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In his announcement of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nominee, President Barack Obama emphasized that she was first placed on the federal bench by a Republican, President George H.W. Bush.
“It’s a measure of her qualities and her qualifications that Judge Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, and promoted to the Federal Court of Appeals by a Democrat, Bill Clinton,” the president said.
Why did the first President Bush nominate Sotomayor to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York? Veterans of the first Bush administration say the answer is politics, with a generous helping of horse-trading thrown in.
Appellate courts and the Supreme Court are often the stage for ideologically based confirmation fights. The lower district courts are, in the words of one former Bush official, “darn near patronage jobs.”
Senators, even those in the opposing party from the White House, wield great power over who is nominated to the district court seats in their states. And in 1991, when Sotomayor was nominated, the Senate was controlled by Democrats, and the two senators from New York were Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Republican Alphonse D’Amato.
By a number of accounts, Moynihan and D’Amato had a long-standing arrangement from the Reagan years. “It was a special deal whereby D’Amato agreed to defer to the pick of Moynihan for one out of every four district court seats,” another former Bush official told me. “That was a deal that preceded [President George H.W. Bush], so basically Moynihan was picking one of four district court nominees.”
In 1991, it was Moynihan’s turn to choose, and his choice was Sotomayor. There is no evidence that anyone in the Bush I White House or Justice Department thought Sotomayor was a conservative, or even a moderate, but no one wanted a fight with Moynihan.
“She was not our first choice,” recalled a third official from the administration of the first President Bush.
“It’s a measure of her qualities and her qualifications that Judge Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, and promoted to the Federal Court of Appeals by a Democrat, Bill Clinton,” the president said.
Why did the first President Bush nominate Sotomayor to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York? Veterans of the first Bush administration say the answer is politics, with a generous helping of horse-trading thrown in.
Appellate courts and the Supreme Court are often the stage for ideologically based confirmation fights. The lower district courts are, in the words of one former Bush official, “darn near patronage jobs.”
Senators, even those in the opposing party from the White House, wield great power over who is nominated to the district court seats in their states. And in 1991, when Sotomayor was nominated, the Senate was controlled by Democrats, and the two senators from New York were Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Republican Alphonse D’Amato.
By a number of accounts, Moynihan and D’Amato had a long-standing arrangement from the Reagan years. “It was a special deal whereby D’Amato agreed to defer to the pick of Moynihan for one out of every four district court seats,” another former Bush official told me. “That was a deal that preceded [President George H.W. Bush], so basically Moynihan was picking one of four district court nominees.”
In 1991, it was Moynihan’s turn to choose, and his choice was Sotomayor. There is no evidence that anyone in the Bush I White House or Justice Department thought Sotomayor was a conservative, or even a moderate, but no one wanted a fight with Moynihan.
“She was not our first choice,” recalled a third official from the administration of the first President Bush.