Democrat Barbara Bollier said Thursday that she wouldn’t support adding additional justices to the U.S. Supreme Court or vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s plan to raise taxes on high-income earners if she’s elected to Kansas’ open U.S. Senate seat.
Bollier made the comments during a televised debate with Republican nominee Roger Marshall as he described her as too extreme for their GOP-leaning state. Bollier is a state senator and former lifelong moderate Republican who switched parties at the end of 2018, and Marshall is a two-term congressman representing central and western Kansas.
Marshall and other Republicans have been trying to undercut Bollier’s pitch to voters that she is a sensible centrist by saying her election would help Democrats recapture a Senate majority and she’d vote with the party’s liberals.
Some liberals want to add additional justices to the U.S. Supreme Court because conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s likely confirmation would give conservatives a 6-3 majority.
“The Supreme Court should not be politicized, and I have no interest in expanding the number of judges on the court,” Bollier said.
Marshall strongly supports Barrett’s appointment and said Bollier’s fellow Democrats are “extreme” in favoring “packing” the court.
Bollier said she opposes Biden’s plan to increase taxes on people earning more than $400,000 a year. She also said she would keep increases in standard income tax deductions that were part of tax legislation championed by President Donald Trump — after struggling initially to remember the policy and saying, “I’m blanking.” Marshall praised the Trump tax cuts.
Marshall also pressed Bollier aggressively on gun rights, saying she favors confiscating firearms. Bollier said he was misrepresenting her views, but he pointed to recordings of comments she made Oct. 3 at a Kansas City-area event in which she praised a 1990s Australian law passed after a mass shooting that forced the owners of 700,000 guns to sell them to the government.
The congressman, a strong abortion opponent, criticized Bollier as “extreme on this issue” because of her strong support of abortion rights.
“She believes in abortion at any time, and I assume that she would even use federal funds for abortion as well,” Marshall said after Bollier said she trusts women to make their own decisions.
Bollier didn’t have a chance during the debate to reply to Marshall’s comments. After the debate, Bollier spokeswoman Alexandra De Luca noted that federal law generally bars U.S. government funding for most abortions and later texted, “She would not vote for that.”