Like their colleagues, Ohio's two U.S. Senators have partisan takes on whether President Obama should nominate a successor to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. M.L. Schultze of member station WKSU in Kent reports.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced within hours of the death ofScalia that any nomination of his replacement by Obama would die in the Senate. And Monday, Ohio's Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman said the country should "trust the American people to weigh in on who should make a lifetime appointment that could reshape the Supreme Court for generations." His counterpart, Sherrod Brown, says the American people already made that important
choice in electing Barack Obama.
"The voters clearly spoke that they re-elected Obama by a pretty wide margin in '12
and he's the president; he should nominate somebody the Senate should consider. Not
necessarily vote for him, but at least consider. But they are saying that this
president should only have a three-year term and he should be disregarded for the
last 11 months and they're just wrong about that." :20
Portman is one of six Senate Republicans facing re-election in a state that voted for President Obama.
