By John Gramlich, CQ Staff

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has set a procedural vote Monday on a federal lower court nominee, raising concern among liberals that the parties’ election year fight over judicial confirmations may be spreading from appeals court picks to lower courts.

Reid, D-Nev., took the step after Rand Paul, R-Ky., threatened to block the nomination of Michael A. Shipp to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey unless Reid allows a floor vote on a measure to cut off U.S. aid to Pakistan until an incarcerated informant who helped American forces find and kill Osama bin Laden last year is released.

By threatening to block Shipp’s nomination, Paul has stirred fear among liberals that the increasingly bitter fight over judicial nominees — previously confined to appellate judges — now may be shifting to noncontroversial, lower-court judges, who traditionally do not face filibuster threats.

The Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Shipp, currently a federal magistrate in New Jersey, on a voice vote in April.

Republicans “are really taking the obstruction to a new level,” said Marge Baker, executive director of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group. “Forcing a cloture vote on a District Court nominee who came out of committee on a voice vote is unprecedented.”

While executive-branch nominees sometimes face filibuster threats over related policy issues, Baker said the circumstances surrounding Shipp’s nomination are different. She accused Paul, who has not expressed any personal objections to Shipp, of “holding a District Court nominee hostage” over an unrelated matter.

If confirmed by the full Senate, Shipp would be the fifth District Court judge confirmed by the Senate in five legislative weeks, a pace that liberals see as too slow leading into the monthlong August recess and then the home stretch to the November elections.

In addition, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced June 13 that Republicans would block all federal appeals court nominees until after the election, citing the so-called “Thurmond rule.”

Under the practice, named after the late South Carolina Republican Strom Thurmond, the minority party blocks the confirmation of judicial nominees — typically controversial ones chosen for higher-level courts — in the final months before a presidential election.

Despite concerns from the left, Republican leaders indicated July 20 that a cloture vote on Shipp, while being forced by their side, does not necessarily portend a pre-election expansion of the battle over judges.

Michael W. McConnell, a Stanford law professor and former judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, underscored that point.

McConnell, who is no relation to the minority leader, said at a law conference last month that regular cloture votes on District Court nominees would represent a “major escalation” in the long-running political battle over judicial nominees. But he cautioned that one senator’s threatened filibuster of a nominee is not a statement of the entire minority’s position.

“I don’t count it as a filibuster if a single senator has a hold and forces a floor vote on someone,” especially if the cloture vote turns out to be lopsided in favor of the nominee, McConnell said at the conference, hosted by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.