Graham signals he's likely 'no' vote on Biden SCOTUS nominee Jackson

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham is signaling he'll likely vote against recommending that President Biden's pick to become the next Supreme Court justice gets a full Senate confirmation vote – making clear he thinks the finalist from home state South Carolina should be the nominee.

He like fellow South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott thinks Judge J. Michelle Childs is the best choice.

Biden vowed in 2020 if elected to nominate a black female to the high court. Biden nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and Childs are black females and sit on the federal bench. 

"I was willing to get probably double-digit Republican support for somebody that would have been in the liberal camp from my state," said Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which holds the nomination hearings, then votes on whether the nominee should get a final floor vote. "So they made a political decision to reject bipartisanship and go another way."

He also said Biden "can pick anybody he wants, and I can vote any way I want."

A nominee could get confirmed to the high court without a single Senate Republican vote.

Democrats have the majority on the committee. The full Senate is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, but Vice President Kamala Harris has the tiebreaker vote. 

Graham's comments come as a surprise to some, considering he voted in the affirmative last year to confirm Jackson to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Graham has said he believes Childs' potential nomination was derailed by liberal dark-money groups. 

Since arriving in the Senate in 2003, Graham has voted in favor of every Supreme Court nominee.

A "no" vote on Jackson would be a notable shift in his attitude toward the process, which has included painful partisan fighting in recent years. 

Graham says he does not yet know when he will met with ackson and that the president has not reached out to personally ask for his support.