Will the GOP Continue to Lose Hispanic Votes?

Following Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court back in May, we commented that the GOP would be unlikely to filibuster her confirmation because of a fear of losing Hispanic votes.

Of course, with Sen. Al Franken being sworn in earlier this month, it is extremely unlikely that Senate Republicans could pull off a filibuster anyway. But even if they wanted to, as blogger Glenn Thrush said, “every GOP leader with a pulse knows that opposing her could accelerate the stampede of Latinos out of the GOP in the southwest, west and Texas.”

In fact, our very first post back in October explained how winning Latino support was putting then-Senator Barack Obama over the top in states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. The GOP has tried to be cautious of the growing significance of Hispanic votes.

Apparently, that fact is of no concern to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Ranking Minority Member, Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Since the confirmation hearings began earlier this week, Sessions has been in (what appears to be) full campaign mode against her.

Just watch his message consistency as he questioned her on Tuesday:



Sessions knows full well that nothing can derail a Senate Judiciary confirmation like charges of racism. When President Ronald Reagan nominated him to be a District Court judge back in 1986, the GOP-controlled Judiciary Committee rejected him upon the following stories:

Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)… "un-American" and "Communist-inspired." Hebert said Sessions had claimed [the NAACP] "forced civil rights down the throats of people."

…Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases…

…Another damaging witness--a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures--testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers."…Sessions, he said, had called him "boy" and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to "be careful what you say to white folks."

So, when you want to court Latino voters - as President George W. Bush did fairly well in his two national elections - letting a man like Sessions be the chief opponent of a Sotomayor confirmation seems like a particularly dumb move on the part of the GOP.

Why is Latino support so critical?

Hispanics are the second largest ethnic group in the United States, and they’re continuing to grow. As NBC’s Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser pointed out in their book Why Obama Won:

"Young voters are more diverse racially and ethnically than older voters and are growing more over time. Just 62% of voters under 30 are white, while 18% are black and 14% are Hispanic…in 2000, nearly three-quarters, 74%, were white."

And as we all know, young voters were particularly supportive of Obama. The correlation is that as younger voters grow older - and more and more young people reach the voting age - Hispanics will become a more and more prominent voting bloc.

What makes Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination so important is that there are still few Latinos holding high offices in the U.S. government. Hispanics represent about 15% of the American population, but only about 6% of the House of Representatives and 2% of the Senate. Furthermore, in 2008, only 7.7% of federal employees in the civil service were Hispanic, with only about 3% holding senior roles.

This might be an important reason as to why Hispanics made up only 7.4% of the total vote in 2008 - they seldom have one of their own to support.

While there are many non-partisan groups for the advancement of Hispanics in public life out there - such as the National Association of Latinos in Elected Office, The Leauge of United Latin American Citizens, and La Raza - the most successful groups of these sorts would be partisan.

The reason is simple: those involved with the parties themselves are often more experienced and would have a greater incentive to build support by recruiting Latinos for public office (namely, building a base to win elections for their party).

And between their nativist stance on immigration and now Session’s stark opposition to confirming Judge Sotomayor, the GOP is becoming less and less likely to be the party to achieve this goal. Thus - despite their efforts to the contrary - it seems evident that the Republicans will continue to lose out on the growing Hispanic vote.

Sotomayor Hearings Start Off Partisan

Today’s opening to the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor hit a hard partisan tone this morning. One only needs to hear the remarks of Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Minority Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to understand.



Read Leahy’s full remarks here.



Read Sessions’ full remarks here.

In fact, the GOP members of the Judiciary Committee have all hit Sotomayor hard on the “empathy” issue so far today. A party-split vote in the committee is very likely at this point.

To see the full hearings, visit the Judiciary Committee’s website for a live webcast.

All Things Sotomayor

We usually don’t do posts about the same topic two days in a row, but there is a terrific string of stories on Politico today about President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

The first story is an excellent overview of the political implications behind the Sotomayor pick. Obviously the nomination of a Hispanic woman brings with it the furthering divide between the GOP and the Latino community, but there are less obvious implications on the local level with midterm elections next year.

Second is the “How and Why” behind Obama’s selection. For example, Politico writes that with the nomination coming during the current Congressional recess “Obama caught the Republican minority off-guard, with critics not equipped to respond with the force they would during the session.”

The last story from Politico is about former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and his opposition to Sotomayor. Like Rush Limbaugh did yesterday, Gingrich accuses her of being a “racist” for a comment she made in 2002. And although RNC Chairman Michael Steele has been warning Republicans not to say things like that, RNC New Media Director Todd Herman - the man in charge of the social networking message - went dramatically off-message when he posted “new racism = no better than old” today on Twitter.

Finally, the New York Times had an interesting story today about the upcoming confirmation battle. Of course, they forgot to mention the ad that’s ready to hit the airwaves.



Additionally, five of the past eight posts on FiveThirtyEight.com have been about Sotomayor - most of which use Silver’s skills in research and mathematics to defend the nominee from her opponents.

Will the Senate Confirm Sotomayor?

President Obama nominated Second District Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter to the U.S. Supreme Court this morning.

Here is the full video of the announcement. Watch it until the end for some insightful analysis from the NBC correspondents.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

There is already a great deal of criticism coming from the right. Former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) today called the appointment “the clearest indication yet that President Obama’s campaign promises to be a centrist and think in a bipartisan way were mere rhetoric.”

Meanwhile, Charmaine Yoest, the president of Americans United for Life, said Sotomayor was “a radical pick that divides America…This appointment would provide a pedestal for an avowed judicial activist to impose her personal policy and beliefs onto others from the bench at a time when the Courts are at a crossroads.”

Here they are referring to the now widely circulated video of Sotomayor sitting on a panel at Duke University in 2005.



But this was undoubtedly already seen by the President’s staff during the vetting process, and a little more footage indicates that she was talking about precedent and not actually policy - making it a perfectly reasonable statement.



However, the criticisms won’t end there. In a 2002 speech at Berkeley she said that a judge’s personal background “affect the facts that judges choose to see” and “I simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging, but I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

At face value, that already is enough to fuel the fire against Sotomayor in the confirmation process, where Republicans will accuse her of judicial activism. But these remarks will be complemented by her recent ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano, in which she sided with the city of New Haven, Connecticut over a group of white firefighters after the city threw out the results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough.

This explains why Huckabee said “If she is confirmed, then we need to take the blindfold off Lady Justice.”

Nonetheless, Republican leaders have already said they will reserve judgment on Sotomayor until they have more information.

From Politico:

“Senate Republicans will treat Judge Sotomayor fairly,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement. “But we will thoroughly examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele released a restrained statement, declaring: “Republicans will reserve judgment on Sonia Sotomayor until there has been a thorough and thoughtful examination of her legal views.”

But it already looks like she may have obstacles to overcome. In 1998, Senate Republicans held up the confirmation to her current bench for a year. When she was finally confirmed, it was with the approval of only seven of the current forty Republican Senators. Some, specifically Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), have begun to sound skeptical of whether they will support her again.

Among the Republicans who voted against her were current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Minority Whip John Kyl (R-AZ), John McCain (R-AZ), and a particularly important one, ranking Judiciary Committee member Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Each of them will be instrumental going in to the fight against her confirmation.

It will be an ugly battle, but will she still be confirmed?

As the media digs through her life and career, we will learn more about Sotomayor and more about what could prevent her from being confirmed.

As of now, she should have no problem getting through the Judiciary Committee, although she may not have the luxury of any GOP votes there.

The only way for Republicans to defeat her confirmation then is a filibuster. This action would have several backlashes for the GOP

First, each of the Republicans that fight for a filibuster will be subject to the political pressure of looking like a hypocrite. When several Democrats tried to filibuster Justice Samuel Alito the Senate Republicans had a fit over what they perceived as a misuse of filibusters.

Second, they would fail. It is unlikely that every single Republican will vote against cloture. The GOP Senators from Maine, in particular, will likely support her confirmation. It is also probable that Senators such as Judd Gregg (R-NH) will support cloture (even if he opposes her confirmation) in order to appease their liberal constituents. Gregg, Snowe, and Collins all approved her confirmation to her current bench.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, many Republicans will not want to oppose the first Hispanic nominee for the High Court. As blogger Glenn Thrush wrote this morning, “every GOP leader with a pulse knows that opposing her could accelerate the stampede of Latinos out of the GOP in the southwest, west and Texas.”

As of now, we can expect Sotomayor to be confirmed.