Kavanaugh Was Supposed to Be a Midterm Boon for G.O.P. Not Anymore. (Published 2018)
- ️Sun Sep 23 2018
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- Sept. 23, 2018
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — No Republican Senate candidate has been as aggressive in using the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as a political weapon as Josh Hawley, the Missouri attorney general who is in an intensely tight race against Senator Claire McCaskill.
A former Supreme Court clerk, Mr. Hawley made his first campaign commercial about control of the court, and he assailed Ms. McCaskill for refusing to say if she would support Judge Kavanaugh. And after the accusation of sexual assault against Judge Kavanaugh last week, Mr. Hawley denounced Democrats for staging an “ambush.”
Yet in Missouri and other politically competitive battleground states, leaders in both parties are increasingly doubtful that Mr. Hawley and other Republicans can wield the Kavanaugh nomination as a cudgel without risking unpredictable repercussions in the midterm elections.
With Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, scheduled to testify this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and many women furious over President Trump’s attacks on Dr. Blasey, a Supreme Court nomination that was once seen as a political winner in many conservative-leaning states could, instead, rouse female voters and independents who otherwise may have cared little about the confirmation fight.
Suburban women are pivotal in this year’s campaign, and many of them were already tilting toward Democrats because of their contempt for President Trump. If Republicans are too harsh in their questioning of Dr. Blasey, they risk inviting an even greater backlash at the ballot box in an election where their House majority is in peril and their one-vote Senate majority is teetering.
And with record numbers of women running for office, their voices and those of female voters could crescendo in highly competitive election-year states from Arizona to Florida to New Jersey in support of Dr. Blasey if she testifies as scheduled. Her story makes it far harder, Republicans say, for their candidates to treat Judge Kavanaugh as an unalloyed asset and excoriate Democrats who oppose him.