This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee have been rooftop-shouting advocates of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and have decried Democrats' attempts to do what they did last year — block the pick of a president from the other party.
Both Utahns, particularly Hatch, have gone through gyrations to explain why it was OK to refuse even a hearing for Merrick Garland, then-President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed the late Antonin Scalia, but now say it's despicable that the Democrats are rallying against Gorsuch.
Here's what the senators don't bring up when they gush over President Donald Trump's high-court choice:
Gorsuch has been the beneficiary in recent weeks of an unprecedented, multimillion-dollar ad blitz aimed at swaying public opinion in favor of his confirmation and to pressure senators who might oppose him.
And the campaign is funded by — you guessed it — dark money.
The frequently run nationally televised ads are paid for by the Judicial Crisis Network, a PAC created in 2005 by wealthy conservatives who wanted to ensure the appointment of pro-business judges.
It was set up as 501(c)(4) "social welfare" group so it would not have to disclose its donors. It originally was called the Judicial Confirmation Network, whose mission was to help win confirmations for Republican George W. Bush's nominees but was changed to the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) when its chief aim morphed into blocking Obama's picks.
In recent years, the JCN has spent millions in down-ticket state judicial elections and attorney general races to back pro-business candidates whose records show them to be beneficial to the PAC's anonymous donors.
Earlier this year, the JCN distributed a news release announcing it was prepared to spend $10 million on a push to win the confirmation of Trump's nominee. In that release, the PAC boasted about its successful "Let the People Decide" campaign against the Garland nomination.
The group also has been active on the legal front, filing briefs to support lawsuits against Obama initiatives, including key aspects of the Affordable Care Act.
Carrie Severino, JCN's chief counsel and policy director, warned in the release that vulnerable Democrats in states carried by Trump would pay the price in 2018 if they try to block the GOP president's nominee.
Severino is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who, I would argue, owes his seat to Hatch, his most ardent defender on the Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings in which Thomas had to fight off sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill.
Thomas has been, perhaps, the court's most conservative justice. His wife ran a tea party PAC and was an early grass-roots Trump backer.
Another far-right justice is Samuel Alito, a mentor to Lee, who was Alito's law clerk before he ran for the Senate.
Thomas and Alito have been guests at events hosted by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who have launched dark-money PACs to elect tea party candidates.
Lee and Hatch are familiar with these types of PACs.
FreedomWorks helped defeat three-tern Sen. Bob Bennett in the 2010 Utah Republican Convention. That opened the way for Lee to capture the seat.
In early 2015, when Lee's approval numbers sank below 50 percent and prominent Republicans were actively recruiting candidates to challenge him, Citizens United, another lucrative dark-money PAC, began running TV ads thanking Lee for his work.
Political observers knew exactly what those ads meant, coming more than a year before the 2016 election. It let potential GOP foes know that it had the money and was willing to spend what it took to knock them out. While several names surfaced in 2015 as potential Lee rivals, in the end, no prominent Republican challenged him.
When FreedomWorks, fresh off bouncing Bennett, began forming a campaign to defeat Hatch in favor of another tea-party darling, the longtime Utah senator made two substantial moves.
His supporters formed a competing dark-money PAC, Freedom Path, and spent millions recruiting Hatch devotees to become convention delegates so he could avoid Bennett's fate. And he began veering his policy positions sharply to the right.
Hatch and Lee know the culture of dark-money PACs. And it is reasonable to suggest that championing a court nominee loved by those groups will bear political fruit for them in the future.
The PACs, fueled by rich, anonymous donors, have been effective in getting favored candidates elected in congressional, gubernatorial, legislative and other down-ballot races across the country.
Now, it appears, they're banking on a bought-and-paid-for judiciary as well.