TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Florida’s two senators, echoing a sharply partisan divide nationally, are splitting over whether to support U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Democratic incumbent caught up in a tight re-election battle with Gov. Rick Scott, said Friday that he would vote against Kavanaugh, while Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said he would support the nominee put forward by President Donald Trump.
The decision of Florida’s two senators came a day after a Senate committee heard testimony from Kavanaugh adamantly denying that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, who insisted she’s “100 percent” certain he did.
“Dr. Ford’s testimony was compelling and raises questions about his character and, therefore, there needs to be a full FBI investigation,” Nelson said in a statement emailed by his Senate office.
Nelson’s comments were the first time he has taken a position publicly on Kavanaugh. He said that he had tried but was not able to schedule a meeting with the appeals court judge.
Rubio said he would support Kavanaugh, but in a lengthy statement sharply criticized the Thursday Senate hearing and said both senators and the media had “disgraced themselves.” He said the confirmation process would be viewed as a “dark moment in the Senate’s history.”
“This entire ordeal is indicative of something that goes beyond the nomination before us,” Rubio said. “It has revealed how our culture has become increasingly sick and demented, unmoored from the values upon which this great nation was founded and which have allowed our society to flourish.”
Rubio, however, concluded that there was still no reason to vote against Kavanaugh.
“I will not vote against the nomination of someone who I am otherwise inclined to support and in the process add credence to charges which have already done permanent damage to his reputation, on the basis of allegations for which there is no independent corroboration and which are at odds with everything else we have heard about his character,” he said.
Nelson’s decision to finally announce his position on Kavanaugh comes after weeks of criticism from Scott. Scott, who had backed Kavanaugh before the allegations surfaced, criticized Nelson on Twitter and said that he was doing what “party leaders told you to do.”
In a statement, Scott called the testimony of both Ford and Kavanaugh “convincing” but said the nomination should be confirmed.
“I think both of these people have been used and abused as pawns in a partisan Washington political theater, which is clearly the product of career politicians playing games at the expense of these individuals’ lives and reputations,” Scott said. “I don’t know what happened 36 years ago in suburban Maryland. The truth is that none of us really know. So, I have to go with what I do know - Judge Kavanaugh has been a fair and brilliant judge.”
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