Gov. Chris Sununu said sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should be “fully investigated” before any Senate vote to confirm him.
However, New Hampshire’s Republican governor stopped short of heeding Democratic challenger Molly Kelly’s call for the withdrawal of President Donald Trump’s high court nominee.
“These are very serious allegations that should be fully investigated before making a determination on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination and the Senate should think carefully about the next steps in this process,” Sununu’s campaign said in a statement following testimony by Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh’s opening statements.
Sununu called Ford’s allegations “very serious.”
“Gov. Sununu is pleased that the U.S. Senate has allowed Dr. Ford the opportunity to be heard and greatly appreciates her having the courage to tell her story,” Sununu’s campaign said.
Ford, in her testimony, said she’s “100 percent certain” that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her during a high school party in the summer of 1982.
“I believed he was going to rape me,” Ford testified. “I believed Brett was going to accidentally kill me.”
Ford, who said she was “terrified” about testifying, described how the alleged assault changed the course of her life.
Kavanaugh, testifying after Ford, choked up as he angrily defended himself against the allegations, which he slammed as part of “a calculated and orchestrated political hit” against him.
Kavanaugh told the senators that his name has been “destroyed” by allegations from Ford and two other women who in the past week came forward with claims against him.
Even before the testimony began, Kelly took aim at Sununu, urging the Republican governor to “immediately call for President Trump to withdraw Kavanaugh’s nomination.”
At a campaign event in Dover that took place minutes before the start of the hearing in Washington D.C., Kelly said what’s at stake is whether American society chooses to believe women who say they were assaulted.
“Here’s where I stand: I believe women. I will listen to women. And I will stand with women every single day as governor. Women will no longer be silent,” Kelly added.
She contrasted herself with Sununu.
“Chris Sununu stands with Brett Kavanaugh – no matter what,” Kelly said. “That’s wrong.”
Since the allegations from Ford became public nearly two weeks ago, Kelly has repeatedly called on Sununu to drop his support of Kavanaugh. Sununu had joined some 30 other Republican governors this summer in backing the high court nomination of the federal appeals court judge.
Three Republican governors who didn’t sign the letter of support, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Phil Scott of Vermont and Larry Hogan of Maryland, are calling for an investigation into the multiple allegations against Kavanaugh. So is Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a vocal GOP critic of the president.
Sununu, with the statement from his campaign, joined those governors.
But Kelly said Sununu’s statement wasn’t enough.
“Even before we heard Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s courageous testimony today, I believed her. My instinct was to trust her. Chris Sununu’s instinct was to stand by Judge Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, and his party,” Kelly said.
And she charged that the governor “owes the women of New Hampshire an apology.”
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s late June retirement announcement gave Trump a prime opportunity to replace the crucial swing vote on the high court with a reliably conservative justice. Supporters of women’s reproductive rights fear the court may overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 high court decision that constitutionally protected a woman’s right to have an abortion.
If the ruling were overturned, regulation of abortions would fall to the states.
Kelly’s been highlighting the issue ever since Kennedy’s unexpected news. The next morning – at an event in Manchester – Kelly said that “Roe v. Wade could be threatened.”
Sununu has repeatedly pointed out this summer that he is pro-choice and he supports Roe v. Wade.
But he told the Monitor in late July that judges shouldn’t be evaluated on just one issue.
“As a governor, I don’t judge any single judge on a single-issue litmus test,” he said. “It’s about the Constitution, it’s about whether a judge will uphold the Constitution on a variety of different issues.”
With less than six weeks to go until Election Day, Saint Anselm College politics professor Christopher Galdieri said the governor’s support of Kavanaugh is “a potentially potent way to tie Sununu to Trump.”
Galdieri said Sununu – as the GOP governor of a swing state – faces “a more complex situation” politically than blue state Republican governors like Baker, Hogan and Scott.
“There’s little cost to defying the Washington GOP when you’re from Massachusetts or Maryland, and probably a lot of benefit. For Sununu, he can’t afford to alienate either Republican base voters, who want him to support the Trump administration and govern conservatively, or the crossover voters who supported him in 2016 even while they were casting votes for Hillary Clinton and Maggie Hassan,” he explained.