Obama High Court Choice Poses Political ‘Peril’ for Republicans
By James Rowley and Kim Chipman
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- By nominating Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, President Barack Obama all but dared Senate Republicans to risk alienating Latinos by trying to block her confirmation.
Sotomayor, 54, whose upbringing by a single, Puerto Rican mother in New York City public housing is the basis of what Democrat Obama called “an inspiring life’s journey,” may be a difficult political target for Republicans. After losing the 2008 elections, the party is seeking to appeal to women and to Hispanics, the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. electorate.
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat designated by the White House to spearhead the confirmation effort, said the nomination will be “more a test of the Republican Party” than of Sotomayor. Republicans “oppose her at their peril,” he said.
“The risk here is not just that they could be seen as anti-Latino or anti-woman, but just more anti, the party of no,” said pollster Michael Dimock, associate director of the Washington-based Pew Research Center.
Hispanics make up potent voting blocs in such states as Florida, California, Texas and New York. Support among Hispanic voters enabled Obama to carry North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico in the presidential election, when he garnered 65 percent of the Latino vote.
Pressure From Base
Still, Senate Republicans will be under pressure from their base to attack Sotomayor, who was a federal district judge for six years before her appointment by President Bill Clinton to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998. Conservative legal activists vowed to paint Sotomayor as a jurist who bends the law to suit her political goals.
Obama “has picked a radical,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a Washington group that advocates for conservative judicial nominees. “If he was going to make himself vulnerable on the issue of judicial activism, he could not have picked someone better,” Levey said. “It’s clear she was chosen because she was a Hispanic woman.”
Asked if Sotomayor’s ethnicity was partly behind her selection, a senior administration official who briefed reporters in Washington said the president feels it is a positive thing.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to “get into the politics and the demographics” of the appointment, saying Obama “picked the person he believed best-suited for this job.”
Trouble Ahead
The Republican Party already faces a challenge persuading Hispanics to support its candidates, because many Republican lawmakers opposed legislation that would create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
“Republicans could have some issues with the Latino community if it’s perceived that they are opposing her and not making the case for that,” said Janet Murguia, president of the Washington-based National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil-rights group.
In their statements, Senate Republicans challenged Sotomayor to show she would set aside her political views and not be a “judicial activist.”
“Some of her writings seem to raise serious questions about her approach to the Constitution and the role of the federal judiciary,” said South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint.
Texas Republican John Cornyn said Sotomayor “must prove her commitment to impartially deciding cases based on the law, rather than based on her own personal politics, feelings and preferences.”
‘History of Activism’
Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, one of 29 Republicans who voted against her 1998 appellate-court nomination, told Fox News his vote was based “on a belief that she had a history of activism.”
Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, which will convene hearings to question Sotomayor, cited as evidence her 2005 comment at a Duke University conference that the “Court of Appeals is where policy is made.” That “appeared to be somewhat revealing of an approach to the law that I’m uneasy with,” he said.
Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who headed the committee when Sotomayor was confirmed to the appeals court, told MSNBC he was concerned about a 1996 law-review article in which she endorsed a “legal system capable of fluidity and pliancy.”
Yet two years after that article, Hatch was among 24 Republicans who voted to confirm Sotomayor to the appeals court. Seven are still in the Senate, including Richard Lugar of Indiana, Robert Bennett of Utah, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine.
‘Well-Qualified’
Senate Democrats voiced support for the nomination. Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, the Democrat who votes most with Republicans, commended Obama for “selecting a nominee with a significant breadth and depth of legal experience” to replace retiring Justice David Souter.
And Snowe and Collins yesterday praised Sotomayor. With Democrats controlling the Senate 59 to 40, derailing the nomination will be hard, barring an unexpected revelation.
Sotomayor’s replacement of Souter won’t change the court’s ideological balance, said Charlie Cook, a Washington analyst and editor of the nonpartisan “Cook Political Report.”
“A liberal is leaving, and a liberal will take that place,” Cook said. “Now when a conservative justice steps down under Obama’s watch, that will be political Armageddon.”
To contact the reporters on this story: James Rowley at jarowley@bloomberg.netKim Chipman in Washington at KChipman@Bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: May 27, 2009 00:00 EDT |
