(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court is poised to come closer to an election than nearly every other nomination to the highest court in modern American history.
Only three of the soon-to-be 60 formal nominations to the Supreme Court in last century have come closer to a nationwide federal election than Trump’s pick, even if he made his nomination on Thursday, according to a CNN analysis of data from the United States Senate.
The President says he is likely to nominate a new associate justice in the coming weeks. Only 131 days remain until the 2018 elections, as of June 28.
Trump’s nominee, who is poised to shape the ideology of the nation’s most powerful judicial body for a generation, will likely face a razor-thin confirmation battle in the Senate, where Republicans control a narrow 51-49 majority. Three Democrats crossed the aisle to support Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, in February 2017.
The move will come after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take up President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, which came 237 days before the presidential election in 2016.
Still, this is far from the first Supreme Court nomination in a midterm election year. Obama nominated Elena Kagan in May 2010. Former President Bill Clinton nominated Stephen Breyer in May 1994. And Ronald Reagan nominated Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist in June 1986. They were all confirmed before the election.
Democrats in the Senate called on Republicans to wait until after the 2018 elections, but the GOP is moving full steam ahead. “Our Republican colleagues in the Senate should follow the rule they set in 2016, not to consider a Supreme Court justice in an election year,” said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, on the Senate floor Wednesday. “Anything but that would be the absolute height of hypocrisy.”
Republicans argue this situation is different because there is no presidential election until 2020.
In the last century, three justices have been nominated — and confirmed — closer to federal elections. President George H.W. Bush nominated David Souter just 104 days before the 1990 midterm elections, President John F. Kennedy nominated Arthur Goldberg only 67 days before the 1962 midterm elections, and President Warren Harding nominated George Sutherland just 63 days before the 1922 midterm elections. All three were confirmed before the election.
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