Unless something entirely unforeseen happens, confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will be a lovefest for the Democrats who run the Senate Judiciary Committee. There will be much talk about Sotomayor’s historic opportunity to become the first Hispanic on the high court, about her inspiring background and about the sterling qualifications she would bring to the job.
For some Republicans, however, it will be hard to avoid thinking back a few years, to a confirmation hearing that didn’t end happily at all. In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated former Justice Department lawyer Miguel Estrada to a seat on the federal court of appeals. In that instance, as today, the nominee was a Hispanic with a compelling story and impressive qualifications. And some of the very people who are today praising Sotomayor spent their time devising extraordinary measures to kill Estrada’s chances.
Born in Honduras, Estrada came to the United States at age 17, not knowing a word of English. He learned the language almost instantly, and within a few years was graduating with honors from Columbia University and heading off to Harvard Law School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, spent time as a prosecutor in New York, and worked at the Justice Department in Washington before entering private practice.
Estrada’s nomination for a federal judgeship set off alarm bells among Democrats. In November 2001, representatives of those groups met with Democratic Senate staff. One of those staffers then wrote a memo to Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, informing Durbin that the groups wanted to stall Bush nominees, particularly three they had identified as good targets. “They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous,” the staffer added.
It was precisely the fact that Estrada was Hispanic that made Democrats and their activist allies want to kill his nomination. They were determined to deny a Republican White House credit, political and otherwise, for putting a first-rate Hispanic nominee on the bench.
But the Democrats didn’t back off. They had a new, very serious question to ask: What is Miguel Estrada hiding?
The answer was nothing, of course. But the strategy worked. Democrats stonewalled Estrada’s nomination, and, after losing control of the Senate in 2002, they began an unprecedented round of filibusters to block an entire slate of Bush appeals-court nominees, Estrada among them. The confirmation process ground to a halt. More than two years after his nomination was announced, Estrada, tired of what appeared to be an endless runaround, withdrew his name from consideration. Instead of being on the federal bench, he is now in private practice in Washington.
And that was how Democrats treated the last high-level Hispanic court nominee. Think about that when you watch their lovefest with Sonia Sotomayor.
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