Red State Dem Heidi Heitkamp to Meet Kavanaugh

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) announced plans Wednesday to meet Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, ending speculation she might join fellow Democrats in denying Kavanaugh that traditional courtesy.

“I’ll meet with Judge Kavanaugh on August 15 to sit down with him and learn more about him, his judicial record, and his judicial temperament,” Heitkamp told the Washington Examiner in a statement, continuing:

I’ll also need to see his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of a thorough and exhaustive review – which is what every senator should do when evaluating a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. As I’ve continued to say, one of the most important jobs of any U.S. senator is to fully vet any nominee to serve on the Supreme Court, the highest court in our land. And that’s exactly what I plan to do, just as I have for other Supreme Court nominees, including Justice Gorsuch.

The announcement bucks a current of strategy among some Senate Democrats and the wider political left to portray Kavanaugh’s nomination as an extraordinary threat and him as an “extremist” that must not be even entertained.

In the first two weeks after his nomination to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, no Democrats made efforts to meet with Kavanaugh. After President Donald Trump’s White House began to apply pressure on Democrats to change course, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) met with the nominee Monday. Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) agreed Tuesday to follow Manchin’s lead after his Republican opponent in November’s election, Mike Braun, criticized him for giving Kavanaugh a cold-shoulder in a Breitbart News report.

Like Manchin and Donnelly, Heitkamp faces a contentious election in less than 100 days in a state Donald Trump won by a significant margin in the 2016 presidential race. Knowing that perceived hostility to Trump’s judicial nominations could be provide these and other red-state Democrats’ Republican opponents with campaign ammunition, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has threatened to delay a vote on Kavanugh right up to election eve if Democrats take too obstructionist an approach. McConnell’s threat came after his counterpart, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), began the push to force the release of potentially hundreds of thousands of pages of documents from Kavanaugh’s days in the George W. Bush White House and as an assistant to Independent Counsel Ken Starr in the 1990s.

Heitkamp, facing a credible election threat from Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) , has kept her options open on how to handle the nomination, refusing to join co-partisans who are more secure of re-election in announcing they will vote to block Kavanaugh.

In an exclusive Breitbart News interview last month, Cramer speculated that Heitkamp would eventually vote to confirm whomever President Trump nominated to the high court. “North Dakotans would not tolerate a liberal Supreme Court justice. I think Sen. Heitkamp is an automatic [yes] for anyone that Donald Trump puts up,” he said. “She has no choice but to support whoever he puts up.”

The North Dakota Republican Party saw the announcement through the lens of Schumer’s reported inistance red-state Democrats simple delay their decision on Kavanaugh as long as possible. “Caught in a no-win situation, Heidi Heitkamp is taking Chuck Schumer’s advice at the expense of North Dakotans, who want to see Judge Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court,” North Dakota GOP Spokesman Jake Wilkins said in a statement. “Heitkamp likes to talk about how independent she is, but on the issues that matter most, Heitkamp is just another loyal foot soldier in Chuck Schumer’s band of Washington obstructionists.”