Scrutiny of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s legal and judicial record has provided Republicans with another opportunity to peg Democrats, more broadly, as being soft on crime.
Although Jackson’s confirmation hearings have been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, polls indicate President Joe Biden and Democrats’ weakness on crime is a perception among voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
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The Republican National Committee blasted reporters Tuesday with an email headlined “KBJ: Soft on Crime” as Senate Judiciary GOP lawmakers started grilling Jackson on her work as a corporate lawyer and public defender, as well as a trial and appellate court judge, particularly her representation of Guantanamo Bay detainees and sentencing of child sex offenders.
“In 1992, Ketanji Brown Jackson said that ‘tough on crime’ is merely a political tool ‘once the American public becomes enraged about criminal activity,'” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott wrote. “Biden is already undermining law and order in this country. Americans do not want a justice who will rubberstamp his radical agenda.”
The RNC rhetoric echoes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who last week said Jackson had “a special empathy for criminals.”
A national Fox News poll published last month found almost 60% of registered voters disapproved of Biden’s handling of crime since inauguration, while 35% approved. That compares to roughly 50% who disapproved in another Fox News poll released last summer, in contrast to about 40% who approved. At the same time, only 7% listed crime as their top priority in February, competing against double-digit concern for inflation, jobs and economic growth, the pandemic, immigration and border security, and voting rights and election integrity.
Rising crime is a serious problem, and it is a substantial problem in many places, according to pollster Charles Franklin. But when he analyzed Marquette Law School polls from last summer and fall, he noted that registered Wisconsin Republicans and GOP-leaning interviewees “saw” more crime locally and nationally than their Democratic counterparts.
“Is this lived experience? Republicans live in higher crime areas — or are more fearful? Or is this partisan-driven perceptions rather than experience?” the Marquette Law School poll director asked. “This suggests partisan messaging is playing a significant role in perceptions and is more effective when the national picture is concerned,” he answered himself.
How independents will internalize Democratic management of crime remains to be seen. Even though only 45% of independents were more cognizant of crime in their community than a year ago, approximately two-thirds were aware of more crime nationwide, according to the August Marquette Law School poll.
But for Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos, crime statistics are reality, not perception. And if crime is spiking, someone will likely be held accountable, he told the Washington Examiner.
“Congressional candidates who have an equal balance of an urban area and suburban areas, those are the people who are going to be most vulnerable,” he said. “Many independents are self-employed. They own their own businesses, so they’re impacted on two levels: as a resident or as an owner of a small business.”
In Paleologos’s “CityView” polling series of Detroit, Los Angeles, Louisville, Milwaukee, and Oklahoma City, which is not restricted to voters, “high crime, high homelessness, and high mental health” is “a triangulation that’s becoming a strangulation.”
“The crime rate is the obvious chink in the armor for Democrats in urban areas, but it’s beyond that now with homelessness and mental health,” the Suffolk University Political Research Center director said. “Even in cities that didn’t have a racial divide, like Oklahoma City, when we asked people why do you think crime has gone up so much, the response was ‘people are crazy. There’s a mental health crisis.'”
“Generally, Democrats would be seen as better stewards of healthcare support for individuals, but the Democratic leaders in these urban areas are being criticized because of issues like homelessness and mental health that they are directly responsible for, in addition to crime,” he added.
Countering a charge led by Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, a potential 2024 GOP presidential contender, that Jackson had demonstrated a “pattern” of lenient sentences for child pornography offenders, Jackson referred to the law enforcement careers of her brother and two uncles, one of whom was chief of the Miami Police Department in the 1990s.
“As someone who has had family members on patrol and in the line of fire, I care deeply about public safety,” she said. “I know what it’s like to have loved ones who go off to protect and to serve and the fear of not knowing whether or not they’re going to come home again because of crime in the community.”
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Jackson is poised to become the first black female Supreme Court justice should she be confirmed by the Senate, which is split 50-50 between the two parties. Vice President Kamala Harris would cast the tiebreaking vote if they deadlock.
