has never voted a Supreme Court nominee to the floor without a quorum present.
Democrats’ refusal to cast their "nay" votes does a disservice to Barrett, Graham said, praising President Donald Trump’s pick as “one of the most highly qualified people to ever be nominated” to the high court.
Barrett has spent the last three years as a Seventh Circuit judge, with 15 years before that in academia, mostly at her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School.
Republicans criticized their Democratic colleagues for not showing up Thursday, arguing the minority had abandoned their post.
"Rather than show up and do their job, they choose to continue the theater that was part of the hearing,” Republican Senator John Cornyn said.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said her party’s members participated in last week’s hearing to make the case for why Barrett poses a risk to affordable health care, reproductive rights and voter discrimination.
