The GOP's sworn blood oath to deny Barack Obama any chance at appointing a replacement for Antonin Scalia is already about to have its first real electoral impact, nine months before Election Day. According to the New York Times, former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge is planning to announce a challenge to Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the face of the Supreme Court obstructionists, in the coming days. The Times didn't cite any sources, but Judge did tell the Des Moines Register last week that she was considering a bid, and the Register has since confirmed the Times’ report.
If she goes through with it, Judge would be the most formidable opponent Grassley's faced since his first victorious Senate campaign all the way back in 1980, when he knocked off Democratic Sen. John Culver. While Grassley has a conservative voting record, he’s always won support from a good share of Democrats and independents. The senator has earned respect for maintaining close ties to his constituents: Grassley makes it a point to visit all 99 of Iowa's counties every year, for example. And though Iowa has voted for Democrats for president all but once since Ronald Reagan left office, Grassley has always won re-election with over 60 and sometimes even 70 percent of the vote.
But being a conservative is one thing; serving as a partisan foot soldier in the name of Washington dysfunction is quite another. And Grassley's no mere grunt: He's Mitch McConnell's top colonel in this absurd fight. Both national and swing-state polls have shown that voters are generally hostile toward the GOP's stance on the Supreme Court, and that's before any Democratic attack ads have even aired. Add in the possibility that Republicans will find themselves defending Donald Trump's right to name Scalia's successor and the outlook could get very ugly very quickly for Grassley, who has been faring very poorly under the spotlight.
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Judge would still need a whole lot to go right for her, though. She, too, has had a long career in Iowa politics, but she hasn't run a race on her own since 2002, when she won a second term as state agriculture secretary. (In Iowa, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run on the same ticket; when Gov. Chet Culver was turned out after a single term in 2010, so was Judge.) She's also getting a late start, and she'll have to really be willing to tear Grassley down with the sort of negative campaign many pols find anathema.
Still, at the very least, Judge would help expand the playing field and put even more pressure on Grassley and his embrace of gridlock. For Democrats, both of those would be very good things.