In an exclusive interview in the current James Magazine (published by InsiderAdvantage), U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson was asked about prospects for full Senate confirmation of President Barack Obama’s nominee of State Court Judge Dax Lopez to be a Georgia federal judge.
It is Senate custom for senators of a nominee’s home state to send in “blue slips” so a judicial nomination process can move forward. Both Isakson and Sen. David Perdue (a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee) have not done so, and in recent months a number of prominent sheriffs and state lawmakers have expressed public opposition based on Lopez’s longtime service as a board of director and speaker for a pro-illegal immigration advocacy/lobbying group. As this is written, both senators have not met with Lopez.
Isakson told InsiderAdvantage writer Jim Kingston:
“The confirmation of judges is a judicial practice first. That nomination went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have not had any notice from them that they are finished with vetting the nominee. Once that takes place there will be an open public hearing before the Judiciary Committee. After that takes place, if that is looked upon favorably, then it goes to the floor of the Senate. Quite frankly, we are running out of time.
“You know the president is in his last 13 months of his presidency and it is harder and harder to get confirmations through the Senate. No party wants the party in power going out to have too much of a say-so in the judiciary at the end, because if a Republican is elected then that is an appointment that they would have had next year. That’s all to say that I would never prejudge what the Judiciary Committee is going to do. But I would say that the clock is not in favor of judicial nominations making it further simply because of the politics of it.”
