Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Wednesday he cannot vote for Michael Boggs, a controversial Obama nominee to be a federal judge who has faced fierce criticism from progressives.
“Unless I have a better explanation. I can’t vote for him. This is a lifetime appointment. He’s said some things and made some decisions I think are not very good,” Reid told BuzzFeed. “Boggs is not somebody I’m going to vote for unless I have some explanations on why he did that deal with the rebel flag and things he’s said about abortion.”
As a Georgia state legislator from 2000 to 2004, Boggs voted to keep the state’s old flag which included the Confederate battle flag. He voted for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and for various anti-abortion bills, one of which pro-choice activists say endangers doctors.
Progressive groups have waged an all-out fight to scuttle the nomination. The White House says he was part of a package deal with Georgia’s Republican Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson to bring up seven judicial nominees. The senators had used a tool known as the “blue slip” to block numerous judicial appointments and compel the White House to cut a deal.
Boggs has yet to be voted on by the Judiciary Committee, which held a hearing Tuesday on his nomination in which he was grilled by Democrats for his past votes as a legislator. Democrats have a 10-8 advantage on the committee, so if all Republicans vote for him, he’ll need just three Democrats to win committee approval. If and when he is cleared, Reid must decide whether to bring him to the Senate floor. There he would need just 5 Democrats (if Republicans vote for him as a bloc) to be confirmed.
In other words Reid and most Democrats could vote against Boggs while still letting him be confirmed. The majority leader’s office won’t speculate on whether he’ll bring Boggs to the floor until the Judiciary Committee votes on him. Ditching the nomination would scuttle the deal with Chambliss and Isakson, imperiling the other six nominees — including two for the important 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — and potentially leaving the seats vacant.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that while Obama believes Boggs is qualified, senators should vote their “conscience.” He said it would be “grossly irresponsible” to leave the judgeships unfilled.
The reproductive rights group NARAL, which has led the opposition to Boggs, suggested Reid should do whatever it takes to make sure he isn’t confirmed.
“Michael Boggs positions on choice, marriage equality and important civil rights issues are beyond troubling. In addition, his answers before the committee this week were vague at best and resulted in more questions than answers about his past,” Ilyse Hogue, NARAL’s president, told TPM. “We urge the Senate to use any and all measures to prevent this nominee from getting a lifetime appointment on the federal bench.”
This article has been updated.
Please, please, give us the full story on the deal.Who are the other judges in the deal? Where are there nominations? Google turned up an LA Times story that said one of the other nominees, David Barron, is controversial due to drone assassination memos. It sounded like other nominees in the deal may have already been confirmed, but its not clear.
Doesn’t this White House, and the Senators sponsoring these nominees, make sure their party it have 51 votes for these people before they nominate them? Isn’t that one of the jobs of the legislative aids/liasons? Is this incompetence, some Senators breaking their word to the President, or the President’s own party showing him disrespect because it can?
Someone should give the President a hard kick in the ass to wake him up. We do not need to give this nutjob a lifetime job of causing all the trouble he can for the reasonable people of this country.
May I take a stab at a guess on this
I’m guessing (since I have no way of knowing) that Reid and the Administration thought they could get the Red State Dems on board with this. It sort of makes sense politically if those particular Dems wanted to solidify their anti-DFH creds right before the election. I don’t really have any doubt that Reid must have gotten some nominal agreement from Landrieu, Pryor, Hagen and maybe Udall.
Here’s the thing: this guy is so odious, those Red State Dems probably realized too late that supporting him was really a bridge too far. (I mean, come on, the Confederate Battle flag??) Supporting him won’t give them any advantage in the upcoming election and really he’s just indefensible.
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