Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Panel likely to approve Sotomayor

One GOP vote of support expected today

David G. Savage Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON – Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, is expected to win approval today in a near-party-line vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, reflecting the partisan divide on judicial nominees that has taken hold in recent years.

All 12 Democrats on the panel have voiced support for the New York appellate judge, while all but one of the seven Republicans have indicated they will oppose her.

The lineup signals Sotomayor will win confirmation in the Senate by a comfortable margin and become the first Hispanic justice, but she will do so without much Republican support.

The full Senate is expected to take up her nomination next week.

The lone exception to the party-line vote in the Judiciary Committee figures to be Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Last week, the Republican said he would vote to confirm Sotomayor, even though he assumed she would be “left of center” on the court.

“Elections have consequences,” Graham said last week, insisting a president’s well-qualified court nominees deserve to be confirmed. He noted, however, that then-Sen. Obama and most of the Democrats did not follow that standard with President George W. Bush’s two Supreme Court nominees.

Two veteran Republicans, Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah, said their votes against Sotomayor will be their first “no” votes on a Supreme Court nominee and they pointed to changed standards in the Senate.

“I think it’s a whole new ballgame, a lot different than I approached it with Ginsburg and Breyer,” Grassley said last month. He was referring to President Bill Clinton’s two Supreme Court picks: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was confirmed on a 96-3 vote in 1993, and Justice Stephen Breyer, who was confirmed on an 87-9 vote in 1994.

As expected, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the panel’s ranking Republican, announced he will vote against Sotomayor. Despite her pledge to closely follow the law, Sessions said he believed she will not “resist the siren call of judicial activism.”

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., did not announce his vote, but he issued a statement sharply criticizing Sotomayor after her Senate hearings.