Vote on judge can hurt GOP, say Democrats
Posted: July 30, 2009 at 5:43 a.m.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor responds to questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Jon Kyl, R- Ariz., on Capitol Hill on Thursday, July 16, 2009.
WASHINGTON — The Senate debate over Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor turned bitter Wednesday, after Democrats warned the GOP it would pay a steep price for opposing the judge who would be the first Hispanic justice, and a top Republican charged they were playing destructive racial politics.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Wednesday on Republicans to join Democrats in voting to confirm Sotomayor next week, warning that GOP opposition would bring the same sort of public backlash that followed the party's opposition to measures that would have given some illegal aliens a chance to gain legal status.
"I just think that their voting against this good woman is going to treat them about the same way that they got treated as a result of their votes on immigration," said Reid, D-Nev.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the head of his party's Senate campaign committee and a Sotomayor opponent, said that Reid and other Democrats were trying to exploit the nomination and "giving cover to groups and individuals to nurture racial grievances for political advantage."
"I don't think it influences people's votes, but what it does encourage is a very poisonous - indeed a very toxic - tone of destructive politics," Cornyn said. "They ought to be ashamed of themselves."
President Barack Obama's first high court nominee is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who was raised in a New York housing project and educated in the Ivy League before spending 17 years on the federal bench. Sotomayor, 55, likely will be confirmed.
The National Rifle Association recently announced that a vote to confirm Sotomayor would count against senators in the group's annual candidate ratings. The NRA calls Sotomayor "hostile" to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Three Republicans, Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, announced Wednesday that they planned to vote "no."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman, said he was "disappointed" that more Republicans hadn't sided with him in support of Obama's nominee.
His panel's vote Tuesday to send Sotomayor's nomination to the full Senate was nearly along party lines, with just one Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, breaking with the party to back her.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 07/30/2009
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