McConnell says no to potential Supreme Court nominee

After the report surfaced, the White House would neither confirm nor deny that it was looking at the governor of Nevada for the nomination.

Mari St. Martin, Sandoval’s communications director, said Wednesday that the governor hasn’t been contacted by the White House.

Born in Redding in 1963, Sandoval grew up in Sparks, Nevada, near Reno.

Democrats set a precedent for Republican resistance to an Obama nominee when, in July 2007, 19 months before the end of President George W. Bush’s second term, Democratic Sen.

“I suspect it is only the first of many stores that speculation on potential Supreme Court nominees”, Earnest told reporters during a Wednesday press briefing.

Tillis’ signature on the letter represents a shift by North Carolina’s junior senator and a move back to the position of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said Tuesday after the letter was released that he would not meet with any Obama nominee or hold a vote on the nomination.

The Washington Post said a knowledgeable source told the newspaper that the administration is vetting Sandoval, who is said to have told Reid, the Senate minority leader, at the meeting in Washington, D.C., that although he’s not sure he would accept a Supreme Court nomination, he wanted to remain a candidate.

Heller suggested in a statement last week that the “chances of approving a new nominee are slim” but he did not discourage Obama from putting forth a nominee.

Before Sandoval, 52, became the state’s first Hispanic governor, he was the state’s first Hispanic federal judge.

Writing Wednesday on the Internet site SCOTUSblog, Obama gave no hint of when he plans to announce his choice to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, other than to say it will be “in the weeks ahead”.

Obama vowed to nominate a replacement and take his argument to the public, even though McConnell and Republican Senators had firmly vowed to block his nominee.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said the petitions being delivered were “just the beginning of the public rising up”.

Sandoval has judicial experience, having served as a judge of the US District Court in Nevada and as Nevada’s Attorney General. Another person in Nevada familiar with the process confirmed that the process is underway.

“We are going to go through a process as we have done in past vacancies to find a candidate with impeccable legal credentials”, Obama said.

Sandoval is a former federal judge and reportedly met with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid on Monday.

“He said he was interested”, the source said of Sandoval, adding that “a number of people are being checked out” for the job.

The president was reminded of the time he filibustered the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in 2006 while serving as a senator from IL.

Progressive PAC MoveOn.org wants voters to remind McConnell that he and his party didn’t abide by same rules when Ronald Reagan was in the a year ago of his presidency.