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the issue that led to their being caught in a Strategic Hold. Therefore, these five measures of
senatorial intent all provide clear evidence that senators utilize Strategic Holds to gain leverage
in actual, unrelated disputes rather than as a “cover” for ideological objections.
Lastly, nineteen holds, over a third of all holds, were placed by senators from the same
party as the president, further undermining the assumption that holds are solely an ideological-
based practice and/or placed to defeat the trapped nominees. Unsurprisingly, all of these
nineteen holds were Strategic Holds, and these same-party holds account for 46.3% of all
Strategic Holds. The stories of these five sets of holds highlight their strategic, rather than
objecting, nature: In 1998, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) blocked three Clinton nominees from
getting a vote to try and force Republicans to vote on other judicial nominees that had been
stalled for quite some time, specifically Sonia Sotomayor. Senator Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY)
blocked five Reagan nominees in 1988 to protest the treatment of two New York District Court
nominees. Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD) blocked thirty-one judicial confirmations, two of them
to Circuit Court vacancies, over a dispute with the Bush (41) administration over federal
judgeships in South Dakota. And, a group of Democratic senators blocked a number of Clinton
nominees in 1999 to force Republicans to finally bring Marsha Berzon and Richard Paez to a
vote (and this maneuver did result in an agreement that their confirmation votes would take
place). In each of these instances, senators used nominees from their own party to fight for
other, more battle-weary nominees. Finally, Senator John McCain, as discussed in detail above,
blocked five of Bush (43)’s nominees during the summer of 2002 in order to force Bush to
nominate his choice for the Federal Election Commission. This hold by McCain actually
accounts for all holds placed on Circuit Court nominees during the 107
th
Congress. With each of
these five holds, senators used judicial confirmations that they supported (and were nominated
Convention