http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/white-house-makes-new-push-for-garland-222612 White House allies make new push for Garland
Groups to blitz nine states with ads, events to pressure GOP to allow a vote on Supreme Court nominee.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
04/29/16 05:16 AM EDT
With time ticking on what White House aides see as their last, slim chance to get Merrick Garland confirmed before the November election — the unlikely scenario he’ll get a hearing and a vote before the Senate breaks for the summer — allies will launch new operations and ads starting Saturday to pressure GOP senators during next week’s recess.
To date, the outside allies have focused on the states with the five most vulnerable GOP incumbents (New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley’s Iowa. Now they’ll be expanding the map to cover three more incumbents up for reelection: Arizona’s John McCain, North Carolina’s Richard Burr and Missouri’s Roy Blunt.
They’re calling it the 9-9-9 campaign: nine states, over nine days, to push for a court with nine justices. (No apologies to Herman Cain, who coined the term for his 2012 tax plan.)
More and more, though, they’re going to be talking about Donald Trump, tying in Republicans’ discomfort with the largely unpopular likely Republican nominee to say that refusing President Barack Obama’s nominee amounts to enabling a would-be President Trump’s.
The plans represent an unspoken acknowledgment that the Supreme Court fight is less about actually trying to get Garland on the bench before November, and more about turning the Republican resistance into a campaign issue to maximize GOP losses in the Senate, and even in the House. The recess efforts are both a shot across the bow from Democrats, and a test run for some of what they’ll be ramping up through the fall.
Americans United for Change will be heading up the effort to track Republican senators down at town halls and campaign events, often with a collection of mobile billboards in tow, which they’ll also be driving around the neighborhoods where the senators live and have their district offices. They’ll be holding press events, some with workers like nurses and janitors saying they’d be fired if they showed up to work and did their jobs, some with business leaders and law school deans calling attention to the effects of the continued vacancy on the Court and the prospect of more 4-4 decisions, according to the group.
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