Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is tying Senate Judicary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination.
Reid on Monday called the panel under Grassley a “rubber stamp” for Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“I’ve been terribly disappointed in Chuck Grassley, and that’s an understatement,” Reid told reporters during a conference call on Monday. “This committee has turned into a rubber-stamp for this [Donald] Trump-[Mitch] McConnell situation.”
Reid’s comments come amid a pitched battle for the Senate. Democrats hope to win back the majority this fall by tying Republicans to Trump, who they believe will be a weak general-election candidate.
They’ve repeatedly ripped Grassley for holding up Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Reid has said the GOP strategy of denying Garland a hearing or vote means that Republicans would like to leave the decision to Trump, should he win the White House.
Because there is “no question Donald Trump’s going to be the nominee,” Reid said Monday that the current Republican plan should “give everyone pause.”
The Constitutional Responsibility Project and the League of Conservation Voters circulated a memo Monday written by Geoff Garin, the president of Hart Research Associates. Garin conducted a survey of 501 Iowa voters that Democrat say highlights Grassley’s vulnerability.
Forty-three percent of respondents said recent news had made them become less favorable to Grassley. According to the memo, “responses to open-ended probing makes it clear that this negative response … is driven heavily” by Grassley’s position on the Supreme Court vacancy.
The poll found that 42 percent of voters have positive feelings toward Grassley, compared to 30 percent who have negative feelings toward him. That’s a decline from a survey conducted by Hart Research two years ago when 60 percent of voters said they had positive feelings toward Grassley and 19 percent had negative.
Beth Levine, Grassley’s spokeswoman, quickly dismissed the poll, saying “selective leaks from a partisan group with a partisan agenda makes you wonder about what else they learned.
“The White House and its paid political activists are trying to manufacture interest where it’s clearly not a defining issue. And, frankly, if polling actually made a difference to this White House, then Obamacare would be repealed by now,” she added.
Patty Judge, who is vying to take on Grassley in November, hit the Iowa Republican after he told a local radio station that a President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee would be a “gamble” compared to if fellow Republican candidate Ted Cruz won the White House.
“While I agree it’s a gamble to let Donald Trump pick, it’s clear that we should have hearings and give fair consideration to President Obama’s nominee. Rather than gamble with an unknown, we should have hearings for the nominee at hand,” Judge said in a statement Monday.
Outside groups aligned with the White House are targeting GOP senators in nine states over the recess, including holding more than 50 events.
The effort — known as the “9-9-9” campaign — is focused on Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where GOP senators are running for reelection.
The Constitutional Responsibility Project also released an ad against Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) late last week, hitting him over his refusal to move Garland’s nomination.
Carrie Severino, the chief counsel for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said Monday that the plan is “really a desperate 911 call by liberals who will say and do anything to create the most liberal Supreme Court majority in decades.”
The group is using the recess to hit back, including a TV and digital ad in Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota and West Virginia on Garland’s “liberal record.”
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) is considered Senate Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbent up for reelection in November. Meanwhile, Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) are up for reelection in 2018.