WASHINGTON — Utah Repub­li­can Sen. Mitt Rom­ney said Tues­day he sup­ports vot­ing to fill the late Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court, all but ensur­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has the back­ing need­ed to push the nom­i­na­tion over Demo­c­ra­t­ic objec­tions that it’s too close to the Novem­ber election.

Rom­ney issued a state­ment say­ing he would sup­port mov­ing forward.

“If the nom­i­nee reach­es the Sen­ate floor, I intend to vote based upon their qual­i­fi­ca­tions,” Rom­ney said.

Trump , mean­while, said he would announce his choice to replace the late Gins­burg on Sat­ur­day, set­ting off a Sen­ate bat­tle with Democrats.

The Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry chair­man who will shep­herd the nom­i­na­tion through the cham­ber said Repub­li­cans have the votes they need for con­fir­ma­tion — even hough no nom­i­nee has been announced.

“The nom­i­nee is going to be sup­port­ed by every Repub­li­can in the Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee,” Chair­man Lind­sey Gra­ham told Fox News late Mon­day. “We’ve got the votes to con­firm the jus­tice on the floor of the Sen­ate before the elec­tion and that’s what’s coming.”

The pres­i­dent met with con­ser­v­a­tive Judge Amy Coney Bar­rett at the White House on Mon­day and told reporters he would inter­view oth­er can­di­dates and might meet with Judge Bar­bara Lagoa when he trav­els to Flori­da lat­er this week. Con­ver­sa­tions in the White House and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell’s office have been increas­ing­ly focused on Bar­rett and Lagoa, accord­ing to a per­son grant­ed anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the pri­vate deliberations.

Repub­li­cans hold a 53–47 major­i­ty in the cham­ber and can con­firm a jus­tice by a sim­ple majority.

Bar­rett has long been favored by con­ser­v­a­tives, and those famil­iar with the process said inter­est inside the White House seemed to be wan­ing for Lagoa amid con­cerns by some that she did not have a proven record as a con­ser­v­a­tive jurist. Lagoa has been pushed by some aides who tout her polit­i­cal advan­tages of being His­pan­ic and hail­ing from the key polit­i­cal bat­tle­ground state of Florida.

Bar­rett, 48, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Cir­cuit, was a strong con­tender for the seat that even­tu­al­ly went to Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. At the time, Trump told con­fi­dants he was “sav­ing” Bar­rett for Ginsburg’s seat.

Before join­ing the 7th Cir­cuit, she had made her mark in law pri­mar­i­ly as an aca­d­e­m­ic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, where she received a law degree and lat­er began teach­ing at age 30. She clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit, clerked at the Supreme Court for Jus­tice Antonin Scalia, worked at the Miller, Cas­sidy, Lar­ro­ca & Lewin law firm in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., then returned to Notre Dame.

Bar­rett has long expressed sym­pa­thy with a mode of inter­pret­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion, called orig­i­nal­ism, in which jus­tices try to deci­pher orig­i­nal mean­ings of texts in decid­ing cas­es. Many lib­er­als say that approach doesn’t allow the Con­sti­tu­tion to change with the times.

Trump has said he would choose a woman, and he admit­ted that pol­i­tics may play a role. He gave a nod to anoth­er elec­tion bat­tle­ground state, Michi­gan, and White House offi­cials con­firmed he was refer­ring to Joan Larsen, a fed­er­al appeals court judge there.

The pres­i­dent also indi­cat­ed that Alli­son Jones Rush­ing, a 38-year-old appel­late judge from North Car­oli­na, is on his short list. His team is also active­ly con­sid­er­ing Kate Todd, the White House deputy coun­sel who has nev­er been a judge but was a clerk for Jus­tice Clarence Thomas.

Democ­rats, led by pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Joe Biden, are protest­ing the Repub­li­cans’ rush to replace Gins­burg, say­ing vot­ers should speak first, on Elec­tion Day, and the win­ner of the White House should fill the vacancy.

Trump dis­missed those argu­ments, telling TV’s “Fox & Friends” on Mon­day, “I think that would be good for the Repub­li­can Par­ty, and I think it would be good for every­body to get it over with.”

The mount­ing clash over the vacant seat — when to fill it and with whom — injects new tur­bu­lence in the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign with the nation still reel­ing from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic that has killed near­ly 200,000 Amer­i­cans, left mil­lions unem­ployed and height­ened par­ti­san ten­sions and anger.

Democ­rats point to hypocrisy in Repub­li­cans try­ing to rush through a pick so close to the elec­tion after McConnell led the GOP in refus­ing to vote on a nom­i­nee of Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma in Feb­ru­ary 2016, long before that year’s elec­tion. Biden is appeal­ing to GOP sen­a­tors to “uphold your con­sti­tu­tion­al duty, your con­science” and wait until after the election.

Gins­burg, 87, died Fri­day of metasta­t­ic pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. She will lie in state at the U.S. Capi­tol this week, the first woman ever accord­ed that hon­or. First, her cas­ket is to be on view mid­week on the steps of the high court.

With just over a month before the elec­tion, McConnell said the Sen­ate has “more than suf­fi­cient time.”

No nom­i­nee has won con­fir­ma­tion so quick­ly since San­dra Day O’Connor — with no oppo­si­tion from either par­ty — became the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court in 1981.

Both sides are mobi­liz­ing for a wrench­ing con­fir­ma­tion fight punc­tu­at­ed by cru­cial issues before the court — health­care, abor­tion access and even the poten­tial out­come of the com­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Some pro­test­ers showed up ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing out­side the homes of key GOP senators.

At a Trump ral­ly lat­er Mon­day in Ohio, peo­ple chant­ed, “Fill the seat!”

As the Sen­ate returned to Wash­ing­ton on Mon­day, sev­er­al key GOP sen­a­tors, includ­ing Mitt Rom­ney of Utah, declined to say whether they would agree to a swift vote.

Four Repub­li­cans could halt a quick con­fir­ma­tion and Trump crit­i­cized Repub­li­can Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkows­ki of Alas­ka for oppos­ing a vote before elec­tions. The pres­i­dent warned they would be “very bad­ly hurt” by voters.

Oth­ers, includ­ing GOP Sens. Chuck Grass­ley of Iowa and Cory Gard­ner of Col­orado, declined to join in oppos­ing the president’s plan.

Biden has appealed to Repub­li­cans to join Murkows­ki and Collins in oppos­ing a con­fir­ma­tion vote before the Nov. 3 elec­tion. He said, “Let the peo­ple speak. Cool the flames that have engulfed our country.”

Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader Chuck Schumer object­ed to what he called McConnell’s “utter­ly craven” pur­suit of Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion under cur­rent cir­cum­stances, warn­ing it would shat­ter Sen­ate norms. “It’s enough to make your head explode,” he said.