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 From April 26 to Sept. 13, nine states where incumbent
Republicans' grip on U.S. Senate seats is tenuous will hold party
primaries ahead of the Nov. 8 congressional and presidential
elections.
During that period, Republicans seem unlikely to break with Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's hard-line stance against holding
confirmation hearings or a vote on Obama's nominee, appellate judge
Merrick Garland.
McConnell has insisted that Obama's successor, to be elected in
November and take office in January, should fill the vacancy left by
February's death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans are hoping
their party's candidate wins the presidency and can make the
appointment.
A Supreme Court appointment requires Senate confirmation.
Voicing support for holding Garland hearings during the primary
season, political experts say, could enrage conservatives already
upset over the prospect of Obama making a third lifetime appointment
to the nine-member court, which could give the bench a liberal tilt
for the first time in decades.
 That anger could bolster primary candidates challenging incumbent
Republicans from the right or encourage new challengers to come
forward.
Political science professor Sheldon Goldman of the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, who has tracked Supreme Court nominations
since the 1960s, said of the Garland fight: "The real obstacle is
getting over the primaries."
The danger of straying from McConnell's blockade was illustrated
when Kansas Republican Jerry Moran last month backed hearings on
Garland but reversed course after rumblings of a right-wing
challenge materializing in Moran's Aug. 2 primary.
Other key battlegrounds for Senate Republicans include Wisconsin,
Pennsylvania, Florida and New Hampshire. New Hampshire's Kelly
Ayotte is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Senate Republican
incumbents. Ayotte will meet with Garland but said she wants the
Senate to wait until after November's elections to act on the
nomination.
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Arizona Senator John McCain, facing at least two opponents in his
Aug. 30 Republican primary, downplayed the political difficulties
presented by Garland's nomination. He said when he was home during
the recent Senate recess, he heard few complaints. Of his
constituents, McCain said, "They would ask. I would explain.”
Obama and fellow Democrats in the Senate continue to press
Republicans to allow hearings by summer.
"So what you have here is, I think, a circumstance in which those
(Republicans) in the Senate have decided that 'placating our base'
is more important than upholding their constitutional and
institutional roles in our democracy in a way that is dangerous,"
Obama said in Chicago on Thursday.
Some Democrats think McConnell's gambit gives them a campaign issue
for the elections.
Dick Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, said, "If there was any
question about obstruction in the United States Senate, what's
happening with the vacancy on the Supreme Court is Exhibit A of
Republican obstructionism."
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Will Dunham)
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