The man who had been largely credited with turning President Joe Biden's struggling Democratic primary campaign in 2020 around with a pivotal victory in South Carolina said he has been pitching Judge Michelle Childs to Biden for "at least 13 months."
"President Biden made a commitment at the Charleston debate back in February two years ago and said if he had the opportunity he would appoint or nominate an African American woman to serve on the court, and he has reiterated in recent days that he plans to keep that commitment," House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., told The Washington Post on Thursday.
"Now, as it relates to who, I don't have any problem with the seven or eight names that I have seen floated as possibilities. They're all great people. The fact of the matter is, I have been discussing Michelle Childs with the president and his people now for, I guess, at least 13 months."
Judge Julianna Michelle Childs has served on the U.S. District Court in South Carolina since 2010 and has been nominated to the "D.C. circuit that everybody says is the second most powerful and most important court in the country," Clyburn added.
Clyburn noted Childs would be a rare choice in that she was schooled in law at a public school and not a private one such as Harvard or Yale law school.
"She knows the labor issues, she knows the management issues, and that's why everywhere I go people tell me what an outstanding federal judge she has been at the district level," he continued. "So, she has what I call the kind of background and experiences that we ought to have, that judges and jurists ought to have.
"And I am very, very concerned that we take on this elitist kind of atmosphere when we pretend that the only way you can demonstrate the necessary qualifications is to go to certain schools. Well, I don't think that's right.
"Thurgood Marshall was an outstanding jurist, an HBCU [historically black colleges and universities] graduate — in fact, two times. And so I just think that it is time for us to diversify the court, not just as relates to gender, but as it relates to color as well, and as it relates to backgrounds and experiences," Clyburn said.
Childs' nomination to the D.C. Circuit was slated to begin soon, but Clyburn wanted to get her name surfaced in the debate for the Supreme Court, too.
"I'll let the White House do what they would like to do with this," he said. "I'm just making my feelings known. I suspect that there are people in the White House who would feel differently. There may be people around the country that feel differently. I'm letting my feelings be known, and the White House can do what they feel they need to do, and I'll just react accordingly."
Early in the interview, Clyburn that noted his three daughters were "insulted" that no Black women had been considered to date for the Supreme Court.
"They are very professional women, they are achievers — none of them are lawyers or interested in the Supreme Court from a personal standpoint," he said. "But they are women. They're Black women, and they have been insulted over the years, like so many other Black women, that we now have five women who have served on the United States Supreme Court, not a single time has a Black woman ever been seriously considered.
"And so I took that issue up with then-candidate Biden back in 2020, that I thought that the time had arrived for us to do something about that. How many times have you heard it said that Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party? Well, you just can't say it. You've got to show it."
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