Senator targeted with sign of discontent

Blunt criticized over Senate’s failure to consider Obama’s Supreme Court nomination

Mark Boessen passes a rolling electronic billboard as he carries a ladder to the Missouri Supreme Court Building on Wednesday. Americans United for Change is using the billboard to pressure Sen. Roy Blunt and other Republican senators to hold a hearing on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
Mark Boessen passes a rolling electronic billboard as he carries a ladder to the Missouri Supreme Court Building on Wednesday. Americans United for Change is using the billboard to pressure Sen. Roy Blunt and other Republican senators to hold a hearing on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

For a while Wednesday morning in Jefferson City, a video billboard parked on High Street between the Capitol and state Supreme Court Building urged Missourians to tell U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt to do his job and let President Barack Obama’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee come to a Senate vote.

Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, leaving a vacancy on the nine-member high court.

Blunt, a Republican who is running for re-election, has said for weeks he thinks the American people should have a “say” through the Nov. 8 general election in who the next Supreme Court justice should be.

Obama has nominated Merrick Garland of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to succeed Scalia.

“I think, when you’re talking about a lifetime appointment to the court, people deserve to be heard — and they will be heard through the election,” Blunt said shortly after the March appointment.

“If you adopt that principle — which I think is the right principle — it doesn’t matter who the president nominates, nor does it matter who’s elected president in November. That’s the person who gets to make a nomination.”

Neither Blunt’s Senate or campaign offices responded Wednesday to a request for a comment about the video billboard, which was in Kansas City and Springfield earlier this week. It headed to St. Louis after the Wednesday morning Jefferson City stop.

The moving billboard is sponsored by the group “Americans United For Change.” In group news release said it is on a nine-state, nine-day mobile billboard tour to underscore the need for nine justices on the high court.

The group’s message to Blunt and GOP senators in the other eight states: “Do Your Job and Fill the Vacant Seat on the Supreme Court, or Someone Else Will Fill Yours.”

Blunt and others have discounted arguments Obama’s nominee is entitled to be heard by the Senate, because Obama won the office by the largest popular majority vote (in 2008) and second largest majority vote (in 2012) in the nation’s history.

“April 27th marked 42 days since the President nominated Judge Garland to fill the seat left behind by the death of Justice Scalia; 42 days is the average time Supreme Court nominees have been welcomed inside the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room to answers questions about their record,” the Americans United For Change contends.

“If history (were) followed, Garland would have faced the committee this last week.”

Instead, the group argued, Blunt and other GOP senators are following the lead of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley in an the “unprecedented, rankly partisan choice” to refuse a hearing for Garland.