WASHINGTON — President Obama is considering a Republican who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to a federal judgeship in 2005 as his nominee to the Supreme Court.
Sources said Wednesday that Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval is being vetted as a possible successor to Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Feb. 13.
Sandoval, 52, is a former attorney general and federal judge. His name was floated just a day after Senate Republicans announced they would refuse to meet with any Obama nominee and flatly ruled out confirmation hearings until a new president is elected.
Obama is counting on the bad optics of senators rejecting a fellow Republican to soften resistance to confirmation hearings.
But Senate Republicans held firm.
“We pretty much had unanimous agreement that this is what we are going to do,” Sen. Dan Coats (Ind.) told CNN. “We knew the White House will play games with us, no matter what we did.”
Coats said he would not back Sandoval or any other Republican whom Obama might dangle before the GOP-led Senate.
“I think we can all understand in an election year they’re going to try to turn this into a political football and try to make the Republicans look bad. And we made the decision that this was about principle, not the personality,” Coats said.
With Scalia’s death, the court is equally divided 4-4 between liberal and conservative justices.
Republicans are counting on a GOP president next year who would nominate a conservative.
Obama called on the Senate to “move quickly” on a nominee.
“As senators prepare to fulfill their constitutional responsibility to consider the person I appoint, I hope they’ll move quickly to debate and then confirm this nominee so that the court can continue to serve the American people at full strength,” Obama wrote in a post for SCOTUSblog.
Sandoval is a moderate, pro-choice Hispanic who believes same-sex marriage is a settled issue.
He met with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid Monday, and the Nevada Democrat is throwing his weight behind his home-state Republican governor.
“I don’t pick the justices, but I know if he were picked, I would support the man,” Reid said.
Sandoval was approved by the Senate to a federal-district court judgeship after he was nominated by then-President George W. Bush. He resigned from the bench in 2009 to run for governor of Nevada, where he beat Reid’s son, Rory, in 2010.
He was the first Latino elected to statewide office in Nevada.