Alito '72 faces committee vote

The University is poised to have its first alumnus on the high court in half a century, with the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito '72 widely expected by week's end.

After Alito's no-frills performance in 18 hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee two weeks ago, he is expected to earn the support of the committee in a party-line vote tomorrow.

Several senior Democrats have said they will vote against Alito because of his positions on abortion and congressional powers, but are unlikely to try to stop his confirmation with a filibuster.

A handful of Democrats are even expected to vote for Alito in the Senate floor vote Friday.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has announced he will vote for Alito in the floor vote, and other "red state Democrats" — including North Dakota's Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad and Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln — could follow.

The judiciary committee's Democrats, all well left-of-center, were unlikely to support Alito all along, prominent conservative legal scholar and University politics professor Robert George said.

Among Republicans on the committee, George said before the hearings began, only chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) might vote against Alito. But Specter eliminated any suspense by announcing he would vote for Alito in a press conference immediately following the hearings.

In the Senate as a whole, "the pickings on the Republican side are going to be mighty slim for Democrats," George said, citing Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee and Maine's Olympia Snowe — the only Republicans to have publicly expressed reservations about voting for Alito — and Maine's Susan Collins as the few with any inclination to vote against Alito.

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Adding to the pressure are pro-Alito advertisement campaigns, due out this week, targeting certain conservative states with Democratic senators.

Otherwise, focus and energy on Capitol Hill seem to have shifted away from influencing Alito's confirmation and toward managing the political fallout of the Senate floor vote widely expected to confirm him.

Democrats and Republicans have been bickering over scheduling, important now that the Jan. 31 State of the Union address is approaching. Unable to delay the hearings past the address, Democrats have nevertheless delayed the committee vote — originally scheduled for Jan. 17 — by a week, hoping to leave as little time as possible between the floor vote and the address.

Senators running in midterm elections later this year will doubtless be contemplating their floor votes carefully, recognizing Alito as a political hot potato.