WASHINGTON — Sen. Joe Manchin said he plans to meet with Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Wednesday.
"She has a very credible record," Manchin, D-W.Va., said in an interview, adding that his team is still vetting Jackson but that he has seen "nothing at all" of great concern. "So we hope it goes well."
Manchin, a centrist who sometimes bucks his party, holds a pivotal vote in the Senate, which is split 50-50 between the two parties. Democratic leaders' top priority is to keep the caucus unified to confirm President Joe Biden's first nominee to the high court.
"So far, we have not seen anything of what you would call alarm of concern that that person might be completely out of the mainstream," he said of Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C.
Manchin voted to confirm her to that influential court. She won 53 votes, including those of three Republicans. One of them, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, met with Jackson on Tuesday.
Manchin said he will talk to Jackson on Wednesday, watch the vetting process unfold and make a decision. Her Judiciary Committee hearing is scheduled to begin March 21. It takes a simple majority of senators to confirm a Supreme Court justice.
CORRECTION (March 8, 2022, 11:55 p.m. ET): A photo caption in a previous version of this article misstated when Sen. Joe Manchin was pictured at a congressional hearing. The photo was taken June 10, 2021, not June 10, 2022.
