Trump Makes a Political Football League Out of the Supreme Court Nominations
Donald Trump and Republicans have been arguing that Trump deserves your vote to get a conservative Supreme Court Justice that will also reflect fundamentalist religious issues. Besides replacing Justice Antonin Scalia, there are three elderly Justices that also may need to be replaced in the next four or eight years. It doesn’t pay at this date to observe that Justices are not supposed to be political appointments, but just superior constitutional judges.
Trump’s campaign has taken the unusual step of adding another eleven justice candidates to the previous eleven that he has suggested. These new justice candidates are essentially all listed to attract voters from swing states and to expand his campaign’s outreach to women and minorities. We will document this in detail below. This is very cynical of the Trump campaign to make the Justice positions and candidates all into enough political footballs to make up a league.
It is common politics that when you are siting a federal facility or project, you invite proposals from major states and dispersed companies that can host the facility or project. Even after the project is chosen at a particular site, you guarantee that the work will be farmed out to many states. That way you get large nationwide political support for a facility or project that eventually will be sited mainly in one state and location. Trump is doing the same thing with the serious considerations of Justices. Several of these candidates are not on the Federal benches, but just state Supreme Courts, which is unusual.
To the description of the candidate, we have added the probabilities of the Presidential candidates for winning the swing state of their origin. We take the probabilities from the forecasting site 538 http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com. For state Presidential forecasts, probabilities below 90% are not considered as certain. The total probabilities nationwide are very close with Secretary Clinton at 61.9%, versus Donald Trump at 38.1%.
We start out with the largest toss up state, Florida, with 29 electoral votes, currently at 48.9% for Clinton versus 51.1% for Trump. Trump has already covered a close race in this state by supporting its Attorney General with a $25,000 donation from Trump’s charity (which was illegal), and hosting a fund raiser at his estate. Trump chose two candidates from Florida: Charles Kanady of the Florida Supreme Court; and Federico Moreno, an Hispanic judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, from Caracas, Venezuela.
Next we come to the swing state of Ohio, with 18 electoral votes. Trump has gained the lead in Ohio, leading by 57.7% to Clinton’s 42.3% probability of winning. Trump has chosen candidate Jonathan Adler, a well known legal columnist and commenter from the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio.
Michigan has 16 electoral votes, which now has Clinton at 71.6% and Trump at 28.3% probability. Michigan is an auto making state in the Rust Belt. The Trump campaign has drafted a black Michigan Supreme Court justice Robert Young for their list.
Georgia also has 16 electoral votes, with Trump leading the probabilities by 79.0% to 21.0%. Trump has included Georgia Supreme Court justice Keith Blackwell.
Colorado has 9 electoral votes with Clinton having probability 70.0% and Trump 29.9%. Trump has included two justices of the Denver 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Neil Gorsuch and Timothy Tymkovich.
Kentucky has 8 electoral votes, with Trump guaranteed by probability 97.6% to Clinton at 2.4%. Trump’s candidate is Amul Thapar, a South Asian, who is a federal trial judge, also an unusual position for a nominee.
Iowa has 6 electoral votes and Trump has the leading probability of 63.6% leaving Clinton with 36.3%. Trump’s candidate is Iowa Supreme Court justice Edward Mansfield.
Trump’s candidate from Utah is Sen. Mike Lee, who once criticized Trump. Trump has a sure thing there at 96.6% to Clinton’s only 3.1%.
Finally, Trump has added a woman justice to the list with Margaret A. Ryan of the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. This could add to the already strong lead that Trump has with the armed forces. It also is another sign of his campaign’s desire to become more inclusive of women.
Of the 11 new candidates that Trump has, 8 are from important swing states. He has also added a woman and three minority candidates among them.
