For midterms, Supreme Court political drama plays to its audience

By Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, New York Times News Service

Sunday, July 15, 2018 | 2 a.m.

BOONVILLE, Ind. — Joe Donnelly knew his audience: Addressing a group of camouflage-clad union mine workers and retirees here last weekend, the Democratic senator trumpeted his efforts to protect their pensions and health care, asked attendees to raise their hands if they knew someone with a pre-existing health condition, and made not a single mention of the upcoming Supreme Court vote that could determine his political fate in November.

“It’s a big deal to those who know it’s a big deal, but it doesn’t translate to folks that go to work every day — they’re focused on things that make their life better,” said Russ Stillwell, a former Democratic state lawmaker from this southern Indiana community, explaining why Donnelly had ignored the most urgent topic in Washington just days before President’s Donald Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Two days later, in a Democratic campaign office at a strip mall in eastern Pennsylvania, a different atmosphere prevailed in the run-up to Kavanaugh’s nomination. Susan Wild, who is running for an open House seat in her Lehigh Valley district, and several dozen volunteers made phone calls Monday evening to women in the area, warning them that another conservative justice would put Roe v. Wade “in more danger than ever,” as a script provided to campaign workers described it.

“It’s not just Roe — it’s a lot of things Democrats care about,” said Barbara Diamond, a local activist who joined the volunteer session. “Affirmative action, the ACA, gun control — lots of things the court has the power to roll back,” she said.

The monthslong Supreme Court clash that lies ahead will draw hundreds of thousands of activists to the fray, produce tens of millions of dollars in advertising and consume untold hours of television coverage.

But the long-awaited debate over replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy’s swing vote is more likely to intensify the existing forces of the 2018 midterm elections rather than turn the campaign on its head.

In Senate races, Trump’s judicial selection could amount to a test of fealty for Democratic lawmakers in mainly conservative states like Indiana, where control of the chamber is likely to be decided. But the choice of a judge who could threaten abortion rights is likely to stir renewed opposition from voting groups, like white women, in the moderate suburbs that may determine control of the House.

The red-state Democrats who have tried consistently to find points of conspicuous agreement with Trump, even as their party opposes him overall, reacted with telling caution to the nomination of Kavanaugh. Plainly wary of alienating the right-of-center voters they must win over by November, Donnelly and Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, each of whom voted to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch last year, promised only to study the judge’s record.

Making his way through the Capitol on Tuesday, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said “look at my statement” three times in 15 seconds when pressed about the appointment, hoping to let his carefully worded news release carry the day.

Such dodges only whetted the appetites of Republicans, who taunted the Democrats for their hesitation and, in some cases, predicted they would eventually give in and support Kavanaugh.

“I can immediately say, without hesitation, that I would support this nomination,” said Mike Braun, Donnelly’s rival in Indiana.

In West Virginia, the Republican candidate for Senate, Patrick Morrisey, said Manchin “does not stand for West Virginia conservative values, regardless of how he votes,” and on Wednesday released a statement accusing Manchin of “spineless political calculation and pandering to liberal elites.” He launched an online petition in which West Virginians could tell Manchin to support the president’s pick.

Manchin bridled at the criticism. “I don’t think it’s responsible to make a decision on how you’re going to vote on a person you really don’t know until you do your homework,” he said Tuesday.

But the Democrat also signaled he would much rather tangle with Morrisey on issues unrelated to the court; he turned the question of his state’s values to highlight his rival’s relatively recent move to West Virginia. “He didn’t show up until 2006, after he lost an election in New Jersey,” said Manchin.

Perhaps no Republican Senate hopeful was more eager to hold up the court issue than Josh Hawley, the Missouri attorney general and former Supreme Court clerk who is challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Hawley predicted that his rival would oppose Kavanaugh because her focus is “stopping Donald Trump.” On Wednesday he unveiled his second Supreme Court-focused ad, this one linking McCaskill to Senate liberals opposing Kavanaugh.

McCaskill vowed only to make “an independent judgment” on the appointment, but did point out she had voted for nearly 80 percent of Trump’s judicial nominations. “That doesn’t sound like someone who is a knee-jerk partisan,” she said.

The political calculus could be simpler for Democrats if Kavanaugh appears almost certain to be confirmed. Some Democrats would prefer that the most endangered incumbents not be hectored by liberal donors and activists for what would be only a show of symbolic opposition.

“Our base doesn’t like hearing this, but it comes down to math: You either have the votes or you don’t,” said Jim Manley, a former Senate Democratic aide. “And I’m not so sure the votes are there to beat Brett Kavanaugh.”

Or as Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., put it: “It’s easier to be the 53rd vote than the 50th vote.”

But in House campaigns and some state-level races, the nomination is resonating very differently.

In the educated suburbs where Trump’s party is already on defense — and struggling to dissuade moderate women from deserting it altogether — the prospect of an election-year abortion debate is far more unsettling to Republicans, and could fire up already-energized liberals while cleaving centrist women from the GOP.

By midday Tuesday, multiple Democratic congressional candidates in areas like northern New Jersey and the outer suburbs of Chicago had attacked their Republican opponents for their views on abortion.

In Pennsylvania, where Republicans have traditionally soldered together a coalition of rural whites who are more culturally conservative and upscale suburbanites mainly concerned with taxes, an abortion-rights battle could further dismantle that fraying alliance. State Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, a Democrat helping lead the party’s strategy in legislative campaigns, said the Republican coalition was already straining badly.

In the past, she said, some Republicans had managed to avoid getting pinched on the abortion issue because the Supreme Court had limited states’ abilities to regulate the procedure. But Kavanaugh’s nomination could change that.

“My experience is that most moderate Republicans don’t want to have to vote on unconstitutional abortion bans, because their constituents are opposed to them,” Krueger-Braneky said, predicting, “This is an issue that people will come out and vote on.”

Wild’s opponent in Pennsylvania’s 7th District, Marty Nothstein, said Tuesday that he was not so sure about that. Nothstein, a local official in Lehigh County who was an Olympic gold medalist in cycling, said in an interview that he still believed the election there was more likely to hinge on economic matters than on issues related to the court, like abortion.

And he predicted voters in the district, parts of which were represented by Republican Charlie Dent before his retirement this year, would recoil if Democrats created an over-the-top spectacle in resisting Kavanaugh, whom he described as a “superb nominee.”