Mourdock Slams Lugar for Confirming Sotomayor, Kagan

A Republican challenging Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana says he’d be much more conservative about Supreme Court nominees than the veteran lawmaker has been, ABC News reports.

Lugar has said he voted to approve Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor because, if they had been voted down, the next nominee would have been much more liberal.

But state Treasurer Richard Mourdock said at a Federalist Society candidate forum that he would stick to his conservative principles, no matter who the alternative was.

"Had I been there, then I would have voted 'no' on that person as well," Mourdock said, according to ABC News.

At Monday’s forum, Federalist Society member and Lugar supporter Asheeh Agarwal argued that the senator would be a strong advocate for conservative nominees chosen by a Republican president, ABC News said. Lugar himself was in Washington.

Mourdock, who faces Lugar in the May 8 primary, has been hitting the incumbent hard on his judicial record and painting him as too accommodating to President Barack Obama’s agendas.

In a new radio ad for his campaign, the announcer says: “During those 36 years in Washington, Dick Lugar lost touch with Hoosier conservative values and became Obama's favorite Republican: voting for Obama's liberal Supreme Court picks, amnesty for illegal aliens, earmarks, more government spending and bailouts.”