WASHINGTON _ The Democrat seeking to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky is now saying she would have voted to confirm Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Amy McGrath said in an interview published Wednesday by the Louisville Courier-Journal that the allegations of sexual misconduct raised by Christine Blasey Ford during the Kavanaugh confirmation process were credible, but she did not consider them disqualifying.
"I think it's credible but given the amount of time that lapsed in between and from a judicial standpoint, I don't think it would really disqualify him," McGrath told the newspaper.
When pressed, she said that she would have tended to favor the confirmation.
"You know, I think that with Judge Kavanaugh, yeah, I probably would have voted for him," McGrath said.
McGrath, who ran for the House seat in Kentucky's 6th District in 2018, did not seek the endorsement of EMILY's List in that race, and did not receive it.
In the wide-ranging interview a day after she officially jumped in to challenge McConnell, she also talked about her views on abortion policy, which is always front and center in Supreme Court confirmation debates.
McGrath said that while she is Catholic and personally against abortion, she believed current restrictions on access were appropriate, and they should not be expanded.
"I think there are enough restrictions on abortion and they're reasonable. So right now, you can't walk into a clinic eight months' pregnant and get an abortion, you can't do it and that's reasonable. I believe we already have reasonable laws, and I'm very concerned about what's happening in other states like Alabama and Georgia where they're trying to criminalize abortion even in cases of rape and incest and the life of the mother," McGrath said. "This is not a government decision. It's a family decision and a very personal decision."
McGrath had weighed in on the Kavanaugh controversy at the time the allegations of his past conduct emerged.
"I echo the concerns over the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh. He's been against women's reproductive rights, workers' rights, consumer protections, and is a hardcore partisan," she tweeted in July 2018. "But we are reminded, again, that elections have consequences, and this will be with us for a generation."
