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| President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the fourth day of her confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 16, 2009. |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor won her first public pledge of support from a Republican senator Friday, after a smooth performance at her confirmation hearings that has placed her firmly on track to become the high court's first Latina and the first Democratic-named justice in 15 years.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., announced that he would vote for Sotomayor, calling her "clearly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court," after four days of Judiciary Committee hearings in which he said she showed "a judicial temperament." Lugar, who previously voted to confirm Sotomayor to her current spot on a federal appeals court, was just the first of what is expected to be a number of Republicans who back Sotomayor.
The only other Republicans to publicly weigh in on Sotomayor's nomination are two of the Senate's staunchest conservatives, Sens. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Jim Bunning of Kentucky, who have said they intend to vote no on President Barack Obama's first high court choice.
With Democrats solidly behind Sotomayor, three days of grueling questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee gave Republicans no new ammunition to use against the 55-year-old nominee, who was raised in a South Bronx housing project, educated in the Ivy League, and rose through the legal ranks to spend 17 years on the federal bench.
Now GOP senators are weighing the tricky politics of voting on Sotomayor's confirmation without alienating either their conservative base or Hispanic and women voters.
The GOP's leader at the confirmation hearings, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama has said he has no interest in stopping or even delaying Sotomayor's confirmation vote as the country's 111th Supreme Court justice.
"I look forward to you getting that vote before we recess" on in Aug. 7, said Sessions, despite calls from some conservatives to delay the vote until after the Senate returns in September from its summer break.
"Each senator will make up their own mind," Sessions said.
Sotomayor has overwhelming if not unanimous support among the Senate's 58 Democrats and two independents.
Democrats, sensing a big win, immediately scheduled a committee vote Tuesday, starting the clock on a schedule for a final confirmation vote before the Senate leaves in August for a four-week summer break as well as before the next Supreme Court argument on Sept. 9.
Republicans will likely ask for a weeklong delay before the panel vote, but a unified GOP front against her also seems unlikely, given the praise Sotomayor got from a couple of GOP critics on the Judiciary Committee.
"Your judicial record strikes me as pretty much in the mainstream of judicial decision-making," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Added Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.: "You have, as a judge, been generally in the mainstream."
The underlying politics are dicey for Republicans. They must be careful to keep faith with constituents like National Rifle Association members who oppose her, yet avoid offending the Hispanic voters who represent the fastest-growing segment of the electorate.
Sotomayor's hearings were as much a prelude for future Supreme Court fights as a battle over the judge herself. Republicans criticized Obama's assertion - made before nominating Sotomayor - that he was looking for a justice with "the quality of empathy," and earlier an statement when he was a senator that some decisions depend on what's in a judge's heart.
They also pressed Sotomayor repeatedly on her 2001 statement that she hoped a "wise Latina" would usually rule better than a white male, drawing expressions of regret from the nominee, who said her words were poorly chosen.
Sotomayor parried all their questions on hot-button issues like guns and abortion rights and defended her speeches that have been faulted as showing bias.
She was unequivocal, however, in her statements on what kind of justice she would be. "I do not permit my sympathies, personal views or prejudices to influence the outcome of my cases," she told senators.
Republicans, expressing concern that she would bring bias to the court, gave a speaking role at the hearing to Frank Ricci, a white New Haven, Conn., firefighter whose reverse discrimination claim was rejected by Sotomayor and two other appeals court judges. He complained that the ruling showed a belief "that citizens should be reduced to racial statistics" but declined when given the chance to say Sotomayor's nomination should be rejected.
Her panel's ruling was overturned last month by the Supreme Court she hopes to join.
