According to the Legal Intelligencer, Chuck Grassley’s staff is telegraphing his plans to delay a committee vote for Third Circuit nominee Phil Restrepo of Pennsylvania:
While no official word has been given that a request for a delay has been made by committee members, Beth Levine, spokeswoman for Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said in an email that it is safe to assume the confirmation vote for Restrepo will be held over.
Even worse, according to their reporting, Grassley's fellow Republican Senator Pat Toomey is not currently planning on doing anything to prevent a two-week delay in a committee vote to fill this emergency vacancy until after the July 4 recess, even though a second vacancy on the same court opens on July 1.
But Toomey spokeswoman E.R. Anderson said Toomey’s hands are tied because he is not a member of the Judiciary Committee.
“Toomey wants Restrepo confirmed,” Anderson said in an email, but he cannot control the scheduling of votes in the committee.
Of course, as Senator Toomey well knows, no one is claiming that he can “control” the scheduling of votes, and no one is asking him to.
What Pennsylvanians are asking him to do is to speak up on Judge Restrepo’s behalf, to ask Chairman Grassley not to delay the committee vote. You don’t have to be a committee member to speak up on behalf of a nominee you support. Senators do that all the time.
Well, maybe not all senators. Just the ones who put the interests of their constituents and of nominees they support ahead of partisan politics.