Heidi Heitkamp, a red-state Democratic senator who faced increasingly long odds of re-election this fall, said Thursday that she will vote against confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
A spokeswoman for Heitkamp's campaign confirmed the embattled senator's position on the high court nominee in a phone call with CNBC. Heitkamp first announced her position on the vote in an interview with local media outlet WDAY on Thursday.
In a statement released shortly after, Heitkamp said, "After doing my due diligence and now that the record is apparently closed, I will vote against his confirmation."
Heitkamp, who had voted for Trump's prior Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, also lashed out at lawmakers for their handling of Kavanaugh's nomination.
"Both sides horribly handled the process around this nomination," Heitkamp said. "We must learn from these mistakes."
Heitkamp, facing re-election in a state President Donald Trump won by nearly 40 percentage points in 2016, is considered the most endangered Democrat in the Senate. She supported Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's first Supreme Court pick, last year.
Heitkamp faces a difficult path to re-election against Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, who along with national Republican groups had hammered the Democrat over her indecision on Kavanaugh. Two recent polls showed a double digit lead for the GOP representative.
Cramer,in a statement given first to CNBC, said: "I'm deeply disappointed with Senator Heitkamp's decision to vote no on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. Clearly, she has decided to vote with Chuck Schumer, and not the people of North Dakota."
The senator has repeatedly attacked Cramer over comments he made about Christine Blasey Ford's sexual assault accusation against Kavanaugh. In an interview last month, he said "nothing evidently happened" between the judge and Ford. He later said that he meant "there was no type of intercourse or anything like that."
Kavanaugh vehemently denied the allegations from Ford and other women in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, saying, "I've never sexually assaulted anyone."
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