The uncertainty surrounding Brett Kavanaugh's nomination has Republicans and Democrats alike headed into the week raising the stakes of its outcome to a make-or-break moment for their chances of victory in the midterm elections. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Kavanaugh Confirmation ‘This is march or die’: Kavanaugh urged to hit back hard Allies push for an aggressive offense even as some concede that confirmation to the Supreme Court is an uphill battle.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh is being advised by allies to mount an aggressive and proactive campaign to win over the swing-vote senators who will determine whether he is confirmed to the Supreme Court, even as the FBI undertakes a weeklong investigation of sexual assault allegations against him.

One White House official said Sunday that no new television appearances were currently planned for Kavanaugh, but that “anything to further his case will be done with senators and with the FBI” and that the possibility of appearances later in the week had not been ruled out.


Friends, meanwhile, said they were encouraging Kavanaugh — whom one described as “shell-shocked” by the crisis engulfing his nomination fight — to continue playing offense, the way he did in his testimony on Thursday.

“I’d want people to see me this week,” one Republican close to the process said of Kavanaugh, noting that the aggressive stance he took last week as he faced off against Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee was at odds with his typically unemotional personality — but was responsible for his still having any fighting chance of confirmation.

The uncertainty surrounding the nomination has Republicans and Democrats alike headed into the week raising the stakes of its outcome to a make-or-break moment for their chances of victory in the midterm elections.

“There’s no walking this thing back,” Steve Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, said in an interview Sunday night. “You get Kavanaugh, you’re going to get turnout. You get turnout, you’re going to get victory. This is march or die.”

POLITICO spoke to five people inside and outside the White House involved with the Kavanaugh nomination process.

Democratic activists, meanwhile, reminded voters over the weekend to keep the pressure on three Republican senators — Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — who they noted had so far agreed only to a delay but could still vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

The aggressive pro-Kavanaugh push, however, comes as White House officials and a separate, external war room that has been formed around Kavanaugh — including Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and Travis Lenkner, one of multiple former law clerks to Kavanaugh now assisting him — are fighting what some conceded is an uphill battle in which time is not on their side.

“Seven days is an eternity,” said a Kavanaugh ally, noting a growing concern that phony allegations might surface. “No good things can happen to Kavanaugh in that time except for calling the vote.”

Another person involved in the nomination fight put the odds of Kavanaugh’s being confirmed as low as 50 percent. But, this person said, the White House could not afford to set a standard that would allow unsubstantiated allegations against a nominee to knock that person out of the running to sit on the nation’s highest court.

Democrats have set off their own alarms about the process. Democratic lawmakers have complained that the White House will seek to narrow the scope of the FBI investigation, and complained about the rushed time frame. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the White House and the FBI on Sunday asking that the directive for the inquiry be released so that its breadth could be understood.

Also on Sunday, two days after the announcement of a new inquiry, Kavanaugh’s first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, had not yet been contacted by the FBI, according to a member of her legal team.

Even former FBI Director James Comey, a critic of President Donald Trump but a Republican for most of his adult life, wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Sunday: “If truth were the only goal, there would be no clock, and the investigation wouldn’t have been sought after the Senate Judiciary Committee already endorsed the nominee.”

But on Sunday, one of the critical votes on Kavanaugh, Collins, said she had faith even in a shortened, politicized process. “I am confident that the FBI will follow up on any leads that result from the interviews,” she said in a statement to POLITICO.

The fear factor among Republicans who view Kavanaugh’s confirmation as critical to the party’s efforts to hold on to the House and the Senate in the midterm elections is the randomness of events that have affected his fate so far — and the sheer number of unknowns in the air.

For instance, Flake admitted in an interview with “60 Minutes” on Sunday that his mind was changed from voting “yes” on Kavanaugh to calling for the investigation because he happened to be confronted by two protesters in an elevator — a chance run-in, which happened to be caught on television, that could ultimately affect the outcome of one of the biggest political crises the Trump presidency has yet to face.

“What I was seeing, experiencing, in an elevator and watching it in committee and just thinking, this is tearing the country apart,” Flake said in the interview. “They were clearly passionate and determined I hear them.”

White House surrogates said their strategy, however, was not to attack Flake for his flip-flop, for fear of his making another decision based on emotion.

There’s also concern among Kavanaugh’s allies about what jump balls the White House may unintentionally throw into the mix. When it comes to the crisis surrounding his Supreme Court pick, Trump appears to say whatever feels good for him to say in the moment, vacillating between strong support for Kavanaugh and expressions of support for the credibility of Ford’s claims against him.

“I thought her testimony was very compelling, and she looks like a very fine woman to me, very fine woman,” Trump said of Ford while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. “Certainly she was a very credible witness. She was very good in many respects.”

When the president told reporters Saturday that the FBI had “free rein to do whatever they have to do” in its investigation of assault claims against Kavanaugh, the comment served as a terrifying reminder to the judge’s allies of how the president’s own off-hand remarks could accidentally tank a fragile situation.

That worry about disparate communications strategy was reinforced by White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s personal revelation Sunday, that she, too, had been a victim of sexual assault. Many of her White House colleagues did not know she planned to share the personal detail, they said, but later said they supported her, even if the disclosure lent some support to Ford’s point that assault victims don’t always come forward right away.

And Kavanaugh’s outside team had not been briefed on the personal argument Conway planned to mount in her interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, using her own experience to push back on the notion that Kavanaugh’s confirmation would send the message to victims that their stories didn’t matter.

“I’m a victim of sexual assault,” Conway said Sunday morning. “I don’t expect Judge Kavanaugh or Jake Tapper or Jeff Flake or anybody to be held responsible for that. You have to be responsible for your own conduct.”

Conway once disclosed that she had her own ‘me too’ moment, and following the release of the “Access Hollywood“ tape, she discussed the way young women would deal with aggressive behavior by men on the Hill. But she had not previously described her experience as an assault.

Some Republicans, however, said they were holding out hope that Kavanaugh would be confirmed because the fight would unify Republicans. One poll, commissioned by the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, was circulating among White House surrogates, showing that 58 percent of voters in West Virginia — where Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a crucial vote on the nominee, is in a tough reelection campaign against Republican candidate Patrick Morrisey — think Kavanaugh should be confirmed.

Burgess Everett and Elana Schor contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the Washington lawyer Bill Burck is currently part of the team crafting political strategy in defense of Kavanaugh's nomination.