‘I can’t think of a better person’: Graham boosts South Carolina’s Childs for SCOTUS

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday broke with several of his Republican colleagues by seemingly expressing support for President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate the first-ever Black woman to the Supreme Court.

In an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Graham (R-S.C.) — a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — also appeared to endorse J. Michelle Childs, a U.S. District Court judge in his home state of South Carolina, for the seat held by the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.

“Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America,” Graham said. “You know, we make a real effort as Republicans to recruit women and people of color to make the party look more like America.”

Senate Republicans and conservative commentators have repeatedly criticized Biden for committing to selecting a Black woman to fill Breyer’s seat, with Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) suggesting in a local radio interview on Friday that whomever the president picks will be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action.

But Graham distanced himself from Wicker’s remarks on Sunday, saying, “Affirmative action is picking somebody not as well qualified for past wrongs. Michelle Childs is incredibly qualified. There is no affirmative action component if you pick her.”

Graham also defended Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman, saying it was no different than then-President Ronald Reagan’s promise to nominate the nation’s first female justice in 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor.

“President Reagan said, running for office, that he wanted to put the first female on the court,” Graham said. “Whether you like it or not, Joe Biden said, ‘I’m going to pick an African American woman to serve on the Supreme Court.’ I believe there are plenty of qualified African American women, conservative and liberal, that could go onto the court.”

“In the history of our country,” Graham continued, “we’ve only had five women serve and two African American men. So let’s make the court more like America. But qualifications have to be the biggest consideration, and as to Michelle Childs, I think she’s qualified by every measure.”

Graham stopped short of committing to voting in favor of Childs’ potential nomination, however, but said, “I think I made it pretty clear that I’m a big admirer of Judge Childs.”

In promoting Childs, Graham said the judge “has wide support” in South Carolina and “is considered to be a fair-minded, highly-gifted jurist.” Graham also described Childs as “one of the most decent people I’ve ever met,” and he argued that “it would be good for the court to have somebody who is not [an alumnus of] Harvard or Yale.”

“She’s a graduate of the University of South California. A public education background. She’s been a workers’ [compensation] judge,” Graham said of Childs’ resume. “She’s highly qualified, she’s of good character, and we’ll see how she does if she’s nominated. But I cannot say anything bad about Michelle Childs. She is an awesome person.”

Childs, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, has served as a U.S. District Judge in South Carolina since 2010. She previously served as a state court trial judge, a commissioner on the South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Commission and a deputy director at the state Department of Labor.

Last month, Biden nominated Childs for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the Senate Judiciary Committee has not yet taken up her nomination.

Childs is one of several Black women reportedly under consideration by the White House to take over Breyer’s seat — including U.S. Appeals Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner.

But among those potential picks, Childs is the only person the White House has publicly acknowledged is under consideration to replace Breyer. Therefore, the White House is not actively working to advance Childs’ nomination to the D.C. Circuit while she remains a contender for the Supreme Court vacancy.

Apart from Graham, Childs also is the preferred nominee of House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking African American in Congress and a close Biden ally. On Sunday, Clyburn spoke to the importance of confirming a Black woman to the nation’s highest court.

“It says to every little child out there — growing up under moderate circumstances, needing the entire community to help raise it, getting scholarships to go off to school because they couldn’t afford to go otherwise, going to public schools because you didn’t get an offer from one of the big private schools — it says to them, ‘You’ve got just as much of a chance to benefit from the greatness of this country as everybody else,’” Clyburn said on CBS.

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