Republicans mindful of political risks in opposing Sotomayor

PHILADELPHIA — Nominations to the Supreme Court have inspired many of the nasty, defining partisan battles of the last generation in Washington, creating a whole cottage industry of interest groups on both the left and the right.

President Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, however, has the potential to quiet the usual noise.

That's because Republicans will need to tread lightly in opposing the woman who would be the first Hispanic justice, lest they risk further alienating the nation's fastest-growing group of voters.

Republicans experienced a sharp drop in Latino support in 2008, after eight years of efforts led by former President George W. Bush to increase the party's appeal. Exit polls found that Obama captured 67 percent of the Hispanic vote, running 16 percentage points better than 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry.

The GOP's image had suffered among Hispanics in part by conservatives' push for a crackdown on illegal immigration in debates during 2006 and 2007 over Bush's effort to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented workers.

"If the debate over Judge Sotomayor starts to get too negative, it could hurt the Republicans with Hispanics, and they still have an immigration debate looming," said Matt Barreto, a political scientist and pollster at the University of Washington. "They'll have to ask how important it is to block this judge, especially if she's likely to be confirmed anyway."

Eighty-one percent of Latino voters already approved of Obama's job performance in a Latino Decisions poll Barreto conducted with Pacific Market Research earlier this month.

"Republicans would be idiots for opposing her. ... It would be one more nail in the Republican image coffin," Lionel Sosa, a GOP strategist who advised Bush on Hispanic outreach, told The Associated Press.

Even Alberto Gonzales, attorney general under Bush, called the nomination a "powerful message of hope and opportunity."

Last fall's shift among Hispanics was important because it was key to the strategic realignment of the Mountain West states, for the last 25 years a part of the GOP's geographic base.

Obama flipped Colorado from red to blue on the strength of a 73 percent share of the Latino vote, and captured Nevada with 76 percent of Latino voters and New Mexico, with 69 percent. The Hispanic share of the electorate increased in all three states.