The U.S. Senate has confirmed 221 of President Biden’s judicial nominees. Sen. Dan Sullivan has voted for just two.
Sullivan broke form Thursday and voted to confirm Sharad Desai to the U.S. District Court in Arizona. In nearly four years, Sullivan voted only once before for a Biden judicial nominee. That was in April, when the Senate voted unanimously to confirm Ann Marie McIff Allen to the U.S. District Court in Utah.
The Senate has been working long hours to vote on President Biden’s nominees for federal judgeships before he leaves office and control of the Senate is passed to Republicans.
If senators stay on pace, Biden is on track to match or exceed the 234 lifetime appointments former President Trump got confirmed.
Biden took office aiming to rebalance the federal courts, to counter Trump’s influence. Sullivan’s votes — confirming fewer than 1% of Biden’s nominees — show he’s one of the senators most consistently standing in his way.
It’s hard to find another senator who has been such a regular “no” on Biden’s judicial picks, but Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has voted for just one. (That’s not counting voice votes, which aren’t attributed in the Senate record.)
Other Republicans have helped to confirm dozens. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has voted for 164 of Biden’s judicial nominee, or about 75%.
“If they’ve got the qualifications, let’s look at them. Let’s talk, right?” she said. “That’s what I did before. That’s what I’m doing now.”
Murkowski voted against confirmation of five nominations that came up in the Senate this month. Some of the judicial nominees on the calendar near the end of Biden’s term, she said, have sparked controversies with certain statements or decisions.
“I’m not saying that we went through all the good ones already, but I think that you are seeing more of them …. in these final weeks that are just going to be problematic,” she said.
Sullivan didn’t respond to an interview request sent to his office, but his communications director, Amanda Coyne, said that he meets with as many nominees as possible and gives them Alaska-relevant Supreme Court decisions in advance.
“The senator determines his vote after his own meeting with them and how they have answered his questions about Alaska’s unique jurisprudence and their judicial philosophy,” she said by email.
Trump took to social media Wednesday to tell Republican senators to hold the line and stop confirming judges until he’s president again.
In Trump’s first term, the Alaska senators voted to confirm nearly all of his judicial nominees. Sullivan voted for 95% of them. Murkowski voted to confirm all but Brett Kavanaugh. Her vote on his confirmation to the Supreme Court is recorded as “present.”
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
