Ron Johnson says November election is ‘for all the marbles’ amid SCOTUS fight

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) said Sunday that if Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins the presidential election next month, “America would change forever” adding that in his view, “this election is for all the marbles.” 

“America would change forever. This election is for all the marbles. The Senate Democrats would pack the court. They would get rid of the filibuster so they could enact all these crazy socialist… policies,” Johnson told John Catsimatidis Sunday on his radio show “The Cats Roundtable” on WABC 77 AM.

The senator was referring to calls from some Democrats to add more justices to the Supreme Court and to end the Senate filibuster following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Biden has so far not publicly taken a position on either issue. 

“I don’t know how this country would recover from it,” Johnson said.

Johnson was one of several top Republican officials in President Trump’s inner orbit to test positive for COVID-19 in recent days.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Saturday that he would be delaying the return of the Senate after Johnson and Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) all contracted the disease. 

The delay and diagnoses come as the Senate GOP looks to swiftly confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court after Trump announced her nomination last Saturday. 

With one month to go until the presidential election, Johnson also echoed Trump’s repeated claims that mail-in voting will lead to widespread voter fraud. There is no substantial evidence to support this claim. 

“You are just opening yourself up to ballot stuffing and voter fraud,” Johnson said. “Now you’ve got all these judicial activists — liberal justices who are making up election law on the fly… This could be chaos.”

A coalition of civil rights and voter advocacy groups filed a lawsuit late Thursday against Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) and other Texas officials over a state policy cutting down the number of ballot drop-off locations. The governor had announced Thursday that the state would only allow one drop-off location in each of Texas’s 254 counties. 

“In the midst of an election that is already underway, forcing such new burdens on voters who relied on a different set of election rules to make their voting plan, is unreasonable, unfair, and unconstitutional,” the groups argued in the lawsuit. 

John Catsimatidis is an investor in The Hill.