WASHINGTON (AP) – A Kansas senator’s remarks expressing support for Senate consideration of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick have angered conservatives and underscored the passion the issue stirs in both parties’ activists.
This week’s comments by Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, former head of the Senate GOP’s campaign organization, put him at odds with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other GOP leaders, who have said the chamber won’t hold hearings or a vote on the nominee.
Obama nominated federal judge Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court vacancy on March 16.
Moran is up for re-election this fall in a deeply conservative state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since the 1930s. While he is so far unopposed in the Aug. 2 Republican Senate primary, the filing deadline for candidates who might run against him is not until June 1.
According to reports in The Garden City Telegram and Dodge City Daily Globe, Moran said he favored Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and indicated an openness to a full Senate vote. He said it was extremely unlikely he’d back the nominee.
“I think we have the responsibility to have a hearing, to have the conversation and to make a determination on the merit,” Moran said at the Dodge City Rotary Club on Monday, according to the Daily Globe. “I can’t imagine this president is going to nominate someone I find acceptable.”
Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said “caving into” Obama was not serving Kansans and said her group was planning an advertising campaign “designed to remind Senator Moran that he represents the people of Kansas and neither President Obama nor the Democratic Party.”
Dr. Milton Wolf, whose tea party-backed campaign nearly captured the GOP nomination in 2014 from long-time incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts, tweeted this week, “How much of a coward is @JerryMoran?”