WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court will need Republican support to receive Senate confirmation, a leading Democratic lawmaker said Friday.
Democrats are down to 49 votes in the chamber, following the hospitalization of New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Lujan. Lujan had a stroke, his office said in a statement.
Congressman Jim Clyburn, the chief Democratic vote counter in the House of Representatives, told McClatchy in an interview on Friday that Lujan’s absence means that Republican votes will be needed to muscle Biden’s soon-to-be named Supreme Court nominee through the Senate.
“The president will likely have a bipartisan pick. It has got to be bipartisan in order to get appointed to the court,” said Clyburn, who represents South Carolina in Congress.
Clyburn is openly pulling for South Carolina Judge Michelle Childs to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. He said he has not spoken recently to the president or the vice president about Childs, a federal district court judge, but talked about her this week with South Carolina’s two U.S. senators, Republicans Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott.
Biden is also said to be considering U.S. Appeals Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger for the vacancy.
“I know how to count. I’m the whip,” Clyburn said. “It has to be bipartisan. So I’m reaching out to the two Republicans from South Carolina. I’ve asked them for their support, but I’m talking to other Republicans, as well.”
Clyburn did not say who the other Republicans are that he had spoken to besides Graham and Scott, who he dined with Wednesday in Washington. Graham shared a photo of the trio to his Twitter account.
Graham has committed publicly to supporting Childs, if Biden chooses the University of South Carolina Law School graduate.
In an interview on Friday afternoon, Clyburn said that he met with the Republican senators to seek their support for Childs’ possible nomination.
“The meeting was just about informing them of what I was doing, and knowing full well that you got to have more than 50 votes to get anybody on the court, and it’s got to be bipartisan for us to do that,” Clyburn said.
“We only have 49 votes up here. We have 50 Democrats, with one that will be out for several weeks because of a stroke, and we cannot get it done, unless we get 50 votes,” Clyburn said.
Lujan’s office said in a Tuesday statement that the senator, who is 49, was in the hospital recovering from a stroke. Lujan’s chief of staff said the senator is expected to make a full recovery.
The senator’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted this week that most senators in both parties are older than Lujan.
“So, I would just say, we spend most of our time engaging in good faith about the president’s agenda and not making those calculations,” Psaki said.
The average age of a senator is 64.3 years old, according to a 2022 Congressional Research Service report.
Biden met this week with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin and the ranking Republican on the committee Chuck Grassley. He also spoke by phone to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, a spokesman for the senator said.
By the end of February, Biden says he intends to nominate a Black woman to replace Breyer on the Supreme Court. Breyer is considered to be one of the liberal members of the court. Biden has not shared a list of women he is considering, but the White House has publicly acknowledged it is vetting Childs.
“I want the advice of the Senate as well as the consent, if we can arrive on who the nominee should be,” Biden said during his meeting with Durbin and Grassley.
