Senate Republicans don’t see an enemy in Davenport

On Tuesday afternoon, then-acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s vaccine schedule adjustments, the latest in a series of moves she has taken to challenge the White House. About an hour later, the state Senate, including all 15 Republicans, voted to confirm her. 

Davenport, along with four other cabinet nominees from Gov. Mikie Sherrill, cleared the state Senate in a 38-0 vote on Tuesday afternoon. The unanimity has angered some conservatives, especially as Davenport continues an aggressive legal strategy against the White House.

Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Davenport said she is a qualified leader who they believe will lead the Department of Law and Public Safety professionally. Confirming her, they said, helps build a relationship with the Sherrill administration as Davenport settles in.

“I spoke to people. I met with her. I heard from folks that said she’s a dynamic thinker, so not just an ideologue,” state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Little Silver) told the New Jersey Globe. “So for all those reasons, unless you have a substantive reason to oppose someone right out of the gate, well, then you don’t do that, right?”

Davenport needed O’Scanlon’s approval to move forward. She is from Monmouth County, and thus needed the backing of both Monmouth senators — O’Scanlon and state Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Long Branch) — to move forward under the longstanding policy of senatorial courtesy. O’Scanlon signed off quickly, even as he noted the policy disagreements he expected to have with her.

And O’Scanlon said he sees little purpose in standing in the way of a nominee that he respected, even if they would inevitably disagree on some of her actions as attorney general. If he had not signed off on her nomination, Davenport would simply have served in an acting capacity, which would have made no difference to the authorities she would have possessed.

“It comes as no surprise to me that this governor and her AG are going to do some things, certainly at the federal level, that I disagree with,” he said. “If I disqualify her from any engagement because of that, I have not served my constituents well because she will have no reason to return my calls. We’ll have gotten nowhere.”

Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said senators must balance their partisan desires with their need to assess nominees on the merits of their ability.

“They were putting party politics aside, and they were voting based on whether or not the nominee merited confirmation, and that’s the question in front of them,” Rasmussen said.

Democrats are facing a different form of this issue in Congress. Rasmussen pointed to Senator Andy Kim’s vote to confirm Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem; Kim has since called the vote a mistake and demanded Noem’s resignation. Some progressives, though, questioned or criticized Kim’s vote in its immediate aftermath.

“He’s gotten that thrown back in his face like, ‘Well, okay, you have this problem with something that this cabinet member did. Why did you vote for them in the first place?’ … It’s definitely something that voters are connecting the dots more on, and you see it, I think, both from Republican voters and from Democratic voters,” Rasmussen said.

Just like O’Scanlon, State Sen. Parker Space (R-Wantage), one of the Senate’s most conservative Republicans, said that he will not shy away from criticizing Davenport or Sherrill when needed, but he wanted to offer the “benefit of the doubt.”

“Trying to start off with a new governor, let’s see what we can do,” Space said. “Obviously, if there are things that she doesn’t do in the direction that my beliefs are … I’m going to make sure that it’s known.”

State Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-River Vale) said she thinks Davenport, a former assistant U.S. attorney and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration attorney, will handle law enforcement professionally and responsibly.

“Here you have somebody who has historically been a friend to law enforcement, who has worked to keep our community safe, who understands some of the things that have taken place over the past eight years in New Jersey has kind of destroyed law enforcement, the trust in law enforcement,” Schepisi said. “And I am very hopeful that she is going to continue, as she did during the nomination process, to be outspoken in ensuring that we continue to have strong support for our law enforcement officers and that public safety in the state is paramount.”

Rasmussen said the senators could face some backlash from conservative challengers or their base over the vote, but none of the senators offered much concern, saying their votes help them maintain a voice in the early stages of the Sherrill administration.

“It’s reached a point where we’ve got to do things for the right reasons, and not just fight to fight,” Schepisi said. “I can assure you there are going to be other nominees that I will be a No on. But you have to pick and choose your battles, and it’s not as if we were going to get an AG who is not going to follow certain important objectives of the current administration.”

O’Scanlon already has critiques to offer: He specifically named Sherrill’s continuation of the Immigrant Trust Directive and her recent executive order, both of which limit state cooperation with federal immigration officials. He said that cooperation with immigration agents could help prevent conflicts seen in places like Minneapolis.

“I think it’s a dangerous mistake on the part of the administration to withhold some level of cooperation and coordination,” the senator said.

But he doesn’t think standing in the way of Davenport’s nomination would have helped him achieve that goal.

“For those conservatives, I throw it back at them and say, ‘Wait a minute. What is your method of stopping this administration from joining those [anti-Trump] lawsuits?’ They won’t have an answer because there is none,” he said. “They see that as red meat for their base, and they’re going to toss it to them.”