Hacker News Reader

Comment by kochb | Hacker News Reader

Nominated Delaware DA by George W. Bush. Recommended to Delaware District Court by Senators Coons and Carper. Appointed by Trump. Confirmation approved by voice vote (which generally means no Senator expressed the desire to register opposition in a recorded vote).

You know officials are doing something right when they can secure broad support like that.

View on HN

It's pretty common for judges, especially at lower levels, to have broad bi-partisan support. Lots of politicians are lawyers, and if you're well regarded by the local/state Bar Associations, you're going to have lots of friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Until you start ruling on very high-profile cases, or if you have a lot of partisan scholarship, you're unlikely to alienate the folks confirming you so it largely comes down to what the opinion of you is at the Bar.

This is actually why you've started to see people nominated for high level federal posts and even SCOTUS without a lot of divisive scholarship, because they're intentionally staying away from these issues to try to maximize career growth.

I agree that judicial candidates draw bipartisan support more often than most would realize, but you might be overstating how often this happens. In our current political era, Connolly falls into a minority.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45622

See pages 30-33:

> during the Trump presidency, with 81.0% of district court nominees confirmed by roll call vote

> During the Trump presidency, in contrast to the two immediately preceding presidencies, only 15 (10.6%) of 141 district court nominees confirmed by roll call vote received zero nay votes at the time of confirmation. A plurality of nominees (36, or 25.5%, of 141) received more than 40 nay votes when confirmed by the Senate, while another 20 nominees, or 14.2%, received 31 to 40 nay votes at the time of confirmation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com