GOP pledges quick vote on Sotomayor

WASHINGTON — Sonia Sotomayor sped toward confirmation as the nation's first Hispanic justice Thursday, encouraged by Republican promises of a quick vote and cheered on by a Democratic senator's challenge to take on the Supreme Court's conservative wing when she arrives.

"Battle out the ideas that you believe in, because I have a strong hunch that they are closer to the ones that I would like to see adopted by the court," Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican turned Democrat, told Sotomayor.

Even two of her Republican critics called the 55-year-old appeals court judge's rulings "mainstream" — noteworthy concessions for President Barack Obama's first high court nominee.

If confirmed, Sotomayor would become the first justice appointed by a Democratic president in 15 years, and the hearings were as much a prelude for future Supreme Court fights as a battle over the judge herself. Republicans repeatedly criticized Obama's past assertion that he wanted a justice with "the quality of empathy," and Sotomayor disavowed Obama's statement as a senator that some decisions would be determined by "what is in a judge's heart."

Republicans, expressing concern that she would bring bias to the court, gave Frank Ricci, a white New Haven, Conn., firefighter whose reverse discrimination claim was rejected by Sotomayor and two other appeals court judges, a speaking role at the hearing. 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.

The details of Ricci's case played out repeatedly in testimony this week.

Nowhere is Ricci's case being debated more hotly than New Haven, where the case originated. He gets strong support there in the white middle-class neighborhood of Morris Cove.

James Izzo, a chef, said the city was wrong to throw out the test results to help blacks and Hispanics. "I just think these people need to study harder," said Izzo, 26. "They play the race card over everything. I think it's a little ridiculous."

As Sotomayor concluded three grueling days of nationally televised question-and-answer rounds in the Judiciary Committee's witness chair, the panel's senior Republican, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said, "I look forward to you getting that vote before we recess" on Aug. 7.

Sessions, who declared he still had "serious concerns" about Sotomayor, said he wouldn't support any attempt to block a final vote on confirmation and didn't foresee any other Republican doing so. A committee vote on confirming her is expected late this month.