Sen. Lindsey Graham has indicated that he is leaning toward opposing President Joe Biden's nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, even though last year he voted to confirm her to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, The Hill reported on Wednesday.
The South Carolina Republican, who is influential on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is upset that Biden passed on South Carolina federal district Judge J. Michelle Childs after labor groups pushed back on her potential nomination.
Graham said Childs, who he suggested as the nominee, was derailed by dark-money liberal advocacy groups and that the choice of Jackson "means the radical left has won President Biden over yet again."
He stressed that "the reason Michelle Childs is not the nominee is because of a concerted effort by the left to take her down, and that doesn't sit very well with me."
The senator summed up his frustrations by saying, "Here's the point: I was willing to get probably double-digit Republican support for somebody that would have been in the liberal camp from my state. So they made a political decision to reject bipartisanship and go another way," The Hill reported.
Republicans are defending Graham's change of opinion, pointing out that the stakes for a Supreme Court confirmation vote are much higher than a nominee to the D.C. Circuit.
"I don't think voting for a circuit nominee guarantees a vote for the Supreme Court," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who is also on the Judiciary Committee. "I think people view that as different. Circuit court has to follow Supreme Court precedent, a Supreme Court judge does not."
Democrats appear to have given up serious hope of persuading Graham to vote for Jackson and are putting more effort into convincing other Republicans, such as Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted to confirm her to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in June.
Graham said he does not know when he will meet with Jackson and that Biden has not asked him personally for his support, according to the Hill.
Collins, whom Biden has spoken to twice about Jackson, praised the nominee's "thorough, careful approach" to applying the law after meeting with her for more than 90 minutes.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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