Conservatives say they’re bracing for an aggressive campaign by the White House and Democrats who’ll be looking to keep the Supreme Court fight on the front burner. | AP Photo White House preps Supreme Court battle plan Obama is expected to announce a nominee as early as this week.

As soon as President Barack Obama announces a Supreme Court nominee from his short list — which is now set — the White House and its allies will unleash a coordinated media and political blitz aimed at weakening GOP resistance to confirming the president's pick.

Administration allies have already started putting a ground game in place. Obama campaign veterans have been contracted in six states — New Hampshire, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where GOP incumbents are most vulnerable, plus Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley's Iowa.


With Republicans flatly refusing even courtesy meetings with a nominee, let alone confirmation hearings, they’re also looking into photo ops with Senate Democrats, and could pursue mock hearings or other events meant to highlight GOP intransigence, according to sources familiar with the planning.

Still, the West Wing is trying to strike a balance between pushing the nominee forward to create pressure and the danger of seeming to politicize the fight or accidentally straying into hypothetical discussions of future court decisions.

Obama is expected to announce a nominee as early as this week. Many believe that the choice will be one of three federal appeals court judges: Sri Srinivasan, Merrick Garland or Paul Watford.

The first calls for outside help went out from the White House as soon as Antonin Scalia's death was confirmed and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ruled out confirming a successor. That Thursday, senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and White House counsel Neil Eggleston gathered in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for a larger version of their regular judicial nominations action meeting, with participants including Judy Licthman of the National Partnership for Women & Families, frequent White House collaborator Robert Raben, People for the American Way and the Leadership Conference On Civil and Human Rights. Tina Tchen, chief of staff to the First Lady, also attended.

In follow-up conference calls and smaller meetings, a plan and strategy took shape, which they agreed would be led by Obama 2012 deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, with White House communications director Anita Dunn leading the media plan, and recently departed legislative affairs director Katie Beirne Fallon taking the lead on the Hill. The following week, leaders of more of the operational groups gathered in Jarrett’s office for a brainstorming and coordination meeting, with Eggleston and political director David Simas attending.

Among the outside groups that attended: Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, Americans United for Change president Brad Woodhouse, political consultant Bob Creamer and Patty First from the Raben Group.

The White House is still unsure how to deploy Obama. Some advisers feel like the presidential bully pulpit is the only way to bring enough pressure to have a chance at making Senate Republicans crack. Others have been advising that the more this is about Obama, the worse their chances are, and the more they can focus attention on the nominee, and his or her qualifications, the better they'll do.

Obama’s aides haven’t made a final decision on the long-term strategy. They’re more focused for the moment on finalizing plans for the roll-out, hoping to at least generate some initial buzz around the nominee.

Outside allies are lining up progressive organizations, labor leaders, women’s groups and black ministers, to focus attention on the battle, which is likely to drag on for months. Monday morning, for example, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is releasing a letter from law school deans pushing the Senate to act.

"We are building this campaign for the long haul. Our number one goal is that Senate Republicans do their job, follow their Constitutional responsibility and take up the president's nominee and put that person on the court," said one of the people involved in the outside efforts. "But if they want a political fight, we're more than willing to accommodate them. And if they maintain this unprecedented obstruction, they can kiss their majority goodbye."

Senate Democrats have been pitching in too. First up: photos and video of the nominee going to meet with Democratic senators on Capitol Hill, hoping will keep the nominee in the news. The administration and Senate Democrats are also weighing whether to stage mock hearings or other photo ops highlighting the nominees inability to even talk to Republicans — all in the hope of generating embarrassing footage for the GOP.

“Unprecedented Republican obstruction calls for an unconventional response,” is how one Senate Democratic leadership aide put it.

Traditionally, Supreme Court nominees go completely silent except for their private meetings with senators and committee hearings. Though White House aides appear ready to break with that tradition, they'll only go so far: the nominee won't be making the rounds of Sunday talk shows, but some outside advisers have pushed for more contained and scripted appearances, like speeches at bar associations or law schools.

But the White House is proceeding carefully, feeling that the politics work best for them if they're able to keep the focus on Republican obstructionism.

“It’s going to be largely about the person, so it’s up to us to be as serious and dogged about how we present that person to the country,” a White House aide said.

Top aides remain optimistic that McConnell will ease his blockade, but right now there’s zero indication Republicans plan to back down. With that in mind, the administration is prepared for the fight to become more about ramping up embarrassment for Republicans up and down the ballot going into November, hoping they can help elect a Democratic president and more Democrats to the Senate, who would then fill the seat in January.

Asked aboard Air Force One on Friday whether the White House is prepared to have the nominee do interviews or whether the president will take a more public role, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, “it’s too early to say exactly how this will play out.”

Within the White House, the planning is being overseen by Jarrett, Brian Deese, the senior adviser whom Obama tapped to lead the process, and Shailagh Murray, the senior adviser and former newspaper reporter who's specialized in developing unconventional media strategies for this White House. White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz has become the point person for the media approach .

Jarrett’s chief of staff, Yohannes Abraham, has been organizing about 125 outside experts, including legal experts, law school deans, former Supreme Court clerks, officials from previous administrations, former elected officials (including dozens of Republicans), civil rights leaders, mayors, union officials, CEOs and environmental leaders.

They’ve also convened conference calls with leaders broken down by groups: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latino, African-American, civil rights, small business, state and local elected officials, academics and law school deans, disability advocacy, faith, youth, labor and progressives, women and lawyers.

"The coordinated grassroots effort that has already proven a powerful tool to put pressure on Republicans will only ramp up," said Amy Brundage, a former deputy communications director at the White House currently helping coordinate communications for the outside effort at Dunn's firm. "That includes events in targeted states with real working Americans pushing Senate Republicans to do their jobs, press events with key Democratic members and groups, and coordinated validator pushes like those with the legal scholars, historians and attorneys general."

So far, the administration doesn’t have a set calendar for each day following the submission of the nomination, but they’re developing the plan to accommodate variables such as who the nominee is, what that person’s biography includes, and what that person’s current job allows for. With the short list reportedly limited to sitting federal judges, there may be less room to maneuver. Judges face more restrictions on their activities than a practicing attorney, academic or politician.

“The formal ethics rules applicable to appellate court judges wouldn’t apply to a senator,” said Indiana University professor Charles Geyh. The standard rules for judicial candidates technically don’t apply to Supreme Court nominees, Geyh pointed out. Strategic considerations have led recent nominees to be fairly evasive about their views, but that doesn’t preclude trying to keep the spotlight on the nomination.

“I wouldn’t hesitate to have cameras at the ready to the extent this person is having doors slammed in his face, using that as a way to embarrass the Republicans, but that’s different from having the nominee out there chatting about what he’d do as a judge,” Geyh said, adding that most of the reticence nominees have shown in recent years “is all strategic and has nothing to do with ethics.”

Democrats have already been talking about holding unofficial hearings on a potential nomination. Whether the nominee him- or herself would attend is an open question, but experts say it would also be within ethical bounds.

“We’re entering uncharted waters here. We’ve never had a situation in which the party in power, in this case the Republicans, were denying even a hearing to the nominee,” said Nan Aron of the liberal Alliance for Justice.

If the fight stretches into late summer and the Democratic focus turns to an election-focused campaign, the situation gets dicier. A nominee who’s a sitting judge would need to steer clear of events where those arguments are being made, and even a non-judge would be wise to do the same.

Conservatives say they’re bracing for an aggressive campaign by the White House and Democrats who’ll be looking to keep the Supreme Court fight on the front burner. Already, some groups have been circulating opposition research about several of the potential nominees whose names have been most discussed, hitting Sri Srinivasan, Jane Kelly and Ketanji Jackson.

“This is just going to push the boundaries,” said veteran GOP judicial nominations advocate Curt Levey, now with Freedomworks. “The can certainly make the meetings with Democratic senators into a show—more of a show than it normally is.”

The White House theory is that if there’s enough pressure to get Republicans to cave on a hearing, that will start the ball rolling in a way that’ll make winning confirmation a real possibility.

Democrats pounced on Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) promise last week that the Republicans will turn Obama’s nominee into a piñata. That raises additional questions about who Obama chooses, since the person will have to endure not just a stranger than normal process, but likely a very negative one. As Cornyn warned, that could be enough to make some potential picks say no. If this fight goes on long enough and the nominee is a judge who’ll likely recuse from pending and future cases, the person could be open to attacks of getting paid for not working—or going back to their day job and appearing to throw in the towel.

Levey said he expects the fight will eventually morph into full-blown election politics.

“At some point this is going to turn,” Levey said. “It may turn very quickly in terms of the White House giving up whatever little hope they have.”