Cornyn: Judge candidates get their hearings
Published 8:09 am Thursday, March 7, 2019
By Ken Stickney
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday that two nominees for federal judgeships in this state encountered few problems before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.
Cornyn chaired hearings Monday for Sean D. Jordan, nominated for a seat in the Eastern District in January, and Mark Pittman, nominated for a seat in the Northern District.
“It was good to get hearings done,” Cornyn said, later explaining that Senate Democrats on the committee are less inclined to challenge nominees at the district level, who must rule according to Supreme Court decisions.
Jordan, a private attorney in Austin, previously served in the state solicitor general’s office. Pittman serves on the Texas 2nd District Court of Appeals. Both men are affiliated with the Federalist Society, which includes conservative and libertarians who seek legal system reform. They promote textualist or originalist interpretations of the Constitution.
“Generally speaking, our Democratic colleagues accept the fact that district court judges are chosen on experience and qualifications,” Cornyn said in his weekly conference call with Texas reporters.
But Cornyn said getting the nominations to a vote can be more arduous for the Republican majority in the Senate. He said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has had to invoke cloture 128 times in efforts to move nominations along, far more than in recent administrations.
Cornyn said the Democrats who seek to prevent votes are “burning time without changing votes.” Republican senators hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
The senior senator also lamented what he said was trouble at Texas’s southern border, which he described as a “humanitarian crisis” that concerns efforts for Central American caravans to enter the U.S.
“About half of the country is in denial” — reflecting a political divide along party lines — about what’s happening there, Cornyn said. He said the push for immigrants who seek asylum at the border is “overstripping the Border Patrol’s capacity to handle people.”
He said drug cartels are exploiting that situation and trafficking people and drugs into the U.S. while the Border Patrol struggles to handle immigration paperwork.
“This is big, big business,” Cornyn said of the cartel efforts, which inflict “a trail of human misery” at the border. He suggested the U.S. may have to change immigration policy to discourage mayhem at the border.
In a response to a reporter’s question, Cornyn, up for re-election to the Senate in 2020, said he is continuing to raise campaign funds with the possibility of a challenge from former U.S. Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, D-El Paso. He said although O’Rourke has said he won’t seek the Senate seat, Cornyn said O’Rourke, who challenged incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2018 can still qualify for the 2020 race until Dec. 9.
“It’s a growing list” of candidates, Cornyn said of the emerging contest. “It’s a free country.”