Former U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan, a Republican candidate for Vermont’s open U.S. Senate seat, said she supports Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a press statement Monday, Nolan said she decides whether to support judicial nominees “based solely on their qualifications” — not based on which president nominated them, or whether she agrees “with every decision they’ve ever made” as a judge.
“Politics should play no role in the confirmation process, a lesson that Washington politicians on both sides have sadly strayed from in recent years,” she said.
In a February interview with VTDigger following her campaign launch, Nolan struck a similar note when asked how she would vote on expanding the Supreme Court: “I don’t want to politicize the court, so no.”
She declined at the time, however, to “engage in hypotheticals” and say whether she would vote for U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to serve as Senate Majority Leader should she win her election and Republicans take back control of the Senate. As majority leader in 2016, McConnell blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly a year after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016.
U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who is vying for the same Senate seat as Nolan, has publicly backed Jackson’s confirmation since President Joe Biden announced the nominee last month.
Vermont Democrats, including Welch, have said that a Republican victory in Vermont’s Senate race could hand control of the Senate, and its judicial confirmation powers, back to McConnell.
“I’m not asking for (Vermonters’) vote to go work for Mitch McConnell, and I will always do the right thing and I will not work for a party or an ideology. I’ll always work for Vermonters,” Nolan said in February.
Nolan’s campaign said she was not available for an interview Monday.
Nolan and Welch are vying for the Senate seat occupied by U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who is retiring when his term ends in January 2023.
At a news conference in Burlington on Friday, Leahy said Senate Republicans lodged “hypocritical attacks that were racist, misogynist and unprecedented” at Jackson during last week’s Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. On Wednesday of last week, Leahy was so angered by U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whose behavior Leahy called “beyond the pale,” that he left the room.
VTDigger reporter Lola Duffort contributed to this report.
