Kavanaugh Confirmation Kavanaugh hearing gives 2020 Dem hopefuls a chance to break out And Republicans are taking notice.

They’re the most junior Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Kamala Harris and Cory Booker led the way in upending Brett Kavanaugh’s debut — and the GOP was watching with 2020 on its mind.

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was only 13 words into the Supreme Court confirmation proceeding before Harris calmly broke in first, saying that “we have not been given the opportunity to have a meaningful hearing.” Booker interrupted soon afterward, appealing to Grassley’s “sense of decency and integrity,” jump-starting a current of Democratic disruption.


It was a team effort by the minority, which planned the moment in advance as an alternative to a full-scale boycott of Kavanaugh’s hearing. But Harris and Booker’s key roles in the protest drew quick jabs from Republicans who were already preparing to hit them as driven solely by their own potential White House runs in 2020.

Harris and Booker, the second and third African-American members ever to sit on the Judiciary panel, describe each other as friends and have only recently cracked the door open to presidential bids. Yet even before they leapt first into the fray, slamming the GOP for withholding hundreds of thousands of pages of Kavanaugh documents, Republicans were gearing up to portray the Democratic duo’s pushback as driven by their 2020 ambitions.

The Republican National Committee deployed a rapid-response effort spotlighting Harris and Booker’s status as White House contenders, accusing them of capitalizing on the moment to boost their own profiles. Senate Majority Whip Sen. John Cornyn on Tuesday night tweeted “All about 2020 presidential politics” with a link to an Associated Press story highlighting the roles of Booker, Harris and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) in the hearings. Booker already had riled Republicans for suggesting that backers of President Donald Trump’s nominee are “complicit in the evil” his ideology represents, July comments that Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) referenced anew on Tuesday.

“Instead of treating the judge’s hearing seriously, they’re going to soak up every minute of camera time to appeal to their far left base,” RNC spokesman Michael Ahrens said by email. “They’ve already said they’re voting no, so any faux outrage is obviously going to be about 2020.”

Other Republicans watched from afar, predicting that Harris and Booker’s leadership in the anti-Kavanaugh protest would backfire. One Senate GOP aide quipped that “two liberals trying to out-extreme one another on national television is Christmas in September.” Another warned that the disruptions would hurt vulnerable red-state Democrats: “They seem to be willing to sacrifice their endangered 2018 colleagues at the altar of their 2020 ambitions.”

Harris dismissed as “ridiculous” the suggestion that her vocal pushback against Kavanaugh stemmed from any attempt to burnish her own rising-star status in the party.

“We’re talking about the highest court in the land, and one of only nine people in the country who would serve in that position,” the first-term Democrat said in an interview. “And the significance of that nomination, then, to the lives of Americans, is profound. Everyone should take these hearings extremely seriously.”

This isn’t Harris’ first foray into high-profile hearings. Last year, she stoked 2020 speculation when she aggressively questioned Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers during a hearing.

Indeed, she and Booker aren’t the only Democratic 2020 hopefuls whose vocal opposition to Trump’s second Supreme Court pick in two years is sparking jeers from the right. They’re not even the only potential presidential contender on the Judiciary dais: Klobuchar is also mentioned on some of the party’s short lists.

The conservative opposition research group America Rising compiled an emoji-studded checklist of “all the right boxes” that Harris, Booker and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) checked during Tuesday’s hearing, including “glad hand with the resistance” and “tally suck-ups from campaign operatives.”

Booker declined to discuss his party's strategy, his own, or anything else as his party’s pivotal Kavanaugh moment played out on Tuesday.

"Oh brother, my head is too focused on the next step in all this," he said in a brief interview.

But days before the hearing began, some of their Republican colleagues were already preparing for up-and-coming Democrats to use the moment to their advantage. “There are always people who want to make a show,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told reporters. “And yeah, I expect we’ll see some of that.”

Ultimately, every minority member of the committee — from stalwart liberal Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut to deal-making moderate Chris Coons — aligned in their protest against Kavanaugh, a fact that Harris spokeswoman Lily Adams observed. “Every single Democrat objected to this hearing today, and rightfully so,” she said.

After the initial theater of Democratic disruptions cooled, and the 21 members of the Judiciary panel worked through their opening statements, Harris and Booker displayed some striking similarities in their opening statements. The committee’s two youngest Democrats both nodded to their historic presence as senators of color serving on the committee, Booker name-checking storied civil rights activism and Harris mentioning the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which helped provide “the opportunities that allowed me to become a lawyer or a prosecutor.”

Booker delivered longer remarks, while Harris kept hers more abridged, with only a brief reference to Republican withholding of documents from Kavanaugh’s past. “I appreciate that I’m a bit of a trailblazer,” Booker joked as he sought to extend his time.

Tillis, the next senator to speak after Booker, offered his own attempt at humor to begin his opening statement: “I have a 12-minute preamble, and 18 minutes of comments.”

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

