WASHINGTON  —  With a name, face and judicial record finally fleshed out, President Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court vacancy is ready to commence courtesy calls with senators that Democrats hope will ultimately put unbearable election-year pressure on Republicans refusing to consider any Obama nominee.

Merrick Garland planned to visit two top Democrats on Thursday, a day after Obama nominated the 63-year-old appellate court judge and former prosecutor for the seat. The White House said that after a two-week Senate recess, Garland will meet with Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who’s been a chief focus of Democratic attacks for refusing to let his panel hold a hearing for anyone Obama selects, helping to doom the nomination.

Declining to see Garland was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has led the GOP’s near-solid blockade against a hearing or vote until the next president makes a choice. But the planned meeting with Grassley – which his aides conceded could occur – underscored a willingness by a small but growing cadre of GOP senators to say they’d see the nominee, and in some cases take the process even further.

“I meet with anybody, and that would include him,” said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. Flake said if a Democrat is elected president this November, he’d want the Senate to consider Garland’s nomination during a post-election, lame-duck session because “between him and somebody that a President Clinton might nominate, I think the choice is clear.”

Flake’s comment showed how Obama and the leading Democratic presidential contender, Hillary Clinton, have had a good cop-bad cop effect on some Republicans, who consider Clinton likely to make a more liberal selection should she enter the White House.